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Growth Online		 New Insights into the Nature of Society
 Knowledge Base
by Roy Posner and MSS

 

Society has evolved to its current mental stage, and is just beginning to perceive its spiritual possibilities. Whereas the 20th century was of the common man, the 21st will be of the Spiritual Man.

 

INTRODUCTION
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In this section of the Growth Online Knowledge Base, we present our original thoughts, as well as links to our original articles on the Society's Growth topic of "New Insights into the Nature of Society." (If you wish, you can see our other Society's Growth categories.)
 

STAGES OF SOCIETY'S EVOLUTION
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What Society Is

Causes of Social Evolution

Physical, Vital, Mental, and Spiritual Stages of Society

The Evolution of Mind/Mentality in Society

Other

What Society Is

Society is a Living Organization
Society is a living organisation, not a mere functioning organisation. With each part born the society becomes alive and at once each part of the society endeavours to relate with that new part or the newly developed part with a view to integrating with it ultimately. (MSS)

 

On What Civilization Is

Civilization is an instrument fashioned by human beings to improve the welfare and well-being of our race through a wide range of institutions – political, social, economic, educational, scientific and cultural. (MSS)



Causes of Social Evolution

Causes of the Evolution of Social Life of Collective
The social life of the collective is continuous evolving under pressure of its own aspiration to manifest greater powers of life. It is also evolving under the influence of higher-level spiritual determinants working behind the scenes to express higher powers of consciousness. This evolutionary intention expresses subconsciously as the will of the society. This collective will expresses through the actions of individual members of the society pursuing their own interests and aspirations. (MSS)

See Thoughts on the Causes & Process of Development and Evolution in Society
 

 

Physical, Vital, Mental, and Spiritual Stages of Society

Four Planes of Human Evolution
The movement of civilization is Man's evolution  from physicality to vitality to mentality to spirituality. (MSS)

Four Stages of Civilization
 Society has developed through three overlapping stages -- physical, vital, and mental. Over the course of tens of thousands of years humanity has evolved from a society mainly concerned with the physical realities, such as our survival, a life of fear and threat from without, and the need for complete deference to authority; to a stage in which our individual vital needs and wants, including our desire to expand and trade, come into their own; to the present emerging mental stage where peace, freedom, democracy, the fulfillment and empowerment of the individual, the emergence of fast, complex organizations, and the extraordinary power of thought to shape our world for endless progress emerges. Beyond that is the spiritual stage of social evolution where mind is more fully developed to allow multi-sided awareness of truth, instead of the current limited capacity of mind, and where one connects with the spiritual Force that enable the ultimate flowering and transformation of life.

Stages of Social Development
Society has been developing throughout history through the three overlapping stages - physical, vital, and mental. Each stage is characterized by the predominance of one of the three attributes of human consciousness. The progression from one stage to the next stimulates an exponential increase in the productivity and accomplishments of society.

Evolutionary Stages of Society
 -Just as the universe evolved from matter to life to mind; and the individual parallels that development in his body, his vital, and his mind, so too the society has evolved from a physical state of survival beginning say 100,000 years ago, to a vital stage during the middle of the last millennium, focused on trade, and interaction with others; to a mental stage that he is now currently unfolding in which we see the emergence of freedom, democracy, higher organization, education, and individual self-fulfillment.

-There have thus been three stages of social development: the Physical (marked by survival, deference to the collective, etc.); the Vital (marked by human interconnections, travel, business, etc.); and the Mental (freedom, fulfillment, higher organization, etc.). There is also the possibility of a future Spiritual stage. 

-The currently emerging Mental stage of social development is indicated by an increase in freedom, democracy, mental inquisitiveness, human fulfillment, and higher levels of organization.

-The Internet is reflective of the further emergence of the power of Mind. The Internet is an outer reflection, form of the Mental stage of human development.

-The more complex and interrelated the systems of an organization is, the more development and evolution there is in society.

-Beyond the mental age of society is the spiritual age, indicated by harmony, unity, collaboration, peace, spiritual connectedness, unlimited infinite potential of accomplishment, success, and joy. There is also the utilization of the Divine Spirit, i.e. the Force (which can also be accessed even in the mental age) to create instant life response, accomplishment, and possibility in life.

Man Emerging into the Mental & Spiritual Dimension
A thousand years ago man was physical. His life was elementary. He survived. Today he has multiplied his comforts, enjoyment, reach, mastery a hundred or even a thousand-fold. The progress in one millennium has been phenomenal. This occurred because man moved from being physical to being mental. Though he has not yet acquired a fully formed mental life, a rational life, certainly he has moved away from the physical to the vital life. Both body and vitality accept the guidance of the mind, at least in material matters. Thus, we can say that man today is mental.

If this phenomenal expansion was the result of moving from the physical to the mental, moving from mind to the Spirit can bring another phenomenal expansion of similar magnitude. Today's life will further expand in its richness, inner peace, outer security, harmony and, especially, in Prosperity a thousand-fold. (MSS)

Human Relationships in the Three Stages of Social Development
Man and society are in the process of transition from the physical/vital to a more vital/mental stage of evolution. Human relationships during the physical stage are determined by blood and physical proximity centered around the family and the local community. Attitudes, ideas, opinions, sentiments, feelings, and emotions toward others derive from this basis and are extremely narrow. Those from a different location are looked on as strangers or foreigners, those of different ethnic background as inferior, those of different religious persuasion as infidels. The most important social value is loyalty to the family and intense emotions of affection and attachment are restricted to members of the family.  

As society evolves, human relationships become less dependent on physical factors. Man associates more with people of other communities, nationalities, races, castes, classes and religions. The importance of family ties declines, the importance of social relations and occupational associations increases. The joint family gives way to the nuclear family, social institutions like the company and government offer security and companionship formerly derived from the family. Man offers his loyalty to larger social units -- the company, the class, the nation. His attitudes, sentiments and emotions widen considerably to embrace a much larger segment of humanity beyond his family and locale. He comes to smile at the stranger instead of eyeing him suspiciously. He enquires with curiosity about others' beliefs and cultural traditions, rather than maintaining an aloof sense of superiority.

These changes represent a development in human consciousness from the physical to the vital and mental planes. Relationship at the physical level is mere physical attachment to others who are felt as part of oneself, i.e. of the same body. At the vital stage, relationship is based on feeling and sensation, nervous stimulation, the intensity and pleasure of food and sex and companionship with those around. Only when man goes beyond this level can pure emotions and sentiments develop which are not confined and restricted to physical circumstances. Communities have attained this level of cultured relationship in the past, but it has been confined to a small section of the population, usually an aristocratic class freed from the preoccupation with material concerns by generations of wealth and comfort. Today society as a whole is making the transition to this higher level. The spread of education, the extension of social freedom to women and minorities, the dissolution of rigid class barriers, increased social mobility, are aspects of this process which we have described earlier.

Levels of Collective Change in Consciousness in the World
Is there a collective movement in higher consciousness under way?

Undoubtedly we are in a new age where a new consciousness is emerging. It is happening in ways that for the average person are too subtle to be perceived. Even for the conscious person, it is happening in ways that are beyond the spiritual traditions or even the New Age movements. That is why Sri Aurobindo's perceptions of this new world are so helpful, because he lays out the general parameters so clearly. Karmayogi has extended this knowledge into the major fields of life.

If it is a collective movement, it is certainly not a conscious one. That is why I listed out several of the outer manifestations of collective change, because it can be more readily seen there. For example, people are speaking about the environment with one very strong, even loud voice. It is a great development, but only the most surface form of collective unity. It addresses the purely physical plane of existence. When humanity address the psychological issues -- i.e. the fulfillment of the individual, the encouragement of his full potential, the overcoming of all problems that impede his progress, etc. -- then there would be real collective progress. In other words, we would be collectively sharing the need to embrace the deepest of human values. Environmentalism addresses physical values of cleanliness, security, etc., not the deeper psychological values, let alone spiritual values. Still it is a significant step.

Spiritual values of Harmony, Unity, Oneness, Love, Wisdom, Delight, Timelessness, Infinity, Peace, et al are the deep beliefs that would be embraced for a true spiritual evolution. That is an evolutionary leap beyond; though it can infiltrate earlier forms of collective progress.

We can also see evolution along a spectrum from political to economic to cultural to spiritual unity. We are well under way towards economic unity, with the others hardly addressed.

It is in outer events/unfoldings that we can see the inner appreciation of values. The Internet is a perfect example, as it embraces the deeper aspirations of man. The common man does not see the deeper values that the Internet represents. 

Perceptions of deep human values at the collective level would be a great sign that human evolution is on its way, and is being shared, communicated, and embraced. It would be a great step in human evolution.

Of course, the overcoming of ego, ignorance, exclusiveness, possessiveness, separateness, et al; plus the purification at the physical, vital, mental, and spiritual levels of the person are the essential steps of progress for the individual. They would readily contribute to the general collective movement forward; to the progressive evolution of humanity.

March of Civilization
It is said that civilization began in Mesopotamia. Man took to agriculture and urban living. It was a physical life of the civilized man. Mind was developed in Greece in later centuries. The evolution of Man continued, but elsewhere. It was Rome that developed law, art, and empires. Again it moved. Europe developed science. Now that center of that movement is in USA, which is focusing not so much on Science as Scientific Technology. Before this movement began the Spirit was discovered in India. (MSS)

Advance of Civilization and Role of India and US
Advance of civilisation arrives at revelations which later become their culture. The Greek's intellectual culture, the Roman's love of law, the European scientific enquiry, British patronage of democracy and the American's excelling in practical organisation are such consummations. The Indian discovery of the Spirit as the underlying principle for all these expressions and their reliance on that spiritual approach to shape their daily life are unique to India.  This is the basis of Sri Aurobindo's statement that India would become the Guru of the world.

The world is treating USA as the leader and is taking after her culture. Even in India this is true. I consider this movement in the historical perspective that Nature develops her several facets at several parts of the globe before she achieves her desired consummation. The full cycle of human capacities having been developed successively, what remains now is to unite them all. I see Indians moving to the West in that light. (MSS)

Ease in Society Since WWII because of Moving from Vital to Power of Mind
Life was negative with a vengeance until 1900, maybe until the end of World War II. It made survival difficult. Most people struggled to hold on to what they had. The question of opportunity was unheard of. When Benjamin Disraeli became the Prime Minister of England, he described his rise as, "At last I have reached the top of the greasy pole."

In an expressive proverb it is said here that if we rise six inches, there is a slide down of 12 inches awaiting us around the corner. It was so because Mind was not sufficiently organised in those days. Life is a lower force, which was stronger than Mind. (MSS)



The Evolution of Mind/Mentality in Society

The Evolution of Human Consciousness through Three Levels of Mind, and Its Descent Into Life
The evolution of human consciousness can be described as the gradual emergence of mentality in the body, life and mind of humanity, reaching its acme in the development of the pure thinking mind in ancient Greece. This ascent of consciousness has been followed by a progressive descent of the power of thinking mind from the development of theoretical, abstract ideas in ancient Greece to the application of mind to organize social life in the days of the Roman Empire and for the conquest of matter in modern times. (MSS)

Hamlet as Symbol of Emergence of the Mental Individual in the Human Collective
Hamlet represents the beginning of a new phase in the evolution of Western society - the birth of thinking mind and the emergence of mental individuality in the human collective. Instead of immediately seeking to revenge his father's death, Hamlet begins to contemplate the nature of human existence. He perceives the pretense and falsehood of society. He becomes conscious of his own personal defects. He comes to question the very purpose of life and action. All this is possible, because the thinking mind has been born in Hamlet and that mind is giving shape to his individuality. ... Hamlet is a symbol captured in fiction of a real historical phenomenon that was occurring at the time the play was written .. the collective development of thinking mind and mental individuality in Europe. ... Around the time of Hamlet, some 500 years ago, thinking ceased to be the sole prerogative and preoccupation of a rare few and became the common right and heritage of humanity as a whole. (MSS)

From Thinking Mind to the Spiritual Individual of Tomorrow
The emergence of thinking mind has made possible the emergence of mental individuality in humanity. But this is not the end of the journey or the last stage in human evolution. Mind is only a transitional stage and point of departure for our further progress into the realm of spirit and the gradual emergence of the spiritual individual in humanity. While much of humanity has yet to acquire the capacity for conceptual thinking that forms the basis of true mental individuality, our real future lies beyond thought in the application of spiritual power to inform and elevate life. As the pioneers, adventurers, discoverers, inventors and thinkers of the past blazed new trails for humanity to follow, the future of humanity lies along a course that will be blazed and in territory that will be first settled by the spiritual individuals of tomorrow. (MSS)

From Tyranny of the Past to a Future of Fairness
The Future is for fairness, not for tyranny. Man was physical at the dawn of civilisation. The physically strong man became the ruler. He was not elected or selected. He foisted himself on those who were weak. People worshipped his strength. The original meaning of the word tyrant was leader. That was so in Greece, where democracy was born. Today man is not so physical or even vital. Mind has emerged in action, if not in mastery. Cruelty is frowned upon...

The logic of human existence led the oppressed to worship the oppressor. The present has bid good-bye to tyranny and surely the Future is NOT for tyranny in any form. (MSS) 

New Mental Evolution in Society
 The last 50 years has seen a vast development of the mental consciousness, surpassing the previous 500. Humans are ever more frequently having subtle and psychic experiences indicating a movement towards higher mind. The greater globalism, through greater economic development and dependency, increase in communications and media, indicate an accelerating movement towards the outer oneness of life.

Achievements of Modern Civilization are Mental
All achievements of modern civilization are products of mind

  • Democracy
  • Science
  • Technology
  • Industrialization
  • Education
  • Economic development
  • Money
  • Social Organizations - Green Revolution
  • Internet  (MSS) 

Rising Expectations in Mental Stage
Media, communications and technology is creating rising expectations of all individuals of the world to attain one's individual fulfillment. This is an indicator of the mental stage of development.

Mental Basis of Humanity's Success, and the Spirit & Supermind Potential Beyond
Life is Vital, Nature is physical, but man is mental [compared to these]. Humanity's successes were successes of Mind over the lower planes of life and matter. Beyond this lies another plane known as Spirit. It is superseded by the plane of Supermind to which Man and his Mind do have access. (MSS)

Evolution of Civilization from the Physical to Subtle Mentality
We do believe that man is becoming more and more civilised with the passage of time. The nomad settled down in one place. He began to grow his own food, learned to build a shelter for himself, acquired a language for communication, and made tools to make work easy.

In our view, these were landmarks of civilisation. They were comforts of life. This is how man ceased to be physical and showed signs of becoming mental. Moving from gross physicality to subtle mentality is to civilize oneself. (MSS)

The Vital, Mental, and Spiritual Frontiers of Life to be Organized
Life consists of matter, the animus of life, mind, and spirit. In society we are moving well along towards the organization of matter, which enables infinite possibilities in the of the physical realm as seen in machines inventions, technology, roads, infrastructure, shelter, life sciences, medicines, etc. The US is of course in the vanguard here.

And yet the rest of life beyond the physical matter remains unorganized. There is pain, suffering falsehood, ignorance, evil, conflict, contradiction, disharmony, hate, desire, attachment, and on and on. This reflects as poverty, war, disease, famine, and many other social ills. This is the vital realm of humanity unorganized. It is the next frontier beyond the organization of matter that we have now been passing through. Such organization inevitable requires the organization of thought, ranging from logical thought to thought that comes as light, illumination, vision, revelation, inspiration, and intuition from spiritual descent, that will be necessary to help organize the vital life.

The subtle vital, mental, and spiritual existence remains for all intensive purposes a frontier unexplored. The mental capacities of certain citizens and the deeper spiritual truths of India, now more well-rounded through its acceptance of evolutionary theory, can help the material-oriented US and West, and inevitably the rest of the world, exploit the new opportunities to organize life within across borders of the new frontiers of our vital, mental, and spiritual existence.

Development of and Outgrowing the Vital Life of Man
Man started on earth with a physical life. He built his house with his own hands and therefore cherished it with a fine sentiment of attachment. He was attached to his wife, children and parents.

The attachment ennobled him. He was proud. With the passage of time, his emotions developed and presently he lives by his mind. The mental progress will be impeded if he does not wean himself away from his vital physical attachments. The course of life breaks those attachments and helps him progress in the mental plane. (MSS)

 

Other

Historical World Movements
The world evolved from spirit (as in ancient India) to Babylonia as civilization to Middle East as religion to Greece as birth of mentality to culture, trade of the Renaissance to invention of 20th century Europe to practical organization of the US. Now the US in its full materialism meets the ancient Indian spirit through Indian programmers, completing the cycle and tying the head to the tail.

Self-Existing Force of Society
Society is a self-existing force which instantaneously converts energy of any level into the next higher level, here force into Power. (MSS)

Achievement, Human Choice, and Infinite Capacity
 In the last 100 years the world has achieved more than it achieved in the previous 500 years. Man's choice has inherently had that power within...The human mind is always capable of that power, because it is Infinite. (MSS)

Economic to Common to Spiritual Man
The last few centuries were marked by the emergence of economic man. The 20th century saw the emergence of the common man. This new 21st century will see the emergence of spiritual man.

Physical Vital Evolves to Vital Proper
 The urge to interact with others beyond one's self moved the vital consciousness of the human from its physical basis to the vital proper. (Paraphrase of Sri Aurobindo)

Birth of Freedom and Democracy
Sri Aurobindo says that the earliest preoccupation of man is the search for God, Freedom, Light and Immortality. That is man's spiritual quest. This is reflected in his social life as the quest for equality in Knowledge, Power, Status and Capacity. The first visible sign was Martin Luther's break with the Church by which he proclaimed to the world that every man born is equal in the eyes of God. The priest's special right to represent God to others was denied. Man, the Individual, was thus emancipated from the thraldom of Church, the organisation. Kings ruled the nations.

The divine right theory sanctioned their right to rule. Democracy was ushered in and every citizen was accorded the right to choose the ruler as well as become the ruler if he is chosen. (MSS)

Civilization Building on the Essence of the Past
The essence of civilisation is to give up past experience and build upon the essence of that experience. (MSS)

The Knowledge or System of Education that enabled Stages of Historical Development
Mesopotamia led the world of civilisation. Greece, Rome, Europe, England and USA led the world in succession, Greece by knowledge, Rome by law, Europe by Reformation, England by sea trade and empire. Now USA leads the world by economic power, accumulated wealth and technology. It is noteworthy to see knowledge behind all these movements either in the shape of collective knowledge or system of education.  (MSS)

Themes of Each Generation
Each society and each man organizes himself around one theme and lives the best part of his life for that. At different periods, society fashions a dominant motive to more fully fulfill itself. It was marriage once, money in another period, name or fame, freedom as in the 1960's, etc.

Essence of Past Generations are Carried Forward
The essence of past generations is carried forward to following generations. What has been the essence of your generation; the hard work and determination of he WWII generation, the inner and outer freedom of the baby boomers, unprecedented technology of the current generation? Can we recognize each of the essences of previous generations and times? What are they?

Nature of Society
Society is a sea of nourishing human sensations that constantly inform, educate, organise and lead. (MSS)

MSS Articles on Social Evolution
 Social Evolution
 Social Evolution in Pride and Prejudice 

Also See Thoughts on the Major Stages of World History

Also See the Nature of, Potentials, & Possibilities of Individual Nations

Also See Society's Movement Toward World Unity

 


 THE EMERGING TRUE INDIVIDUAL IN SOCIETY
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Click here to see entries

 

POTENTIALS & POSSIBILITIES FOR SOCIETY
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The Evolutionary Intention Expressing through Society and Individual
 The social life of the collective is continuous evolving under pressure of its own aspiration to manifest greater powers of life. It is also evolving under the influence of higher-level spiritual determinants working behind the scenes to express higher powers of consciousness. This evolutionary intention expresses subconsciously as the will of the society. This collective will expresses through the actions of individual members of the society pursuing their own interests and aspirations.

Untitled
 There is no limit to what we as a person or as a society can achieve. We are only limited by our own belief systems. "We become what we believe we can become." (Bhagavad-Gita). 

Society's Potential
Society has infinite potential for accomplishment, joy, and evolution.

Infinite Potential of Society
One of my perennial arguments is society has an infinite power in potential. No society, it is my belief, can ever decline unless its ways of management strangles its sources of productive energies. It was a great truth in 1929. Half the world was ruined because of the crash. At such a moment, one section of the society exhibited the above vigour. (MSS)

A Definition of Development
Development is the process of continuously enhancing the capacity of society to respond to opportunities and challenges by increasing its level of organization. (MSS)

Evolution of Society
 Like the individual, like society as a whole, each country is evolving.

Survival, Growth, Development and Evolution
Life exists in the grades of survival, growth, development and evolution. An agriculture society changing into an industrial society is evolution. A famine stricken population avoiding extinction by its brave struggle is survival. A middle class family that faces a slide down into a lower class fighting back successfully is also survival.

An empty house of a middle class family acquiring all consumer durables is growth. A self-employed person having moved into that position from salaried employment is development. (MSS)

New Evolution and Oneness in Society
 The last 50 years has seen a vast development of the mental consciousness, surpassing the previous 500. Humans are ever more frequently having subtle and psychic experiences indicating a movement towards higher mind. The greater globalism, through greater economic development and dependency, increase in communications and media, indicate an accelerating movement towards the outer oneness of life.

Rapid Evolution of Society in Recent Decades
Normally when we think of the term ''evolution," images of how humans emerged from the plant to the ape come to mind. Yet evolution is also occurring in the present, though few have tried to map it out. It is occurring predominantly through human evolution, which can be seen at the level of the individual, or at the level of society, or at the point they intersect. Interestingly, evolution is speeding up in the last several decades. Some have even suggested that evolution is moving into a phase of exponential growth. Consider the events of the last two decades, indicating the evolution taking place in society:

  • The Cold War has come to an end, ending bi polar conflict that threatened to end the world, opening the door to more integrative, collective developments in the world.

  • The European Union has taken shape, creating a model for forms of political unity in the future.

  • Asia has risen out of its moribund state, bringing entire new cultures into the forefront.

  • A global view of the earth and environment has emerged, which is a kind of collective world "religion."

  • A new world of possibility has opened up with the emergence of the computer, telecommunication devices, and especially the Internet.

  • The education of humanity is radically accelerating, contributing to vast new knowledge and insight.

  • Man is becoming more aware of other cultures and spiritual traditions.

  • Man is becoming more mental, rational, and open to a variety of perspectives.

  • We are moving from the rise of the Common Man to the rise of the True Individual, who is able to express his true individuality, not determined by the view of the herd.

  • Increasingly it is the era of Rising Expectations where everyone expects their fair share in this world.

  • We see individuals all over the world taking to personal growth and new forms of spiritual identity.

From these developments it is not to difficult to envision further steps towards Inner Fulfillment and World Unity, including deeper associations between nations and cultures,  the development of a World Parliament, the movement from economic to political to cultural to spiritual integration, the emergence of new insights into the nature of spirit and spiritual progress for the individual, and endless other possibilities. We are just at the very beginning in the next stage of human evolution, just as startling a change from what we are now as the human was from the ape.

Society Knowing Process of Creation
Society will radically accelerate the rate of its development when it understands the process that makes it grow and develop.

Achievement, Human Choice, and Infinite Capacity
 In the last 100 years the world has achieved more than it achieved in the previous 500 years. Man's choice has inherently had that power within...The human mind is always capable of that power, because it is Infinite. (MSS)

The Emerging Multi-sided Understanding in the World
In The Live Divine, Sri Aurobindo explains that we humans exist in an essential Ignorance, on its way to an Integral Knowledge. One way that takes shape is our inability to grasp the many-sided truth of any individual thing or matter. We tend to know one or a few sides of an issue and believe that is the full truth. This limited knowledge, this Ignorance of the whole is rooted in the exclusive nature of Mind, which tends to embrace one view of a thing and avoid all others. That exclusivity is in turn supported by the seperative nature of Ego, which divides us from others and the world, and therefore the integral, multi-dimensional truth of things. However, when we move to a higher consciousness, we break these bonds, move away from Ignorance, exclusivity, and separativeness, and embrace the multi-sided view; i.e. the integral truth off any issue. In that way, we not only have the knowledge to make right decisions that result in powerfully, positive outcomes, but we evolve out of our current limited nature, and begin to embrace a Supernature.

Interestingly, not only are individuals moving from Ignorance to Integral Knowledge, but so is society as a whole. One very prominent example is the emergence of the Internet. Through this integrative technology, we are compelled to embrace the many-sided view of things. Functions such as blogs, discussion groups, and the like force us to look at a variety of perspectives of a matter, which obliges us to shed our limited view. Through this social technology, we are forced out of our own exclusive view; for who wants to appear foolish when others clearly see the limits of our argument. That is the positive power of the social collective on the individual; just as the individual can positively impact society.

The Internet is not the only way the collective is embracing the multi-sided view. It happens elsewhere in society. For example, there are business meetings to discuss a variety of perspectives on any matter. Also, the more enlightened companies, who value their employees, seek to get their perspective of things. This adds to the collective knowledge and wisdom of the firm, leading to more rational decisions and actions that lead to successful outcomes. The more one has the multi-sided view of things, the more one can succeed in an ever-upward spiraling path.

In these cases, individual or collective, there is a movement from ego, separativeness, and a sense that we know it all, to harmony, oneness, and unity with others' points of view. As we become more rational, i.e. mental, human beings, we open ourselves to the multiplicity of possibilities and insights of the world, shedding our attachments to our very limited understanding and view. This movement is an evolutionary one -- Ignorance to Integral Knowledge.

With this in mind, why not ask yourself these questions. What limited view do you cherish? What multi-sided knowledge do you refrain from seeking in order to have the "joy" of your own ignorance, falsehood, and folly? Are you willing to truly listen; even take another's point of view? If so, you are a true rational individual, well on the way of the spiritual path of knowledge and wisdom.

Man Emerging into the Mental & Spiritual Dimension
A thousand years ago man was physical. His life was elementary. He survived. Today he has multiplied his comforts, enjoyment, reach, mastery a hundred or even a thousand-fold. The progress in one millennium has been phenomenal. This occurred because man moved from being physical to being mental. Though he has not yet acquired a fully formed mental life, a rational life, certainly he has moved away from the physical to the vital life. Both body and vitality accept the guidance of the mind, at least in material matters. Thus, we can say that man today is mental.

If this phenomenal expansion was the result of moving from the physical to the mental, moving from mind to the Spirit can bring another phenomenal expansion of similar magnitude. Today's life will further expand in its richness, inner peace, outer security, harmony and, especially, in Prosperity a thousand-fold. (MSS)

Trade as Preliminary of World Union
Now that Nature has completed one round [of its evolution of civilization], all the different aspects must be brought together as a whole on earth. Sri Aurobindo says it will come about as World Union. Trade is now globalize. It is a movement of bringing all of the nations together in the field of trade. It is a natural prelude to a united humanity on earth. (MSS)

Mind's and Spiritual Mind's Multiplier Effect in Society
The computer and Internet revolution are indicators of the further emergence of the mental consciousness in society. Anything that enhances that movement has a multiplier effect. E.g. for each information technology job that is created, a dozen or more other related jobs are created directly or indirectly. The mind and its mental application through works in society has that multiplier power. Society's implementation of mind centered in the spiritual consciousness has that potential effect to the infinite degree.

A Resource, a Multiple Resource, and Resourcefulness
-If one can go to a source several times, it becomes a resource.
-One can do so for the same purpose or different purposes. That source which lends itself to be of use again and again for different purposes is considered a multiple resource.
-Minds that are so, are described as prolific.
-Sand is one such resource when apart from being a raw material for house building and glass making, it lends itself to be used for making chips. Electricity was found useful for hundreds and thousands of purposes. Coal proved to be so earlier. When we look at these phenomena closely, we may feel that it is our MINDS that make raw materials resourceful.
-Mind is far more resourceful than matter or material objects.
-Spirit is the origin of the Mind. Logically, it must be more resourceful than mind. (MSS, extracted, reorganized)

Inner Well-being of Society
The collective of humanity seeks inner well-being when its external needs are over-fulfilled. (MSS)   

Real Underpinnings of Today's Social Change
Social and cultural changes are having even more impact than technological change. Recognizing this will put computer and Internet in its proper perspective. And that will make the Internet socially creative.

The Courage to Take up Society's Opportunities
Society is constantly throwing up new opportunities. But individuals in the society have no courage to resort to the new opportunities created by the society because the very same society will condemn such a pioneer effort. So we must learn to have the courage to take up the opportunities despite what society says. This applies to the average individual in his or another field, the leader of the company or of the nation, etc.

Sometimes we must take up such pioneering efforts outside of or in spite of the normal bounds of the current organization or structure.

People see the results of opportunities taken up, but not the opportunities that arise. (MSS)

World is Unreceptive to New Ideas: We Can Find out Why
-The world is not receptive to new ideas, particularly new boons. If one goes on the Internet and learns how the major discoveries were received by the world, one will be appalled at the treatment they had received. The world was conservative. It is conservative to the core today.

-Man is conservative, traditional and will oppose tooth and nail every good thing that develops.  

-It will be a GREAT project for a PhD student of an advanced university if he lists all the BOONS at our doorstep - organisational, political, technological, educational, social, etc. - and evaluates them in terms of their contribution and records the reception they get at various levels of the society. Man's dire need is AWAKENING to the new world that is springing up around him. (MSS)

Accepted Givens of Modern Life are Being Thrown Out
Several such statements - a leader is born, intelligence does not grow, the throne is not for us, you must be born into the royal family - are giving way to the modern realities. In modern times, all kinds of people are becoming heads of state, PhD is awarded to people not innately intelligent, based on training. It means leadership and intelligence are acquired. (MSS)

Higher Values that Have Not Come Yet into Society
Truth has never been valued in any society like any of the above.  Values, devotion, loyalty, and purity have not yet come into their own in any period in any country. (MSS)

The Emerging Creative Class
Those regions of society fostering great independence of thinking, more creativity, and dynamic individual lifestyle attract those individuals that develop into a creative class that enables regional boom. It is yet a further instance of the educated class being the catalyst of great society. Creativity is the highest aspect of education, which has been the catalyst and spearhead of our society. Thus the Creative Class is the highest aspect of the education spearhead, giving it its most power.

Moreover, this Creative Class is unconscious of its own dominant role in society. If it becomes conscious it can lead our society in many ways, including overcoming many of its problems. (Paraphrase of MSS)

Power of Creativity in Society
Even more significant than our being an information or knowledge economy is the fact that we are a creative economy. We are becoming conscious of the power of creativity to enable success, and we are systematizing this fact in work and in our lives. It is the decisive source of competitive advantage.

The economy by definition becomes creative when it self-generates jobs, service, and Prosperity. The Internet enables this.

See Comments on Creativity for the Individual and Society

The Vital, Mental, and Spiritual Frontiers of Life to be Organized
Life consists of matter, the animus of life, mind, and spirit. In society we are moving well along towards the organization of matter, which enables infinite possibilities in the of the physical realm as seen in machines inventions, technology, roads, infrastructure, shelter, life sciences, medicines, etc. The US is of course in the vanguard here.

And yet the rest of life beyond the physical matter remains unorganized. There is pain, suffering falsehood, ignorance, evil, conflict, contradiction, disharmony, hate, desire, attachment, and on and on. This reflects as poverty, war, disease, famine, and many other social ills. This is the vital realm of humanity unorganized. It is the next frontier beyond the organization of matter that we have now been passing through. Such organization inevitable requires the organization of thought, ranging from logical thought to thought that comes as light, illumination, vision, revelation, inspiration, and intuition from spiritual descent, that will be necessary to help organize the vital life.

The subtle vital, mental, and spiritual existence remains for all intensive purposes a frontier unexplored. The mental capacities of certain citizens and the deeper spiritual truths of India, now more well-rounded through its acceptance of evolutionary theory, can help the material-oriented US and West, and inevitably the rest of the world, exploit the new opportunities to organize life within across borders of the new frontiers of our vital, mental, and spiritual existence.

Filling in the Gap
A gap is its potential; whether it is between concentrated wealth at the top of society and the paucity at the bottom; or between the rich nations and the poor; or between my infinite potential and my current status; or between an Integral Knowledge supported by universal consciousness and my Ignorance supported by my ego-sense and separateness. Filling in the gap is then an important reason why we are here on earth.

The Organization Differential that Shows as Suffering
The differential between the energy that is blossoming as a new expansion in society and the organization of that society to sustain that expansion shows itself as the acute pains, problems, and sorrows we see all around us.   

On "Doubling"
 Silicon Valley's famed Moore's Law suggests that emerging technologies will double in their power every 18 months. Can't we apply this law to other parts of society? Couldn't we double our productivity rate in that period, or as improbable as it seems, double Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in that period? A practical concept of infinity says that we can bring in the higher consciousness and spirit to enable infinite results where we now see finite possibilities. If that is the case, then who is to say what we are limited by.

What other areas can we apply Moore's technological law to? How about doubling our consciousness! In one sense, this is much easier to do, once we know the method. It's just a question of True Education, which we can learn on our own by knowing one's True Self, or which can be acquired in the future by the public through an education system of True Knowledge.

How a New Opportunity Taken Up Spreads
[Here's how a new opportunity taken up spreads:] The pioneer, the leader, the Avatar, etc., broaches the subject to the world. It comes to be accepted long after. Some token experiments succeed. It spreads as an initial wave. Slowly either the government or the society or both take it up, give life to it and sponsor it, give support in the form of a new organisation. That has been the history of any successful social movement until now. (MSS)

Emergence of New Leader Reflecting Undercurrent Change in Society
Subconscious collective society in its self-conceptive self-determinism throws up a conscious leader when it is mature, having changed its old attitudes into new ones, so that it may move from its physical vital experience to mental comprehension by its own conscious awakening of discarding its anachronisms. (MSS)

Reconciling Material Prosperity and Spiritual Realization in the World
-The world fulfils itself by relating the two ends of Material Prosperity and Spiritual realization. It is its destiny.

-The spiritual realization of India which was at one point partial has become whole in recent decades as a result of the evolutionary realizations of individuals such as Sri Aurobindo that took India beyond her static spiritual wisdom.

-The practical organization of the US is currently physical which enables material prosperity. However, the practical organization of the US must rise from its physical basis to a spiritual basis.

-One or more individuals, by living a life that includes both, can build the bridge between, reconcile the two worlds of material prosperity and spiritual realization. Such individuals can then develop their shortest method into The Formula of life, which the whole world can then readily follow, fulfilling its purpose and destiny. (Paraphrase of MSS)

One's Spirit Connecting to Society's Spirit Enables Boom
When a writer or the leader or other skilled individual has touched the Spirit in his own inspiration in his field, it touches the Spirit of the population also. This individual Spirit calling the social Spirit creates a live ever-increasing movement, a boom, e.g. of sales or popularity.

Anyone who is patient enough to invoke the Spirit in his own life, who acts on his own faith in Spirit rather than his own individual capacities to succeed, will witness such a boom in his own life. How far it will rise depends upon how far he is in tune with the Spirit of the Times.

With the spiritual Force ever-increasing in the atmosphere, this phenomenon of interrelated Spirit is ever-more likely to burst out into boom. (Paraphrase of MSS)

Overcoming Society's Falsehood
If society is Ignorant and (especially) False, what are the direct strategies that will enable it to become Knowledgeable and True? In whatever they do, in their present professions and homes, members should discover their personal evolving souls.

Current Movements Appeared Mildly in Distant Past
-The integral nature of society or creation is such that any farfetched ideal humanity has had, had its distant mild echo in the past.

-Our rule is nothing can emerge which is not in the Absolute. That Absolute seems to be peeping at us from the distant past. (MSS)

The Future is for Sincerity of Truth
The future is not for Ignorance or Superstition. Nor is it for the insincerity of the art of diplomacy. It is for the Truth of Sincerity. In one of Her messages the Divine Mother says, "Men, countries and continents, Truth or the abyss". The Future is not for rituals and ceremonies. It is not for religion or religious worship. The Future is for the Spirit. (MSS) 

The New in Society Emerging from the Lowest
The new always emerges from out of the lowest level of society, as its lack of formation permits the new to emerge.  (MSS)

Bridging Material Prosperity and Spiritual Realization in the Hour of God
It has been said that the Hour of God is here. On earth it is fulfilled by relating the two ends of Material Prosperity and Spiritual Realization. One person can join these two ends, and through his experience present the Formula of Life for all the world to take up, enabling the rapid fulfillment of this auspicious time for Man. (Paraphrase of MSS)

God Seeks Man Since 1956
Since 1956 when the Force descended on earth, God seeking Man more than Man seeking God has become a greater reality. We see no God, we see only how prosperous we are. Prosperity is the God for the householder. The Force came down on earth in 1956 but began to act through the governments in 1967. From then onwards its action is more and more pronounced. Just now Man is surrounded by a plethora of social opportunities. Psychologically it is greater. (MSS)

MSS Articles on the Nature & Potentials of Society
 Organization of Personality ...

MSS Article
 Movement of Freedom from Agriculture to Internet 

MSS Articles on Social Evolution
 Social Evolution
 Social Evolution in Pride and Prejudice 

Also See Society's Movement Toward World Unity

Also See Development of Individual Nations

 


 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
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General | The Process of Social Development
 

General

The Fabric of the Social Organization
The social organization consists of a single interconnected fabric. The threads and the weave of the fabric are formed by the multidimensional interaction of social activities, organizations, institutions and values. The fabric varies in thickness and density of weave, being most concentrated in large, highly developed urban centers. Development is the process by which the fabric of the social organization increases in density, quality, complexity, and geographic extension.

 

Definition of Development for Society
Development is the process of continuously enhancing the capacity of society to respond to opportunities and challenges by increasing its level of organization.

 

Development is a Process
Development is a process not a program. Development is not the result of a set of policies or programs. It is the result of a process by which society moves from lesser to greater levels of energy, efficiency, quality, productivity, complexity, comprehension, creativity, enjoyment and accomplishment. (MSS)

 

Unconscious to Conscious Development
The natural process of development is unconscious. It proceeds by a slow, cumbersome, trial and error process from experience to knowledge. Conscious development moves in the other direction from knowledge to experience. The more conscious the process, the more rapid the progress. Education is an essential prerequisite for conscious development. (MSS)

 

Historic Stages of Social Development
Society has been developing throughout history through the three overlapping stages - physical, vital, and mental. Each stage is characterized by the predominance of one of the three attributes of human consciousness. The progression from one stage to the next stimulates an exponential increase in the productivity and accomplishments of society.

 

Development for the Individual, Organization, Society
The same principles are applicable to development at the level of the individual, the organization and the society. (MSS)

 

Principles are Similar at Various Levels
Political, social, economic and technological development are various expressions and dimensions of the development of the human collective. The same principles of development are application to all fields of social existence.

The same principles are applicable to development at the level of the individual, the organization and the society.

 

Relationship of Social Development & Individual Development
 All development reduces to the development of human beings. The continued growth in the capacity of human beings to conceive, design, plan, allocate, systematize, standardize, coordinate and integrate actions, systems, organizations and knowledge into larger, more complex and productive arrangements is responsible for the process of social development. (MSS)

 

Theory of Social Development
 Theory of Social Development is a formulation of the higher intellectual consciousness in such a way as the million facts of life are systematized into a single system.  (MSS)
 

Principles of Theory of Social Development

Let us pause for a moment in flow of argument and review the principles and process that have emerged from our deliberation on the universal action in the universe and in the emergence of the social collective.

  1. Evolution of Forms -- We observed that there appears to be an on-going evolution of forms of consciousness, which have emerged over the timeline of the universal action.

  2. The movement of this evolutionary process has been from matter to life to mind to spirit.

  3. Matter -- Matter, that contains latent consciousness, is the base from which all other forms of existence emerge and express.

  4. Life -- Life is the force of consciousness that animates all forms of life.

  5. Mind -- Mind is the organizing principle of consciousness that sees forms and through its powers of thought and understanding expands consciousness and awareness of the infinite potentials in life.

  6. Spirit -- Spirit is a unitary consciousness that sees all universal action as the expression of a single power expressing itself in the delight of its universal action.

  7. Universal, Individual -- The universal and the individual are two different expressions of the same action in two statuses--universal and individual which work together to fulfill each other.

  8. Both centers are expressions of the same action. Cosmic action is the expressions of consciousness of the four planes of existence extended throughout existence. Individual action is a focused and concentrated expression of the same powers in separated consciousness that is self-aware.

  9. Social collective development at 4 Planes -- The development of the social collective appears to moves from Matter to Life to Mind to Spirit.

  10. Energy in the Universal Action -- The underlying force of action/energy--in life appears to arise out of an on-going process of reconciliation that occurs between the nature of the different forms of the universal action expressing as matter, life, mind and spirit.

  11. Energy and Contradiction -- The greater the difference between these apparent contradictions, the greater the differential and therefore the greater the energy released by the universal action to reconcile these forms in a higher expression.

  12. Evolution from Out of Previous Phase -- As development proceeds from the initial phase of action to the next, the first phase becomes a base out of which the next phase emerges. This happens when the lower phase has reached some state of completion. When the higher expression emerges it brings with it new powers, principles and processes that energize the new plane and also brings out greater powers that are latent in the earlier foundation.

  13. Ascent and Descent of Consciousness in Evolutionary Process -- There appears to be a dynamic principle that expresses this relationship. Consciousness in the first plane perfects itself and latent and higher forms of consciousness emerge. It is an ascent of consciousness that releases new power and effectivity of action. As these power express and become organized in the new plane of consciousness, they developed new knowledge and organization that when taken and applied back in the lower foundation release greater and greater potentials--the descent.

  14. Ascent and Descent and Complexity of Forms -- The movement of the universal action in this process of ascent and descent has created more and more forms of itself and in each successive stage greater complexity, intricacy and power emerges and produce a richer more complex expression in universal action.

  15. Greater Complexity, Power in Ascent of the Collective -- In the evolution of the human collective this principle appears to hold true. As the social collective emerges from matter to spirit, it develops and creates more and more complexity, intricacy and power in the collective and its members.

  16. At each stage of the process society discovers, applies and utilizes new principles, powers, processes and strategies that are unique to each level of existence but which  can also be used to draw more form the preceding stages of manifestation.

  17. As the social collective moves from its physical origins to its spiritual heights the social self-conceptive power of the society develops and expands in knowledge and intensifies in its power of effectuation.

  18. Survival, Growth, Development --There are three active statuses of the social self-conception. Survival, Growth and Development

  19. Change of Social Conception -- The process through which the social conception changes from its current construction is by a change of view of the internal and external environment. This change of view continues to drive changes in the society as man's consciousness expands and enlarges as it progresses from matter to spirit.

  20. The social collective develops itself from one stage to another through the widening of its change of view, its self-conception and its power of achievement.

  21. Development of Social Collective is Not Straight Line -- This development of the social collective is a complex process that does not follow a straight line to its goal but involves periods of advance and subsequent periods of retreat but gradually over time the forward march from matter to spirit is irreversible.

  22. Higher Self-Conception at Higher Levels of Development  --At each of the successively higher levels of development in society the power of self-conception increases its expressive capabilities in the new level and expands its potentials. It also brings out greater potential from the previous levels.

  23. Led by Increasingly More as Collective Evolves -- As the process continues from matter to life to mind the nature of the collective begins to change from a large undifferentiated mass led by a few to a more highly differentiated group of individuals who assume self-direction and leadership in action.

  24. Relationship Between Collective and Individual at Various Planes --The relationship between the collective and the individual changes in nature and process as the process moves from matter to life to mind and will change again in the spiritual phase.

  25. Greater Conscious Choice of Collective as It Evolves -- At all stages of the development process, the course and direction are determined by the choices taken by the collective. In the beginning stages of the development choices are limited as well as the power of awareness and effectuation so the process is slow. As society becomes more conscious and taps the higher potentials of its nature, the number of choices increases and the speed and power of the process also intensify. In the course of time, as humanity reaches the pinnacle of its development, to know will mean to achieve, but until then the path remains one that enjoys its twists and turns.

  26. Descent form Consciousness to Action -- Man moves from consciousness to life through action.

  27. Life grows through consciousness.

  28. Consciousness and Organization -- Consciousness develops through organization.

  29. The Actualizing Power of Organizing Acts --  -- Act is the unit of actualization.

  30. Act is the first step in actualizing consciousness.

  31. Acts when linked together through a greater organization of conscious principle, direction, value, and effective instrumentation can accomplish whatever it sets out to do.

  32. Social Development and Increasing Organization -- The social collective achieves development through the instrumentality of higher level organization that gives power and capability of effectuation to the collective self conception to achieve higher productivity, efficiency, prosperity, knowledge, joy and happiness.

  33. Mind and Organization -- The power of organization comes from mental consciousness.

  34. Organizational Powers -- Organizational powers are authority, complexity and values. (Bob Macfarlane, MSS)

 

 

The Process of Social Development

 

Stages for Process of Development for Society
There are three essential stages in the process of development for society. In the first stage the society is prepared to move to a higher level of development through its surplus energies, awareness of possibilities, and its aspiration to see the possibilities through. In the second stage pioneer individuals in society express the aspiration in various ways. Finally, in the third stage the initiative of pioneering individuals are accepted, organized, and integrated in society. (MSS)

 

Energy and Social Development
A society is prepared for development when it possesses the requisite surplus energy, awareness and aspiration.

Surplus energy is the fuel for development. Each developmental achievement requires an enormous investment of energy in new and higher forms of behavior. Surplus energy is generated when society has fully organized and mastered activities at its current level of development. The development and application of mind energize society by technological and organizational innovation, spread of education, acceptance of new ideas and higher values.

Energy is released when society becomes aware of new opportunities and has the collective will to exploit them. The driving force for development is the progressive growth of the social collectives - knowledge and awareness of opportunities and the social aspiration or will for higher accomplishment. (MSS)

 

Development in Society
Energy is released when society becomes aware of new opportunities and has the collective will to exploit them. The driving force for development is the progressive growth of the social collectives - knowledge and awareness of opportunities and the social aspiration or will for higher accomplishment. (MSS)

 

How Process of Development Occurs
The process of development in society occurs by the creation of higher levels of organization in society capable of accomplishing greater acts with more efficient use of social energies. Society develops by organizing all the knowledge, human energies and material resources at its disposal to fulfill its aspirations. Organization is the practical application of knowledge in action. It is the technology or know-how for social accomplishment. (MSS)

 

Social Development and the Initiative of the Pioneer
The society gives formed creative expression to its collective subconscious urge for development through the initiative of pioneering individuals. (MSS)

 

Individual and Society's Pioneer
In the individual the pioneer is one's aspiration to go to the next level, which is comparable to the pioneer who leads in the process of social development.

 

Society's Response to the Pioneers Conscious Development
 -The society gives formed creative expression to its collective subconscious urge for development through the initiative of pioneering individuals.

-The response of society to the initiative of the pioneer depends on its prior preparedness. Initiatives that are too far beyond the society's preparedness are opposed, rejected or ignored. These pioneers are considered rebels. Those that embody the next step in the collective march are embraced, often after initial resistance, imitated and eventually accepted by the collective. These pioneers are accepted as leaders.

 

Response to Pioneer Effort
 The response of society to the initiative of the pioneer depends on its prior preparedness. Initiatives that are too far beyond the society's preparedness are opposed, rejected or ignored. These pioneers are considered rebels. Those that embody the next step in the collective march are embraced, often after initial resistance, imitated and eventually accepted by the collective. These pioneers are accepted as leaders. (MSS)

Process of Growth in Society and the Pioneer
In our theory of social development, there is a certain subconscious urge of society for change or progress. There is also a pioneer who is in tune with that change, even if the society is not yet. He then brings something forward that the society learns about and embraces. When they do, society grows, changes, develops. E.g. Steve Jobs develops the personal computer, even though the society was not aware of its potential on the surface. However, Steve recognizes it, makes it a reality, and the society follows and embraces it. What was subconscious for it, now becomes conscious.

We can see this process in every major development in society, and the corresponding individuals(s) who made it process, i.e. the pioneer. What you have described in your article with reference to dreams and Freud in films as predecessors of what would actually take place in society later on struck me as that process.

Success of Social Movements
The pioneer, the leader, the Avatar, etc., broaches the subject to the world. It comes to be accepted long after. Some token experiments succeed. They spread as an initial wave. Slowly either the government or the society or both take it up, give life to it, sponsor it, and give support in the form of a new organisation. That has been the history of any successful social movement until now. (MSS)

 

Organization Turns Acceptance into Reality
 Once a new activity is accepted, society established new organizations, policies and laws to support it. When social acceptance of the activity becomes complete, the activity matures into an institution that no longer requires the support of specialized organizations, policies and laws to promote it. At a further stage the activity is transmitted to future generations through the family and becomes part of the culture of the society. (MSS)

 

Overcoming Obstacles
When society seeks to move to the next higher stage of development, existing beliefs, attitudes, behaviors and forms of organization become obstacles that have to be overcome in order for the transition to take place. Progression to each further stage involves a change in attitude and life style. (MSS)

 

Old Ways that are Obstacles to Development
 When society seeks to move to the next higher stage of development, existing beliefs, attitudes, behaviors and forms of organization become obstacles that have to be overcome in order for the transition to take place. Progression to each further stage involves a change in attitude and life style.

 

Speed of Social Development
The speed of social development increases as awareness of opportunities spreads, aspiration increases, conscious knowledge of organization grows, attitudes become more progressive, and infrastructure is put in place. (MSS)

 

Infrastructure of Social Development

-Development takes place on the foundation of four types of infrastructure - physical, social, mental and psychological. Only the first of these is subject to any inherent limits. As development progresses, it relies more and more on non-material resources.

-Resources also are of four types - physical, social, mental and psychological.

-Mind is the creator of all resources. The application of human intelligence and inventiveness converts a substance into a resource. Increasing knowledge increases the productivity of resources, even physical resources. Therefore, mind is the ultimate resource that gives value to all the others.

 

Development Occurs When We Take It in Our Own Hands, to Wanting It
It is a truism in the field of development that a society will really develop when its members take it into their own hands. Any work of the government or other agencies may do the initial spade work, but it is not capable of consummating the process of development - a high degree of Prosperity. It reduces to man wanting more and more as days pass by. (MSS)

 

Wanting More Enables Growth of National Economy
In the least of men wanting more is a silly superstition. In the enlightened man, wanting more of education, skills, and comforts is national aspiration, not to be frowned upon. This wanting more is the growing market of the expanding national economy. (MSS)

Process of Growth for the Individual, Business, Society, Universe, Creation

The Individual
The individual decides to or is compelled to develop physically through higher skills, vitally through higher attitudes, mentally through higher forms of knowledge, understanding, conception, and perception; spiritually through the connection to the inner self, soul, through higher levels of mind (higher mind, illumined, and intuitive), all the way to connection to the Supramental realms. In all these cases the urge to move to the next level reflects the process. 

Business
The business through its own self-conception or is compelled to move to a higher level of functioning, which is supported by its plan to carry out and execute its aspiration to the next level through the its organization and skills of its people. 

Society
The society decides to consciously or is compelled to move from physical survival to vital interaction, commerce, etc. to mental organization and the emergence of the individual, and on to spiritual unity of life. 

The Universe
The universe fulfilled at the physical level of inert matter is compelled to animate, to move, to become life, and animated and sensation-based life is compelled to develop Mind, and ultimately to go beyond mind to spirit (Supermind). (Each aspect is involved in the other). 

The Creation
 The Absolute, Divine through a process of self-conception and for the purpose of Delight creates the ensuing level, the Many, the universe and cosmos. 

Article that Explains the Process of Development in Society

 

Also see the Process of Growth and Development for the Individual

 

Also see the Process of Growth and Development for a Company

ORGANIZATION IN SOCIETY
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Organization of Society | The Nature of Organization and Organizations

 

Organizations vs an Organism in Society


Organization of Society
(Main)

The Fabric of the Social Organization
The social organization consists of a single interconnected fabric. The threads and the weave of the fabric are formed by the multidimensional interaction of social activities, organizations, institutions and values. The fabric varies in thickness and density of weave, being most concentrated in large, highly developed urban centers. Development is the process by which the fabric of the social organization increases in density, quality, complexity, and geographic extension.

Meaning of Development of Organization in Society
Increasing organization indicates increasing social growth or social development. Organization can expand horizontally as more organization, which is social growth; or as more complex organization, i.e. social development.

More complex organization is reflected in a continuum upward by a more single complex system; by greater interrelationships between systems; by greater interrelationships between more complex systems; by greater interrelationships between dissimilar complex systems.

The complex, dense organization in our world reflects the complex more dense organization that is developing in the human mind; e.g. the person is learning to integrate carious aspects of his being (thoughts, attitudes, health, inner working; all of which can be made to relate to one another (integral knowledge of self).

The more society develops, the greater the amount, complexity, density, and interrelatedness of its organization. (The same is true for individuals and businesses). The Internet is an example of rich organization that accommodates all three areas simultaneously.

Organizational Complexity in the Mental Stage
One of our fundamental thesis in this site is that society grows and develops by introducing more and more advanced and complex forms of organizations so it can better use its energies. In the mental age of social development that we are now entering organizations are becoming even more complex because in this age the power of thought becomes prominent. The ability to think of new forms and complexities of organization, such as the Internet and the computer operating system now running your computer, are indicators of the mental stage of social development.

The Vital, Mental, and Spiritual Frontiers of Life to be Organized
Life consists of matter, the animus of life, mind, and spirit. In society we are moving well along towards the organization of matter, which enables infinite possibilities in the of the physical realm as seen in machines inventions, technology, roads, infrastructure, shelter, life sciences, medicines, etc. The US is of course in the vanguard here.

And yet the rest of life beyond the physical matter remains unorganized. There is pain, suffering falsehood, ignorance, evil, conflict, contradiction, disharmony, hate, desire, attachment, and on and on. This reflects as poverty, war, disease, famine, and many other social ills. This is the vital realm of humanity unorganized. It is the next frontier beyond the organization of matter that we have now been passing through. Such organization inevitable requires the organization of thought, ranging from logical thought to thought that comes as light, illumination, vision, revelation, inspiration, and intuition from spiritual descent, that will be necessary to help organize the vital life.

The subtle vital, mental, and spiritual existence remains for all intensive purposes a frontier unexplored. The mental capacities of certain citizens and the deeper spiritual truths of India, now more well-rounded through its acceptance of evolutionary theory, can help the material-oriented US and West, and inevitably the rest of the world, exploit the new opportunities to organize life within across borders of the new frontiers of our vital, mental, and spiritual existence.

Turning Individual and Social Potentialities into Actualities through the Power of Organization
Potentialities do not become actualities unless they are organised. What converts the one into the other [for the individual] is the mysterious element called Personality. The sheet anchor of that personality is spiritual values in the body where they have become physical sensitivities. Knowledge raises the mental horizon and widens its scope. Knowledge becomes practical when it turns into an Ideal. The Ideal inspires one to action when the devotion to the Ideal becomes a mental sensitivity.

Mind is capable of only thoughts, and cannot initiate action directly. So, any achievement of the mind is an achievement of spreading the ideal far and wide. It is the vital that is endowed with energy. Energy releases a social movement inspiring the people to extol the Ideal. The movement is more powerful than the mental Ideal. Still a movement by itself cannot achieve. It needs an organisation. An organisation achieves when the organisers have acquired the physical sensitivity for the ideal. Accomplishment is given to the organisation, not the mere ideal or the inspiring movement, though they are essential.

In a nation, what accomplishes is a national organisation dedicated to the Ideal. How can an Individual vastly endowed with rich potentialities convert them into the actualities of his own life? What plays the role of organisation in his life? I said it is his Personality. What energises that Personality is the spiritual values of his physical body. Its accomplishment rises with the rising physical sensitivities for those values. By invoking the Spirit, one witnesses the Silent phenomenon of the Spirit organising his personality, creating the needed sensitivities in his physical consciousness and physical substance. It is the practical GOODNESS of an efficient man of excellent values buried deep in him. (MSS, slightly altered)

Continuum from Acts to the Collective in Development
Act - Activity - System - organisation - institution - culture - collective sensitivity - Individual sensitivity - (Physical, vital, mental) is a continuous chain.

Organization to Institution
Power is greatest and most efficient where its exercise is automatic, subconscious as in the body's autonomic nervous system and in the systems of a company. Very true. At this stage, society calls it culture, tradition, custom, way of life. We say at this stage organization changes into institution. (MSS)

MSS Article
Organizational History of Humankind

ARTICLE: The Powers of Organization in Social Development

Multiplier Effect of Integration of Sectors
The integration of two or more sectors of social activity, organization or technology leads to a multiplication of their productive power, as the combination of computer and telecommunications has given rise to the Internet which integrates multiple functions including news delivery, education, commerce, and entertainment. (MSS)

How Products and Technology Arise
Once there is an approval of a new idea, and some organization emerges to support it, trade and commerce take it up as they see a new opportunity. This is how new products or technology arise. (Paraphrase of MSS)

See the Internet Center which discusses the meaning of the Internet as Organization

Organizing the Central Organizing Principle to End World Problems

In many fields of life, such as computer software or efforts to eradicate poverty, there is chaos, confusion, imperfection, duplication, inefficiency, etc. It is a great problem in life. It can be solved when their central organizing principles are further organized.

Perhaps such perfection mimics the central organizing principle of the Absolute, when it conjured a Real Idea of a creation to be born.

Definition of Society
Society is a self-existing force which instantaneously converts energy of any level into the next higher level, here force into Power. (MSS)

Values as Power of Social Organization
"The ultimate determinants of the power of social organization are the values of society." (MSS)

Organization and Values
Values are the deep-seated beliefs that people, institutions, and societies share. The richer the values aspired to in any form of organization, the greater the energy and capacity of that organization. For example, an organization which adheres to a value, such as systemization or standardization establishes the possibility for a richer, more complex organization than one that doesn't.

Examples of values that an organization can adhere to include physical values such as speed, timeliness, efficiency and productivity; organizational values such as standardization, systemization, coordination, integration and communication; and psychological values such as equality of access, public service and empowerment of the individual.

Having values is one thing, carrying them out is another. The richer the implementation of values is in an organization, the more it is energized, the richer is its complexity, the more it can be a spur to development in society. In addition, the more the value is pushed down into in every act, system, activity of the organization, the organization develops a titanic power for accomplishment. One could say that values are the ultimate determinant of the quality of the complexity of an organization.

Values Imparted by Family, School, Society
Family gives the child survival values. School gives academic values. Also the school trains the child in social values. When he is an adult, the society in which he lives gives the child career values. (MSS, slightly altered)

Ideals of the Individual Beyond the Organization that Turns Ideals Into Falsehood

It is sad to see how the ideals and truths of great men and movements are turned into falsehoods through an organization established for the ideal. The true power, strength, and truth of the ideal comes from the individual, not the institution set up to organize the ideal. The organization corrupts it, ruins it. (E.g. the UN itself is undemocratic, in its Security Council, as it values democracy and equality; Napoleon turns away from his mission and puts relatives in place as he resorts back to organization of government; the USSR creates false government structure to implement its social values; a guru's or thinkers profound insights turn to falsehood through the organization created, etc.)

The truth of the Force of evolution that is behind the emerging of new great forces and developments in the world manifests through the ideals of the awakened Individual, not through the falsehood of the organization that is set up to further the ideal, which corrupts it.  (Paraphrase of MSS)

Inner Organization of Education that Acts on Society
Education is the psychological inner organisation that effectively operates upon the outer mechanical organisation of the society. (MSS)

Culture and Social Organization
Culture is the more subtle expression of the social organization.

Culture is the active attitude of a functioning society.

In a stagnant society, culture becomes rigid and therefore defensive. At one stage, the defensive becomes offensive till it knocks against a rock and destroys itself. Islamic terrorism arises out of it.  

Becoming Organizationally Conscious is Social Supramentalization.
For a nation or other collective to become organizationally conscious is the social version of supramentalization. (Paraphrase of MSS)

Evolution of Organizations

  • We can see a progression of organization of various institutions as they move from physical to vital to mental to spiritual
  • In nations of the past -- e.g. Japan, China, and European nations long ago etc. -- there were often two armies of that nation fighting against one another for power.
  • This became [evolved into] the political parties of democracy. This is a movement from the physical to the vital, with an emerging mental support of idealism.
  • Still the two parties (today) are often at each other's throats, as they are intensely attached to their own position; a vital (still somewhat close to physical) tendency.
  • One possibility for the future is for the two party system to be replaced by two groups, each holding various points of view, who come together to collaborate to find common ground, or even better, new fresh ideas, policies, possibilities, etc. They are not attached, or are at least are far less attached to their own position, which reflects the mental stage. Perhaps it will be multiple groups who come together for this purpose, or one group with individuals of various points of view. There are many possibilities.
  • At a further stage such individuals can aspire to truly embrace the other side's view, see the wisdom in the opposite view, see the integral relationship between various ideas presented, see the relationship to the whole, to the emerging possibilities, etc. This could be a first movement toward the spirit, i.e. of spiritual mind. Members can even open to the higher power to receive answers, and to gain the cooperation of life; or go within to enable thereafter intuitions of knowledge, etc. etc.
  • The specifics I am presenting are speculations, though we can anticipate the possibilities along an arc from physical through spiritual. If we can thoroughly know the history of a particular organization, including its segment of the arc to the present, we can sense what that organization could become in its next highest iteration; or at least individuals could sense through their new spiritual sense what they individually can do to bring a further integration of the members, of the ideas, of the forms of organization.
  • This approach can be adopted for understanding, evaluation, and recommendations for any organization.
  • Perhaps a discipline of Knowledge of Emerging Potentials could be developed based on a mental and mento-spiritual foundation.
  • Expert systems or other new forms of software could prove very useful.

[MSS Comments] The rule the whole is more than the sum of the parts can help one cross the border at each transition.

Organization in Business

Personal Organization

ARTICLE: Organization of Life
The deepest insights into how Nature, Life is truly organized.

The Organization Involved in the Creation of the Universe

 

The Nature of Organization and Organizations
 (Main)

Coordinating Two or More Systems
When you integrate, relate, coordinate two or more systems to one another you create a vast power for success and accomplishment. It can be two systems in business, such as finance to product development, or two systems in society like education to immigration, or two systems in the individual, such as one's attitudes to one's knowledge and skills. All of these are movements to the vision and power of the integral oneness of life.

Multiplier Effect of Integration of Sectors
The integration of two or more sectors of social activity, organization or technology leads to a multiplication of their productive power, as the combination of computer and telecommunications has given rise to the Internet which integrates multiple functions including news delivery, education, commerce, and entertainment. (MSS)

Definition of an Organization

  • Organisations are bringing together activities so that in their coordinated action, they would produce a greater result.
  • It would be more accurate to say that organisation is to bring together SYSTEMS to work in union rather than activities. (MSS) 

Continuum from Acts to the Collective in Development
Act - Activity - System - organisation - institution - culture - collective sensitivity - Individual sensitivity - (Physical, vital, mental) is a continuous chain.

Power of an Organized System; in USA
An organized system enables freedom; freedom to be creative. There is creative prosperity in the US because it has organized systems of life at the level of material prosperity.

Horizontal and Vertical Organizational Complexity
Organizations can become more complex in two ways; horizontally and vertically. In horizontal growth an organization is duplicated or replicated in volume, without any fundamental change in its original nature. This horizontal expansion, though not reflective of development, still gives society more power and capacity. For example, a social service system that tracks the quality of education in a district is expanded by adding more computers to track student progress.

Vertical expansion of complexity, on the other hand, leads to a change in quality and dimension of the organization, leading to new types of services and results. For example, the previously mentioned system for tracking students is now linked to computers in the school which enable the school itself to track this information and then forward it to the district office. Each system or other component of the organization becomes more dense in its complexity, leading to a greater degree of quality and dimension to the organization, or whole new organizations are created that have a built in higher density to begin with (the Internet being an obvious example). 

Miscellaneous Thoughts on the Power of Organization

  • ORGANIZATION is a systematic coordinated purposeful action.

  • ORGANIZATION is a process of securing maximum results with the minimum expense of energy.

  • Consciousness progresses by ORGANIZATION.

  • ORGANIZATION is of ultimate value.

  • Constant upgrading of ORGANIZATION leads to endless expansion in a business.

  • ORGANIZATION is necessary for development.

  • It is the power of ORGANIZATION that speeds up development.

  • ORGANIZED life witnesses tremendous progress.

  • Waste can be avoided by a higher ORGANIZATION.

  • ORGANIZED work yields abundant results. It makes savings possible.

  • Life is a field of energy ORGANIZED according to a system.

  • Energy ORGANIZED is more forceful and effective than unorganized energy.

  • ORGANIZATION can raise an individual or a nation from nowhere to everywhere.

  • Life responds to those who are well ORGANIZED.

  • ORGANIZED people are prosperous.

  • ORGANIZING one's work saves time and increases efficiency, which in turn leads to increased inflow of money.

  • Internal ORGANIZATION in business will make market respond.

  • ORGANIZE time and energy for unfailing success.

  • ORGANIZATION is a new communication network. It has the power to produce.

  • ORGANIZATION is the result of spiritual light in vital work.

  • When fashioned by spiritual energies, ORGANIZATION is the best and it outdistances all others.

  • ORGANIZATION is a more powerful resource than technology.

  • ORGANIZATION is an intangible asset. (MSS, miscellaneous extracted)

Organizing Transcends the Thing Organized
Whatever you organise, you transcend. To organise something, you must be above that. (MSS)

Understanding Organization by Conceiving Its Absence
 Observe a child at 8 or 12. He is under the parental direction that has taken the direction of schooling. School organises the child's energies. Remove the parental direction. Now you see the role of organisation. It is evident.

A man at 40 is under his own direction i.e. discipline. Remove the discipline in one year, a middle class man will be in the slum. One in the slum has al the slum opportunities. By organization, he becomes a middle class person.

The role of organising can be seen in an office, school, army, family, etc. when it is removed. Conceive of the first occasion when organization was introduced at first and compare it with the unorganised state. (MSS)

Organizations vs. Institutions
 Institutions are not centrally managed. Organisations are centrally managed. Over decades, centuries organizations mature, evolves into institutions. Internet is likely an institution since it is not centrally managed. It skipped the organisation phase (of centralized authority) Thus Internet could dissolve organisations (where central authority reigns) like education and management fully or in part.

Organization vs. Institution; Civilization vs. Culture
Life is wider than the Society, Family, culture, etc. History is a series of events. Man's existence becomes history when he had lived long enough worthily. Civilisation and culture are its higher versions as an end result of further longer living. For our purposes civilisation is organisation and culture is institution. Civilisation rises to culture when the values of life are integrated with its living. I call this institutionalising. (MSS)

Organization to Institution
Power is greatest and most efficient where its exercise is automatic, subconscious as in the body's autonomic nervous system and in the systems of a company. Very true. At this stage, society calls it culture, tradition, custom, way of life. We say at this stage organization changes into institution. (MSS)

Organization and Values
Values are the deep-seated beliefs that people, institutions, and societies share. The richer the values aspired to in any form of organization, the greater the energy and capacity of that organization. For example, an organization which adheres to a value, such as systemization or standardization establishes the possibility for a richer, more complex organization than one that doesn't.

Examples of values that an organization can adhere to include physical values such as speed, timeliness, efficiency and productivity; organizational values such as standardization, systemization, coordination, integration and communication; and psychological values such as equality of access, public service and empowerment of the individual.

Having values is one thing, carrying them out is another. The richer the implementation of values is in an organization, the more it is energized, the richer is its complexity, the more it can be a spur to development in society. In addition, the more the value is pushed down into in every act, system, activity of the organization, the organization develops a titanic power for accomplishment. One could say that values are the ultimate determinant of the quality of the complexity of an organization.

Essence, Values, Integral Truth, and Organization
It seems that the essence of the thing organized, i.e. the value involved are the keys to the success of organization or an organization. If the organization brings that out, i.e. organizes it, the organization expands and matures, eventually becoming an institution (i.e. self-running without authority). If the value is drained out through organization, then it becomes an anachronism. One of the aspects of essence or values is that it needs to be pushed into every level of an organization like a company. If not, then the value becomes hallow and is not implemented. It needs to be there in the minutest details of the organization or in the process of organizing. That would enable super-organization that never fails to turn the energy and force into a power that manifests as great results.

Another aspect is the whole of an organization vs. the part. I.e. the full integral truth of things vs. the part, even the false part. If the thing organized is of the full truth -- i.e. there's a knowledge of all aspects integrated into that which is being organized -- the organization will thrive and become a super-organization, maturing into super-institution. E.g. if I have a plan to build a business to provide spiritual knowledge to the readers, I need to think about every side of things, all aspects of the knowledge, all aspects of the business, all aspects of the execution, etc. I also need to consider their integration with one another, and to the whole -- i.e. the ultimate objective. (We could call that the mental part of organizing a thing.) If an organization functions from both its essence and integral truth, it can reach its maximal efficiency, creating the most with the least in the shortest period of time -- i.e. creating the maximum results through the power of energy that organization has released.

Values and the Spirit
 Values are increasingly spreading around the world. E.g., the book 'In Search of Excellence' from 25 years ago called for the empowerment of the employee in business. New values like respect for the individual and tolerance were advocated and embraced in many organizations. These social reflect our own personal values, which are similar. E.g., I value the community, the input of others, etc.

Values are higher forms of mental consciousness on the way toward supramental consciousness, and opening to Spirit.

In 'The Life Divine,' Sri Aurobindo describes what he calls ''comic determinants," which are forces, powers, and truths intended by the Divine to spread throughout the universe in creation. For us it takes form as the spiritual aspects of Beingness, Oneness, Knowledge, Power, Love, Beauty, Creativity, Bliss, and several others. When we embrace values, we are actually taking to one or more of these spiritual aspects. E.g. if I am a manager who is seeks to gain he inputs of others, this value reflects Oneness (between the individuals), and somewhat Knowledge and Love. In that way, every value can be seen in terms of these spiritual aspects. (Some time ago, I did a study connecting human values and these spiritual qualities in terms of percentages.)

Each time we embrace a human value, we take a subtle step toward one or more aspects of the spirit.

Organization and Authority
In the earlier stages of our social evolution authority and power of organizations were in the hands of the few and powerful. Authority was fixed, with no questions asked as to the rightness or wrongness of their thoughts and actions. During these stages the structure of organizations were based not on the clearer perceptions of truth and pure thought but on the physical and vital realities, such as the power and desires of the powerful few.

In the mental stage of society organization authority is shifted toward the individual's input, knowledge, and influence. The individual's contributions begins to be accepted more by those in authority, to the point that the individuals themselves become the authority. This authority and power of individuals on the collective gives the organization a greater knowledge, likelihood of fact and truth, insight, and possibility. In other words, individual empowerment in organization fosters greater richness and complexity in the organization, hence greater social development.

The Evolution of Organization's Organization
Forms are evolving from command and control, top-down, authoritarian organization to more open, free flowing organization. We see this movement when we compare the organization of the military to the organization of the modern company to the organization of the Internet. It is a progressive movement from physical to vital and now to mental consciousness. It is a progressive movement from hierarchy to commonality, which moves towards releasing more and more of the individual's potential.

The Process of the Collective Creating an Organisation in Society
The process of the collective creating an organisation has a subordinate action where the collective subconscious experience matures in the pioneering individual as conscious knowledge ready for action which when the society at large endorses is accepted as a way of life by the whole society, thus creating the psychological basis for the birth of a social organisation. In the measure this new organisation that is born by the psychological growth and sanction of the entire society draws upon its roots to convert that sanction into laws, rules, procedures, customs, usage, belief, social system and social culture, that organisation takes root in the society. (MSS)

MSS Article
Physical, Mental, & Spiritual Organizations

Organization in Business

Personal Organization

ARTICLE: Organization of Life
The deepest insights into how Nature, Life is truly organized.

The Organization Involved in the Creation of the Universe
 

 

Organizations vs. an Organism in Society
 (Main)

Evolution through Organism (as Opposed to Organization) as Law of Life and of Evolution
 Society is an organism whereas government is an organisation. An organisation is administered through rules and regulations and human instruments. An organism acts by itself whose rules and regulations are not known by man. It can use any human being as an unconscious instrument. Or it can even dispense with that. 

We see all this in P & P. The points at which the organisation turns into organism will be very educative. The coming of Bingley and Darcy is in response to the aspiration of unmarried girls in the village for the arrival of eligible bachelors. It is an act at the level of organism. Mrs. Bennet's active initiatives all are actions of organisation. Towards the end of the story, during the two visits of Bingley to her house, she actively takes initiative for the boy and girl to meet alone. The first time it didn't work. The second time it worked. It is an action of society as an organisation. The marriage of Jane and Bingley is at that level, the surface of the society. Elizabeth's marriage is not at that level. A stronger force more widely pressing on the society brings about her marriage. Her meeting Darcy at Hunsford for the first time and meeting him a second time at Pemberley, are actions of the society as an organism.

On page 723 of The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the skeptical folly, immense indolence, enormous intellectual timidity to outgrow habit of  the physical being. Next He says  Life where it chooses to conquer, conquers. This is in constant evidence and the physical being's doubt is not overcome by this evidence. When a situation becomes impossible and the known organisations of life have no answer for it, if life chooses to remedy it for higher reasons it remedies, as in the case of Lydia's marriage and Darcy's second proposal.

In management the company is treated as an organisation. The rules of the organisation can expand the company several fold, even fifty or a hundred times. But when the company is considered as an organism, its growth to the size of the society cannot be prevented. Many small touches of this phenomenon are seen in American life because life is more in evidence than the organised society. In every individual act or social act, on the surface is the action of the organisation. Below in the depth is the movement of life, society acting as an organism. To read the story from this point of view can bring out the clear distinction between society as an organism and society as an organisation. Organisation changing into organism is evolution. Organisation replacing another organisation is revolution. Life achieves when it is determined to achieve, in spite of the organisation. To be able to see such acts in our life is yogic perception. To bring about that change is to release the yogic force. Society releases that force unconsciously.  Man can consciously do that.

The leap in the evolution is not of transfer but of transformation because the force from above descends and is responded to by the involved force inside. That is what the evolution of form of Darwin misses. In a personal discussion with a person like WS or WA, dozens of instances from our own lives can be shown. The phenomena can be made very evident from P & P. This phenomenon is a law of life. And it is a law of evolution. Once the phenomenon is demonstrated, the insufficiency of the evolution of form which inverses cause and effect is rationally demonstrable. It requires a theoretical clarity in terms of inexorable facts. Suppose you do this presentation to S and A, it will be more than clear to you.

One peculiarity of this phenomenon mentioned by Sri Aurobindo is not to destroy the lower but to transform it is the aim. He says the condition for this transformation is the consent of the lower for that purpose to the higher so that the higher could trample them down. That is the inmost aim of ethics. In other words, progress for the lower is its willingness to be trampled on by the higher for the purposes of transformation. This willingness is the aspiration for evolution. That may be called one secret of evolution. In social evolution it is presently done by fear, mercenary motive and helplessness. It must be done by the strength which is used for the voluntary submission for this cruelty.  This thought is there on page 714. (MSS, slightly modified, italicized emphasis added)

Miscellaneous

USA and Organizational Efficiency
USA has more records for the life of the last 200 years than any other nation. She has distinguished herself as a nation of practical efficiency. In every other nation these versions of organisation are originally developed while in USA it is original imitation in the sense that populations from cultured nations came to a virgin land and created a new nation from scratch, but from a subconscious or conscious memory of their parent nations. (MSS)

Power of an Organized System; in USA
An organized system enables freedom; freedom to be creative. There is creative prosperity in the US because it has organized systems of life at the level of material prosperity.

Benefit of, Outgrowing Social Institutions, Infrastructure
 -Social evolution is the growth of social institutions. Family is the foremost of them. Marriage makes family possible. Money and credit are age-old institutions. Education is a significant one. Army, government, library and a host of other institutions have made today's civilisation possible. Insurance is a preeminent institution. What the collective cannot do to the Individual, it accomplishes through these institutions.

-These institutions need physical infrastructure as well as psychological infrastructure, viz. values.

-For the leader and the pioneer, these institutions enable them to serve the society.

-For the less privileged and those who cannot progress on their own, these institutions are a boon when they want to rise in the social scale.

-Man ultimately [in his personal progress and evolution] outgrows these institutions. ... As the individual grows in his external capacities, he generally outgrows the use of the physical social infrastructure. Similarly, when he grows in inner capacities, he outlives the need for the psychological infrastructure. (MSS, slightly modified and somewhat rearranged)

Failure of Shock Therapy Approach in Russia

The transformation of the Soviet Union to the market-based Russia has been a disaster. It has been so because the infrastructure of the Soviet state has been so dismantled that there was nor organization upon which to build a market-based Russia. The "shock therapy" approach of the first Russian leaders (and conservative leaders support in Europe and America) failed to appreciate the importance of organization as a supporting basis for a new society. (It also did not have the consensus of the country's people and political leaders; i.e. it was undemocratic.)

 

RECOGNIZING OUR PROGRESS
 (top)
 

Untitled
The prosperity and boon we are born into is the "socialism" of existence.

Knowing the Social Boon Enables Further Boon
When we are born the society gives each of us a great boon of riches. To know what the emerging boon has been and is now enables us to avail of the NEXT HIGHEST level of boon. In that way we all have the opportunity to become pioneers.

Untitled
We know of the three scourges of humanity; war, disease, and poverty. We see those manifest in many forms today. And yet cannot we tally our recent accumulation of assets, such as the 500 million who have emerged out of poverty in India in the last twenty years. Or nearly a billion who have been set free into the new global market in China since the emergence of Deng; or the freedom of the world from nuclear annihilation, when Gorbachev saved our planet?

What is truly amazing is our lack of understanding of what is right under our noses. And while seeing the glass half empty can take us to the full future; ignoring the part that is filled prevents us from acknowledging the bounty of life; we are left estranged from the gratitude we ought to express.

Recognizing Successes
 Even as we assiduously deal with our social problems, we must recognize our successes. E.g. despite the valid criticism of the polluters, pollution from individual cars in the US has been reduced by 99% from 1960 to 2000! We can acknowledge such progress so that we have the true understanding, which ironically can enable us to take even bolder steps in the future, since a modicum of greater truth is now our guide.

Retrospect from the Present and the Future
In retrospect from the present we see that our way of life, our technology, our knowledge of material reality makes life 100 years ago appear rough and backwards. In retrospect of 100 years from now we will look back on these current times as one of psychological infancy, containing a mass of foolish children engaged happily and willfully in their ignorance and falsehood. Today we call tomorrows retrospective "progressive modern life."

Recognizing the Constant Changes in Society
For the perceptive eye, every five years will show the changes in the society.
It is the woman who is perceptive in this area. It relates to her as fashion.
The changing needs in the personality of the child for better education than the parents are as many as social facets.
Starting from the words of greetings, the imperceptible changes in the dress, lifestyle, attitudes of social preservatives, a mother can be seen constantly insistent in her instructions to her children.
She is thus a conscious agent of social change.
Children are subconscious recipients of emerging new patterns of life which they fully absorb and express as much as the prevailing freedom permits.
Media is a precise exponent of the changes, some they initiate.
Entertainment educates invariably so much that the politics of a country is largely determined by the line the entertainment takes.
It is a favourite theme of mine that every new comfort of life, either by way of change of attitudes or technological innovation, is a source of additional wealth.
The social talents are constantly directing the population towards an unperceived goal.
The receiving centre in Man of all these influences is his ego, its social, psychological, even its spiritual version.
The world is realising the need to outgrow the human ego.
Internet that brings freedom of information strikes at the roots of possessiveness. Free service dissolves the notion of selfish gain, the profit. (MSS)

ANACHRONISMS & OTHER NEGATIVES IN SOCIETY
 (top)
 

Anachronisms in Society

Social Anachronisms
When a society (or individual) lives in the past and is not open to the needs of the present, it begins to decay, wither, and die. (E.g. later Roman Empire; Lady Catherine's authority in Pride and Prejudice, etc.)

Progress Reveals Anachronisms
Truth becomes falsehood when it outlives its time. Such anachronisms are consistently revealing themselves at each bend in the road; i.e. particularly in every trend upward.

The Movement of Energy Amongst  Forms
Energy creates form. However, forms break down, is unable to hold the energy, and so the energy takes new form. What lasts is the energy. What changes is the form. E.g. forms of government change, but the force and energy continues, even increases when of a higher consciousness. Thus energy goes from one form to another; one act to another.

Individual's Connection to Progressive vs. Anachronistic Emergences
In an evolving social context, the old social values (e.g. class, property) are obstacles to tapping new opportunities. Individuals who choose allegiance to the old values stagnate or fail. Individuals who choose allegiance to the emerging social values advance along with the society. They have access to the opportunities that social evolution has opened up.

Retardation of Development through Anachronisms
Development is retarded by a plethora of anachronisms which have no other raison d'etre than the momentum of past habits that refuse to die. (MSS)

The Future is for the Pioneer
The future is for the pioneering individual, not for the superstitious tradition. (MSS)

Resistance to New Invention
Orthodoxy, conservation, tradition are the old ways of life summarised by the modern term "Establishment". That the old strongly resists the new is the order of the day. The old ways of life are so strong, that they can come back sooner or later, even if removed effectively. After the French Revolution, Napoleon made himself the Emperor. Later the royalty was restored. The same thing happened in England earlier. Even in democratic countries, the President of the nation behaves like a Monarch and people at all levels treat him as a King. The old is strongly entrenched, not easy to remove. As late as 1930, the US public opinion was not in favour of Darwin's theory of evolution being taught in the schools. There was a famous case at that time against a teacher who taught the principle of evolution.

Those who stick to the old methods won't permit a little change of any description. About 170 years ago the Railways came into existence. Christians who believed in the sanctity of the Sunday Sabbath would not allow the Railways to operate on Sundays. For several decades that rule prevailed. In Scotland it was there for a longer time than in England. Every innovation - the steamship, the telegraph, the phone, the radio, etc. - met with the same type of resistance. Science called it superstition, but later science developed its own orthodoxy. As recently as 1960 when Eisenhower was President of USA, he disliked the use of phones, though his position compelled him to use them frequently. Industrialists introduce new technologies, but try to operate them in the old way, thereby getting the minimal benefit. (MSS)

Tendencies Favouring Tradition vs. Seeking Change in Man

Tendencies favouring tradition in man:

1. His physicality trusts what is familiar.

2. His physicality insists on repetition

3. His physical inertia resists change as it involves effort.

4. As his physical nature is mechanical and blind, it insists on retaining those things that it no longer needs which leads to anachronisms.

5. His physical nature clings to forms more than the and he therefore clings to rituals long after the essence has disappeared from them.

6. He reveres what is old as it assumes sacred dimensions.

Tendencies seeking change in man:

1. His curiosity compels him to explore.

2. His mentality induces him to innovate

3. His taste for novelty gives him the energy necessary to initiate change.

4. His mind that insists on productivity constantly seeks to replace old thing with new ones that are more efficient.

5. A part of man knows that ossification leads to loss of content and retaining of form only. So the perceptive side of man's personality resists ossification by replacing old with new.

6. He values change as it refreshes life and keeps tedium out. (N. Asokan for MSS)

World is Unreceptive to New Ideas: We Can Find out Why
-The world is not receptive to new ideas, particularly new boons. If one goes on the Internet and learns how the major discoveries were received by the world, one will be appalled at the treatment they had received. The world was conservative. It is conservative to the core today.

-Man is conservative, traditional and will oppose tooth and nail every good thing that develops.  

-It will be a GREAT project for a PhD student of an advanced university if he lists all the BOONS at our doorstep - organisational, political, technological, educational, social, etc. - and evaluates them in terms of their contribution and records the reception they get at various levels of the society. Man's dire need is AWAKENING to the new world that is springing up around him. (MSS)

See Thoughts on Pioneering Individual and How Society Tries to Tear that Person Down

Man Rejects Anything that is New
 (As it Disturbs the Equilibrium of Security as Seen by Partial Mind)
If you are doing research to know how well the world has received new inventions, new ideas, or anything new which is most widely used today, the list you get will be miles long. Some of the comments of the greatest minds will surprise you at the human ingenuity for folly.

One can safely declare that anything NEW has so far been greeted unanimously with disapproval, dissent, resentment, and solid resistance. Humanity arrives at an equilibrium from time to time which is security of existence.

Anything new disturbs that equilibrium. It is seen as an attempt at insecurity. Hence the reaction. No reaction can contain any trace of reason. Man reacts, as he has no reason. This is so because the highest instrument of man is Mind. It can see only one side. Even the Rishis saw only one side of Sachchidananda. (MSS)

Anachronisms in Countries & Fields of Life
It is possible to cite instances in which perceptual blind spots, unwarranted fears, provincial attitudes and anachronistic habits limit development in every country and every field of life. (MSS)

The American Native Peoples
They were physical-type people, though in touch with spirit. The white man was not in touch with spirit, but were progressing from vital to mental. Evolution was behind them. The native people did not want this, could not want this because there was nothing in their tradition that could.  (Though a few wise ones understood.) Because they did not want to embrace the New, they became Nature's victim. They were the trailing edge, and so were forced into suffering so they could overcome their physicality, even their physical view of the spirit. The fact that the white man spread throughout the land was proof that evolution was on their side, despite their arrogance. Now the Indian is reduced to liquor and poverty. The people can become something great and special again if they discover a new inner path that embraces the modern. They are a subtle/spiritual-seeking people, who need to embrace the mentality of the modern era.

Anachronisms & History
History contains a record of infinite potentials discovered and countless opportunities missed due to a lack of perception, tradition-bound attitudes and insistence on anachronistic behaviors. (MSS)

What is Used of the Past in the Future
The past has not to be kept, -- one has to go into the future realisation. All that is necessary in the past for the future will be taken up and given a new form. (Sri Aurobindo)

Untitled
Society is stuck in the mud of social convention, religion without spirit, gossip without meaning, surface beauty, and shallow interests and concerns, to name but a few. It is seemingly only through a dark tragedy that light breaks through this veneer of superficiality. Since we are evolving mental beings with the powers of choice, in the future we can always choose to be conscious, and avoid light from darkness; enabling light from light.

Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice
Lady Catherine in Pride and Prejudice is the very essence of an anachronism. It is the old way of social eminence and economic power over the emerging truth as represented by the independent, emerging, modern spirit as represented by Eliza.

Roots of Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy all over the world is the vital reinforcement of physical rituals and ceremonies. (MSS) 

See MSS Article on the Film 'The Verdict', discussing the Reaction of Society to the Hero's Attempt to Bring Justice

Viciousness of Society
The viciousness of the society toward an emerging idea or individual is an unconscious self-affliction against their very own emerging social aspirations! The results and products that came from those they hate now, they will defend in the next generation as their very own!

Learning from But Giving Up the Past
The essence of civilisation is to give up past experience and build upon the essence of that experience. (MSS)

The Good of One Time that Later Becomes an Anachronism
Good and bad, even good and evil are constantly shifting. What is good one day, may be an anachronism in another time.

Outmoded Attitudes
The most persistent obstacles to human development are not physical barriers, but out-dated attitudes. (MSS)

Bush and Oil
It is one of the great ironies of history that as we go through a catastrophic oil and environmental crisis, the sitting president of the world's leading country is from a family of oil men. It is no irony nor coincidence, but Nature's way of addressing and weeding out the reactionary and the false.

Life Responds Negatively to Outworn Values
 The book 'The Secret' has taken the world by storm. Its central message is that we attract that which we are psychologically inside. When we are positive within, conditions that are favorable present themselves on the outside. When we are negative, the opposite takes place.  I have presented this to my readers as the principle of "inner-outer correspondence." That the inner and outer are interrelated; therefore as soon as we shift to the positive, favorable conditions suddenly present themselves. again, the opposite with negative shifts in consciousness. The result is what I call a ''Life Response" event.

This phenomenon of life response can happen to an individual or a collective of individuals, such  as a business, community, or nation. In the years 2001 to 2008, George Bush, Jr. (#43) has led the US. In the wake of the end of the Cold War, he saw little need to collaborate with the other nations of the world, adopting a go it alone policy, particularly in the wake of 9/11.  Unfortunately, the laws of karma, also known as Sow/Reap in western parlance, created conditions in direct opposition to his original intent. First, the war in Iraq turned into an unmitigated disaster, while attracting the hostility of many nations, including the disenfranchisement of our friends. Secondly, the Russians who were shamelessly ignored in the wake of the Cold War, awoke to directly challenge US power in the world. Life was in essence responding to Bush's narrow, ignorant view of conditions and the actions he took to make them real. These results to his narrow view and action is what I call Negative Life Response.

Likewise Bush and his adherents believed deeply in unfettered, free-market capitalism. He believed that government should not interfere in a market fully capable of acting on its own. The result of this narrow view has been near collapse of the financial system of the United States, including the organizations engaged in speculative transactions. Echoing the days of government-free financial speculation sponsored by the Coolidge administration, which precipitated the Great Depression, Bush was doomed to similar results. His life view was out of step with the progress of the society, which was seeking higher social values, not the laissez-fair, free-market, every man for himself business values of the jungle.

Life responds negatively when we try to foster outworn values. When they are reactionary, then calamity or something similar ensues. Just now we are seeing the negative life response of a completely outworn philosophy that is at odds with the aspirations of the world.

And yet it is a strange thing that it in the final analysis it was absolutely necessary in the greater scheme of things. It was necessary in order to shine the light of day on these false beliefs so that they will not show themselves again. It is Nature's secret way of progressing through the negative conditions of life. We can choose to progress through higher consciousness or through those who are proponents of the opposite. Nature is happy to progress either way. She is neutral, awaiting the decisions of Man. Whichever path we take, She will enjoin us with the right type of response thereafter. It is one secret of her subtle and profound methods.

Anger Toward the New and Reversal of Consciousness
When there is something new in an environment of unfamiliarity, people often object. It is a disturbance of habit. If there is also anger, it is indicative of something more untoward -- requiring a reversal of consciousness on their part. Sometimes that reversal comes from within, i.e. someone makes a psychological change in attitude, belief, etc. Other times it is expressed through the outer requirements of life, as was your husband's case through his cylinder changing duty. Very often it is both. Perhaps that was actually the situation for him.

Idealism that is Crushed
 Idealism that is counter to the cherished beliefs of the present will be destroyed physically, however justified and noble it is otherwise. (MSS)

Old Cultures Prevent Talents to Blossom
It is talents that accomplish anywhere, but the rewards do not necessarily go to talents. They go to one in position. The older the culture, the harder for pure talents without status to thrive. America accomplished shortly what Europe took ages to accomplish. (MSS)

ARTICLE: What are the Catalysts and Barriers to Social Development?

Limitation of Religion and Science
Religion is dogma in that it takes its own limited understanding; it's own rituals as the whole truth; when it is in fact a part that has become its essential Ignorance. When believed in that Ignorance becomes Falsehood. When that Falsehood is acted upon it can become and has become Evil. The many-sided perception of and experience of Spirit itself must emerge from the dogma, superstition, and falsehood of religion.

Science was born when mind looked out through a higher rationality at the limiting ritual, narrow-mindedness, and authoritarianism of religion. However, over time science too became authoritarian in that it subscribed to matter as the Ruler of all the world, as the one and only reality. Like religion it worshipped the part as the whole, taking matter as all of existence; ignoring the whole of life, turning away from the deepest and most profound processes of creation, ignoring the inner psychological state and consciousness of the individual, turning away from the hidden, subtle universal forces and powers, and ultimately casting a cynical eye at the transcendent Divine Spirit. 

Science believes that its knowledge of the surface is the whole of existence, when it is in fact a woeful mini-part of a complex, rich, intricate fabric of a seen and Unseen life and existence. Like religion it is also rooted in an essential Ignorance, whose tenets are subscribed to by its advocates enabling an essential Falsehood, which is then acted upon to create various formulations and products of destruction which become in essence its own form of Evil.

Even as the religions are dying in the wake of their own dogma and superstition, the modern science is limiting our world view to that which is seen on the surface through the instrument of the human senses, or through its agents, the microscope, the telescope and other technologies of measurement; giving us proof of the material surface part, while providing woefully incomplete analysis and insights into the True Nature of the vast, multidimensional Scope of the cosmos. Through its myopic material-only, proof-only, surface-only view science has avoided the Great Truths and Wisdom of life, including the ultimate Knowledge of Spirit, which is the Cosmos' great vehicle for manifestation and unfolding.

Religion and Ego
Religious doctrine, morality, and ritual is mostly individualized or collective ego (which is of course unspiritual in nature).

Religion and Ignorance
Despite its enormous contributions in times past to the civility and consciousness of man, each religion is essentially living in Ignorance, because Ignorance is to see only one side of the myriad of truths that make up the whole.

Pious Antagonism Suggests a New Discovery
When a religious group or other pious entity assert that the latest scientific development is the work of some dark force, it is often an indicator of the rightness of the new discovery, and its great emergence in some form for the benefit of humanity sometime in the near or distant future.

Going Beyond Old Religious Superstition to Soul Awakening
 When people are well educated, liberated from ordinary superstition, they may awake a little in their souls, but still cling to prayers and rituals, forgetting that the deity that grants so many prayers is no longer capable of playing a role in their lives, as their souls are now awakened ... Thus the awakened soul is not inimical to the deity. When the quality of worship degenerates to superstitious rituals, the ORIGINAL deity installed there leaves, and his place is occupied by vital [darker, less pure] spirits whose touch is enjoyed by one's own superstition.  (MSS, slightly modified)

Left-handedness
Westerners coming to India for any organised work among the general public are trained in Indian customs, taught an Indian language, and sometimes asked to put on Indian dress. One important instruction to such volunteers is NOT to give or receive by the left hand. To honour the local custom is to honour the local culture. To an Indian, to do anything sacred by the left hand is inconceivable. It is a sacrilege. Is there anything inherently spiritual in this custom? Is it a social custom? Parents do not allow children to use the left hand. The ones who are born left-handed are disciplined into using their right hand. Mostly parents succeed, not always.

All over the world Man was always right-handed, barring exceptions. How did that happen. Left-handedness is increasing in the newer generations. In certain parts of the West, the percentage is fast approaching 50%. A couple of centuries ago the westerner had long hair as we had a tuft, kudumi. He called it "pony tail". Now cropped head is the prevalent fashion all over the world. Is right-handedness one such fashion? If you are not left-handed but more often than usual tend to use the left hand, observe yourself in action. If the action is one of significance, see when the impulse to use the left hand arises and note the result. Suppose you give a cheque to the bank and find yourself doing it by the left hand, contrary to your custom, you will find the cheque bouncing. It may not be an absolute rule without exception, but in over 75% of the cases, it will be so. In fact, it is an absolute rule if you define your observation. You find the cheque handed in by the left hand readily cashed and you laugh at the rule, but if you follow its movements, that cash given to a clerk will be reported lost. The rule is absolute.

Hatha yoga is a perfect science. Their knowledge is comprehensive about the parts of the body. Maybe they have something to say on this. As man does not move away from his childhood innocence from God by age, left-handedness too is not ultimately negative. The percentage of left-handedness increases in the educated population anywhere in the world, as a symptom of rebellion at the depths of the body against the establishment the society is. It is a healthy negativism. Any tool can become positive or negative. A negative TOOL must be carefully handled to yield positive results. Should that be done, the great negative will become a great positive, yielding far wider results. Each hand has its character. But the key lies in the Mind that uses it. When the MIND is determined to be positive, left-handedness is an asset. By virtue of being left-handed, a determined Mind will rise far above in society and life. In spirit, its achievement will be consummate. (MSS)

Our Perceptions of God's Nature
 The fact that we anthromorphize God, i.e. explain His attributes in terms of our own, shows we are stuck in our ego-based, physico-vital consciousness, below even rationality and spirit that would certainly reveal a more integral picture of His True Nature.

Roots of Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy all over the world is the vital reinforcement of physical rituals and ceremonies. (MSS) 

Social Injustice & Anachronisms that Persist in Society Despite Laws
In the last century, workers who went down the mines were not sure of returning. In the fire cracker factories of South India, a few thousand people work. It is said that deaths -- ten or twenty often -- are common when explosions occur. Local money bags suppress them. News does not report it. Weak small proprietors of the local towns sometimes get harassed by an accident. The truth is long long after the right is enshrined in the constitution and law, the evil persists. It is also the same for the positive rights. A hundred years after the civil war, the rights of the blacks remained a dead letter on the statue books. 200 years after the king was guillotined in Paris, 400 year after Charles I was beheaded, royalty is adored by a section of the British public. It is an anachronism but lingers like the Amish in the USA.

Social change erupts as a revolution or rebellion, new governments are enthroned, new laws are made but the old persists for a long time. The Mind changes but the physical refuses. [Each man calculate how much he can escape. It depends on the scope for escape in the social climate, not on the prevailing LAWS.] Should the Theory of Social Evolution be accepted, studied as Newton's laws of thermodynamics, then the society will have a conscious knowledge which can hasten -- in a trice -- the present unconscious progress. (MSS)

Anachronisms Within Us
As there are anachronisms in society, so too we can say that there are "anachronisms," in our being; i.e. all things that do not want to change to meet the new realities of our lives. (If we change the anachronisms in ourselves, life will respond and the corresponding anachronism in society can change.)

Strength that is Organized Over our Negatives
Individuals as well as society achieve only when the strength is Organised to contain the mischief of the negative. (MSS)

Untitled
 Bush falls under a different rule of reaction to rapid progress so that the resistance of the old can be worked out of the system. (MSS)

The US South's Freedom that is Regressive
It is interesting to view the North-South divide and Civil War as the opposition of progressive and reactionary forces in America. From the beginning, the vast freedom of the New World was attractive to both those who wanted to cast off the conservative burden of class structure and evolve a freer society and those who wanted to return or establish a more perfect society along the old lines. Puritans came to America to impose a Puritan rule -- fundamentalism utopia -- free from the impurities of the Anglican Church and monarchy. Southern immigrants and aspirants longed to erect a new feudal aristocracy to mimic the old world aristocracy that was soon to crumble in the French Revolution. Mother says all growth is in freedom, but freedom is always a double edged sword that can be used for progressive or organization of outmoded egoistic demands. Thus even today America is a seedbed of progressive individuality and archaic fundamentalism.

These opposing forces coexisted for two centuries because of the vast area and loose structure of the emerging nation. When the progressive forces of the North reached a certain level of development that threatened to dominate, the South asserted its freedom to live in the past. The war was fought not over slavery but over national integration. The constitutional weaknesses born of the original compromise between independent colonies and a unified federation rose to the surface and threatened to divide the country forever. It was a war between past and future, aristocracy and democracy, agriculture and industry, vital-physical and mental-vital.

Also See Thoughts on Fixidity, Rigidity, Closed Mind in the Individual

 

Other Negative Qualities of Society

Society is Cruel, False
In Erin Brockovich we see the traits that make for great accomplishment; single-minded goal, direction, determination, organization, not be bothered by society, perseverance, and full effort. She followed the process of creation in miniature, which led to a $300 million settlement. And yet at each point society blocks her. Her boss is skeptical, her office mates dislike her, her opponents oppose viscously, and even her constituents who she tries and ends up getting a great financial settlement for are against her and hostile along the way. Also, she only receives $3 million, when she should have received ten times that or more because it is a socially accepted amount. Society is unconscious, ignorant, false, and cruel.

Individuals, Society Abuses & Crushes the Weak or Perceived Weak
-Society is pleasant to you when you are strong. If you are weak, or if others think you are weak, they poke fun at your expense.

-If you are quiet, the fun becomes ridicule. Soon several people will join together to fool you.

-When a poor man is found to be a success or gifted with a talent, society around him at once turns hostile and tries its best to crush him out of existence. This rule, as many other rules of life, has no exception. Neither the brother nor the mother is an exception, if there is no affection in the family. Even when someone is not weak, if they think he is weak, they try their best to cheat him, ridicule him, slight him, and neglect him publicly.

-What is respected is strength, social status.

-Bernadette was a simple, poor girl in France of the 19th century. She had a vision near the side of a river. The vision of a Lady whom others took to be the Virgin Mary repeated eighteen times in all. The girl was in bliss kneeling before the lady. The place eventually became famous and the girl after several decades was canonised as a Saint. It is a deep lesson for any observer to learn how, when she first saw the vision and word got around, the local officials ostracised her, teased her, harassed her, jailed her and her family. All for what? Because they found her defenceless, the entire society revealed its nether side of wickedness to crush her out of existence. The Church did its worst. The Major, the Magistrate, etc. joined the bandwagon. What matters to us is not what the society is, but what we are INSIDE. Let us look inside and see whether we are capable of such ridicule, whether we have treated anyone like that. If it is there, there is no spirituality as long as it is alive. (MSS, extracted)

Social Injustice & Anachronisms that Persist in Society Despite Laws
In the last century, workers who went down the mines were not sure of returning. In the fire cracker factories of South India, a few thousand people work. It is said that deaths -- ten or twenty often -- are common when explosions occur. Local money bags suppress them. News does not report it. Weak small proprietors of the local towns sometimes get harassed by an accident. The truth is long long after the right is enshrined in the constitution and law, the evil persists. It is also the same for the positive rights. A hundred years after the civil war, the rights of the blacks remained a dead letter on the statue books. 200 years after the king was guillotined in Paris, 400 year after Charles I was beheaded, royalty is adored by a section of the British public. It is an anachronism but lingers like the Amish in the USA.

Social change erupts as a revolution or rebellion, new governments are enthroned, new laws are made but the old persists for a long time. The Mind changes but the physical refuses. [Each man calculate how much he can escape. It depends on the scope for escape in the social climate, not on the prevailing LAWS.] Should the Theory of Social Evolution be accepted, studied as Newton's laws of thermodynamics, then the society will have a conscious knowledge which can hasten -- in a trice -- the present unconscious progress. (MSS)

Overcoming Society's Falsehood
If society is Ignorant and (especially) False, what are the direct strategies that will enable it to become Knowledgeable and True? In whatever they do, in their present professions and homes, members should discover their personal evolving souls.

Human Transformation and Overcoming the Problems of Life
For 10,000 years humanity has labored to raise itself up. Yet even now there is great suffering, anguish, disease, hunger, poverty, pain, ignorance, and falsehood. All of the movements, political and social, have so far failed to really remedy these problems. Things remain for the most part the same. Man suffers, he experiences pain, he experiences the endless ups and downs of life. Religion, though noble in its intent, has also failed to solve these problems. It has merely helped us cope with them. It has not changed their fundamental nature. 

To change their fundamental nature one needs to understand the processes that caused them to become the way they are. Then we need to understand the necessary methods and techniques to overcome these limitations. Throughout his life Sri Aurobindo endeavored to do both. With such an understanding we are better prepared to take the right actions in life that enable the permanent transformation in life that we seek; so that the problems of the individual, of the community, of the society, of life on earth cease to exist; now and forever. 

He said that by transforming our own nature, by opening to the spirit, the divisions and dualities of life gradually give way. By rising above the inherent limitations of our physical, vital, and mental functioning to the higher mental functioning and spirit beyond; by moving inward into the depths of our being where we touch our inner spirit and soul, which itself calls to the greater spirit above, we are lead to our higher nature and consciousness. From that poise we can then extend that personal transformation to our surroundings, to others, to our businesses and communities, to our nations and to the world at large.

Through this process we begin to replace our normal functioning and consciousness, rooted in unconsciousness, ignorance, falsehood, and ego, with a higher consciousness, a spirit, a Force above, that we can call into our lives to further enable our progress. By overcoming our limiting nature, by opening to this Divine force, we begin to see a life of emotional pain receding, a life of physical pain giving way, and a life of mental confusion and ignorance changing into one of insight, knowledge, understanding, intuition, truth, harmony, unity, and oneness of purpose. Living our lives from this higher nature we come to see life continually cooperating with us in every way. We work in harmony with others; we experience a wonder of perfection and truth in all our activities, in all circumstance and situations of life. We come upon the infinite potentials and possibilities of life.

Cause of Problems in Society Due to Limits of Mind, & Its Resolution
Society evolves through higher harmonies between the social entities. In this way all problems, conflicts are overcome. The ego of the social entity is overcome.

Every advance of Humanity is Accompanied by a Problem

  • Every advance of humanity > problem
  • Industrialization > pollution
  • Automobile > road accidents
  • Money > inflation, deflation
  • Economic development > unemployment
  • Green Revolution > pesticide poisoning
  • Genetic engineering > fears of new threats
  • Democracy > popular illiberalism (Zacharia)
  • Internet > internet crime, pornography and terrorism

Humanity's problems are directly a result of the way in which mind functions; i.e. it linearality, the way it thinks in divisions and aggregation, the way it thinks in opposites, its inability to see the whole beyond the part. When we transcend mind to spiritual mind we break mind's limitations and thus overcome her problems. (MSS, slightly modified) 

Overcoming Society's Falsehood
If society is Ignorant and (especially) False, what are the direct strategies that will enable it to become Knowledgeable and True? In whatever they do, in their present professions and homes, members should discover their personal evolving souls.

Overcoming the Organization Differential that Shows as Suffering in the World
The differential between the energy that is blossoming as a new expansion in society and the organization of that society to sustain that expansion shows itself as the acute pains, problems, and sorrows we see all around us. (MSS Comments in Blue)

[MSS Comment: Profound observation. Suppose someone can make this fact intelligible to the public concerned, he will be regarded as the most important person of this century.  The distance from such an observation and the training of it as a mental statement is great.]

Examples:

  • The Bubonic plague was a differential between the expansion of the society and the lacking cleanliness of urban areas that helped trigger the great misery. The cleanliness that craved for adoption exerted itself like this -- as plague.
  • The energy of Lydia [in Pride and Prejudice] that was not matched by the organization of Mr. Bennet's consciousness who did not take responsibility for his family which contributed to the shame of the elopement.
  • The overwhelming stress on the infrastructure (highways, living quarters, etc.) when Silicon Valley expanded vastly three years ago, which ended in a degree of economic and labor collapse.
  • The failure of a rapidly expanding/industrializing Europe to overcome the balkanization, disharmony, and rivalry of its nations, which supported the outbreak of WWII.
  • The rise in human energy as the world now expands, including the reality of globalism, is accompanied by AIDS, where individual human's physical/vital is not organized for control.
  • 9/11, where the US has rushed to the lead after the Cold War, but has not organized in its consciousness the knowledge of its complicity in the arrival of the evil doers. (It is also an indicator of the lacking coordination and integration of the US and Europe; of the world that is expanding and the plight of the Middle East and other bastions of suffering and unrest, etc.)
  • All the stresses in modern US society such as cost of health care, highway accidents, etc. do not match up well with an expanding material base. The psychological organisation at the collective or Individual level is unable to cope up with the increasing material plenty.

Solutions:

  • What begins to fill this gap, to overcome the differential are the discovery and implementation of the requisite missing values.
  • What overcomes the differential is a movement to higher consciousness. It is a movement upward in the vertical plane, from where one is and what is needed; from the current energy that enables the expansion to the required control from the next higher plane.
  • Man normally reacts to the problems and comes up with the solutions, partially neglecting a CLEAR understanding of the current value which is not enough and the necessary higher value that would enable the expanding energy to flow harmoniously. (Man does not use mind to know this clarity. He is vital, and thus solves problems as they occur, missing the clarity of the deeper value that needs to shine for all to see.)

Ignorance, Falsehood in Society
Just as the universe struggles from out of its ignorance and falsehood, society and individuals do the same. Through the limitations of our nature and the forces surrounding us we are confronted with our limitations (i.e. the involution) so that out of this ignorance and falsehood we can progress and accomplish (the evolution). In other words we as individuals are participating in a process that the entire universe is going through.

The Vital, Mental, and Spiritual Frontiers of Life to be Organized
Life consists of matter, the animus of life, mind, and spirit. In society we are moving well along towards the organization of matter, which enables infinite possibilities in the of the physical realm as seen in machines inventions, technology, roads, infrastructure, shelter, life sciences, medicines, etc. The US is of course in the vanguard here.

And yet the rest of life beyond the physical matter remains unorganized. There is pain, suffering falsehood, ignorance, evil, conflict, contradiction, disharmony, hate, desire, attachment, and on and on. This reflects as poverty, war, disease, famine, and many other social ills. This is the vital realm of humanity unorganized. It is the next frontier beyond the organization of matter that we have now been passing through. Such organization inevitable requires the organization of thought, ranging from logical thought to thought that comes as light, illumination, vision, revelation, inspiration, and intuition from spiritual descent, that will be necessary to help organize the vital life.

The subtle vital, mental, and spiritual existence remains for all intensive purposes a frontier unexplored. The mental capacities of certain citizens and the deeper spiritual truths of India, now more well-rounded through its acceptance of evolutionary theory, can help the material-oriented US and West, and inevitably the rest of the world, exploit the new opportunities to organize life within across borders of the new frontiers of our vital, mental, and spiritual existence.

Dualities in Society
When translated into our known universe we see these opposites manifest as darkness and light, good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, and other dualities and divisions. Likewise, in human society it shows up as war and peace, wealth and poverty, and power and oppression, amongst others. Also, in the individual it shows up as pleasure and pain, knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, pleasure and pain, and so forth.

Negativity Created by the Male
The accumulation of political power, material prosperity, religious enlightenment, scholarship, industrial and imperial power and the social preeminence of the male have created the politically oppressed, the poor, the ignorant superstitious masses, the lumpen proletariat and the uneducated docile woman drowned  in domestic chores. All these are reversing in varying measures. (MSS)

Nature Purges Man's Physicality
Man's lowest consciousness is expressed in his physical consciousness, aka his "physicality." That physicality expresses not only as brutality, but as unconsciousness, inertia, unwillingness to change, anachronistic tendencies, inflexibility, lack of tolerance and openness, a material only view of the world, expression of ego, ritualistic religion, etc. Nature breaks the physicality of nations when those peoples experience natural disaster, when the nation is attacked by another, and in other ways. Nature, as an instrument of a Higher Consciousness (the Spirit), enables that people to progress to a higher consciousness through such negative means. The same occurs for individuals, through the difficulties of life. A higher approach to progress is through conscious self-awareness, through rationality and spirit. the progress of man through Soul instead of the difficult path of Nature is the future that awaits man.

Ultimate Powers of Solving Society's Problems
The discovery of our inner, personal soul or psychic being is the way out of our ego, separateness, universal Ignorance, and the divisions and dualities of existence. Connecting thus within and a further opening to the Supramental Force and Consciousness is the key to our progress and transformation, and to the transformation of the society out of its ignorance, falsehood, division, suffering, and pain.

Filling in the Gap
A gap is its potential; whether it is between concentrated wealth at the top of society and the paucity at the bottom; or between the rich nations and the poor; or between my infinite potential and my current status; or between an Integral Knowledge supported by universal consciousness and my Ignorance supported by my ego-sense and separateness. Filling in the gap is then an important reason why we are here on earth.

Thoughts on Solving Society's Problems

 


GOING BEYOND NATURE'S SLOW PROGRESS
 (top)

Evolution through Reconciliation of Opposites
Social evolution always works through opposites, and progresses by reconciling them into ever greater harmonies. This is Nature's way.

Contradictions are Complements in World Events

The conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, and the 9/11 attacks on the US are examples of the great phenomenon in life of contradictions being complements. Each side has weakness and blame that only the other side perceives, and it is only in their contradiction and conflict is the truth of each side's weakness revealed in the interaction with the other side. This enables a further, higher harmony. This is Nature's way.

Untitled
Life normally evolves through conflict. Things we perceive as conflict are the means of social evolution. Things we perceive as "bad" are necessary in the scheme of things, as are the "good." The "good" and the "bad" are necessary to each other for the greater development and emergence of all. E.g. WWII led to UN and the first glimmers of a new emerging movement toward world unity. Problems in Bosnia focuses European role in future of confrontations in region. And so forth.
Creating New World in Consciousness, Not Tragedy
 Until recently the world would reach its intensities of consciousness at each key moment through a negative expression. E.g. Shakespeare's stories express the intensities through tragedy; WWII expresses it, leaving 70 million dead; as does the Cold War; Even the spiritual being Krishna, leading in the battles of Ancient India against evil forces, was able to overcome the opposition through his false ruse.

Relation of Low and High in Society for Progress
The low cannot rise without the high rising further. For example, the prosperity of the lower classes cannot rise unless there is a further rising of the higher classes. Also the high cannot rise further without the low rising considerably . That is the more prosperous parts of the world cannot rise to the next levels of prosperity unless those on the lower end rise a great deal. That is the situation in the current state of the world and its crisis.

Another way of saying this is that the collective welfare of the world cannot usher into a new phase unless it is saturated at the current level. (E.g. In 1990s there was great economic boom. Yet many were left behind, including those in Africa and Middle East, from which despair, anguish and terror originate. Unless we correct the soil from which such terror grows, the world can't move fully to the next level of world prosperity. In the current times we have fallen back as a result of this phenomenon.) 

Now we can express the intensities of consciousness as positives, not as negatives and tragedies. Man is awake to do this, since he has a new mental awareness, and he is also beginning to experiencing the higher consciousness of the spirit. Thus we can consciously bring the joy of creation of our positive intention to bear in the world. (Paraphrase of MSS)

Department of Contradictions
Imagine a "Department of Contradictions," whether in a government or other institution, manned by those who have the vision to see the emerging possibilities in any conflict. Solutions to the problems of the earth would be greatly facilitated!

Untitled
 The British unified the US and then India by their exploitation. Looking for resources and markets, she unconsciously instigated freedom. Likewise Nature shapes our own individual lives, evolves our being slowly or quickly over time in ways we are unconscious of.

Outside Force (Painfully) Causes Development
The individual person becomes more whole through the difficulties that come from without if he doesn't have the power to take hold of the reigns of his own growth and evolution. Similarly, nations in the past have often only become fully realized entities after they have been invaded or overrun (e.g. England over France in ancient times) if they didn't have the power to become fully formed. Perhaps even World War II was the necessary "outside" force to create a degree more unity for the world via the United Nations and other forms. Taking the reigns of development can change this process from unconscious development through strife to conscious development through self-determination.

The Great Value of Tragedy and War
Greek philosophers spoke of war as a great benefactor. The great boon to the world that lies behind the erupting of the war is not seen by us. It lies in the causal plane. Western Europe was ushered into unbelievable prosperity when she recovered from the ravages of the world war. A report of UNDP says that the world made as much progress in the fifty years of the post war period as she had done in the previous 500 years. (MSS)

How Products and Technology Arise
Once there is an approval of a new idea, and some organization emerges to support it, trade and commerce take it up as they see a new opportunity. This is how new products or technology arise. (Paraphrase of MSS)

More Thoughts on Nature's Way

 

SOCIETY'S CULTURE (of Behavior & Values)
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Overview

Culture
Culture is the more subtle expression of the social organization.

Culture is the active attitude of a functioning society.

In a stagnant society, culture becomes rigid and therefore defensive. At one stage, the defensive becomes offensive till it knocks against a rock and destroys itself. (Islamic terrorism arises out of it.)  (Paraphrase of MSS)

Development of Culture
Centuries of existence give rise to a little history. Centuries of history yield a few drops of culture. (MSS)

Definition of Culture
Culture is a way of life based on values. (MSS)

Civilization vs. Culture
Life is wider than the Society, Family, culture, etc. History is a series of events. Man's existence becomes history when he had lived long enough worthily. Civilisation and culture are its higher versions as an end result of further longer living. For our purposes civilisation is organisation and culture is institution. Civilisation rises to culture when the values of life are integrated with its living. I call this institutionalising. (MSS)

Continuum from Acts to the Collective
Act - Activity - System - organisation - institution - culture - collective sensitivity - Individual sensitivity - (physical, vital, mental) is a continuous chain [of sophistication and consciousness]. (Paraphrase of MSS)

Organization Turns Acceptance into Reality
 Once a new activity is accepted, society established new organizations, policies and laws to support it. When social acceptance of the activity becomes complete, the activity matures into an institution that no longer requires the support of specialized organizations, policies and laws to promote it. At a further stage the activity is transmitted to future generations through the family and becomes part of the culture of the society. (MSS)

Existence to History to Culture of Selflessness -- through Compulsion of Life or Self-Directed Spiritual Values
Time never stops. It is relentless. Its march is called the progress of civilisation. Century after century, decade after decade, progress continues. Thus the mere existence of Man becomes history. His mere existence is now denoted as pre-historic period.

As existence matures into history, history ripens into culture. Man was physical, selfish. Now he is mental and aims at being selfless. Man does not become selfless on his own.

He is compelled by circumstances to be selfless. When other tribes attacked, man organised collective defence, impelled by his own selfish security. The ultimate goal of that movement is self-giving, the Spiritual progress of the collective Man. The March of Time compels Man to be selfless and practise Self-giving.

Such a movement is there in commercial technology, education, democracy and the Pure Spirit. [E.g. in education he is compelled to expand that education to all members of society, including invalids. Beyond the compulsion of life to enable greater culture is our direct conscious spiritual will to achieve based on spiritual values such as self-givingness, oneness, etc.. This is the approach of the future. -editor] (MSS)

Historical World Movements
 The world evolved from spirit (as in ancient India) to Babylonia as civilization to Middle East as religion to Greece as birth of mentality to culture, trade of the Renaissance to invention of 20th century Europe to practical organization of the US. Now the US in its full materialism meets the ancient Indian spirit through Indian programmers, completing the cycle and tying the head to the tail.

Advance of Civilization and Culture
Advance of civilisation arrives at revelations which later become their culture. The Greek's intellectual culture, the Roman's love of law, the European scientific enquiry, British patronage of democracy and the American's excelling in practical organisation are such consummations. The Indian discovery of the Spirit as the underlying principle for all these expressions and their reliance on that spiritual approach to shape their daily life are unique to India.  This is the basis of Sri Aurobindo's statement that India would become the Guru of the world.

The world is treating USA as the leader and is taking after her culture. Even in India this is true. I consider this movement in the historical perspective that Nature develops her several facets at several parts of the globe before she achieves her desired consummation. The full cycle of human capacities having been developed successively, what remains now is to unite them all. I see Indians moving to the West in that light. (MSS)

Customs and Culture
Customs vary with culture. We evaluate a man by his customs and culture. We think high of an institution where people are polite and low where people are impolite and rude. We value a foreign nation by seeing the behaviour of that national in our own country. Our estimate is based on our customs. To value another's customs by the standards of our culture is not rational. We do it all the time. When we visit a foreign nation and those people look down on us for our customs, we frown and tell ourselves, "Of course, they forget I am an Indian and this is an Indian habit." Still, culture is of great value, maybe the greatest of values. There is a beyond, beyond what we call culture. It is what belongs to each man as he is a man - his value as a human being, how human one is. If one is to be measured, it is best to measure him on the scale of his humanitarian value.

Culture is valuable, but being humane is the ultimate value. How kind a person is to children, how truthful one is sets the tone of one's real value. It is the value of values. (MSS, extracts)

Evaluating Another's Culture
Going to another culture and evaluating their values in terms of our culture will give us results that will make the analyst look irrational. (MSS)

Scale of Values that Will Indicate the Level of Culture of that Collective
Hospitality to strangers is seen as an index of culture of a community. Friendliness of a population is always valued by tourists from other countries. Landing in a foreign land, one is struck by the orderliness that catches the eye and the cleanliness that pleases.
 
Cleanliness is physical, hospitality is vital, trustworthiness - honesty - is mental. Kindliness to children, respect to the elderly, tenderness to women are hallmarks of high civilisation. If these are the only marks of a nation's progress, one can easily complete the whole scale on either side and it will make evaluation of a community possible.
 
Again, "In all my community there is not a single man who can even consider doing this generous act, even in his dream." That is the upper limit. To fix these extremes is not difficult, but the undulating variations that are odd mixtures in between need not merely a study but a scale of values governed by a theory of values.
 
How they mix and exist at a given moment is seen by the poet or a writer of insight who loves to portray them as they are. It is not for him to construct a scale of values. It is left to a professor of a university. Though it is complex, it is not utterly impossible. (MSS, extracts)

Generosity of Culture
Certain places are populated entirely by generous people and generosity is found throughout the district. In such places it is rare that one is given a nickname. Personal defects, family misfortunes, etc., will NOT be referred to in conversation with the concerned person. Not to discuss such things, even in his absence, is true generosity of culture. (MSS)

Culture on Scale Towards World Unity
The movement toward world unity is only shallow at this point. We care for others in other countries mainly because of the trade and economic benefit we derive through out interactions. At a higher level of unity, we would care about their culture. At a higher level still we really care about the well-being and happiness of people in that country as we would our own community.

Education that Enables Culture
Culture is the best ingredient of Mind that makes it level headed or great. It is education that prepares the mind to receive culture. Man thinks of education when his stomach is full. Hunger prevents one from seeking education. (MSS)

Social Justice & Culture
The level of civilisation and culture determines social justice.

Marriage & Culture
When people of different levels of culture marry, problems arise. These too are not problems of marriage, but those arising out of a lack of culture.

If problems of life and problems arising out of temperament or lack of culture are removed from the basket of marriage problems, very few problems will be left. (MSS)

Great Writing and Culture

�         So far culture found its origin in religion, religious values and religious ways of life.

�         The way of life - agriculture, trade, etc - has always generated its own culture.

�         Language exclusively belongs to each of these branches of life.

�         Great writers dissolve their personalities in the social life and their writing is instinct with the culture of that society. When their language blends with the culture of that society, they become truly great.

How Great Writers Immerse Themselves in the Society Around Them
Great writers dissolve their personalities in the social life and their writing is instinct with the culture of that society. When their language blends with the culture of that society, they become truly great. (MSS)

Untitled
The physical coming into its own has thrown up the leadership of a BRUTE. The behaviour of a brute, the cruelty of the malicious, the tyranny of the vulgar became the culture of the period. Physical strength becomes crude culture. (MSS)

 

An Individual's Cultural Behavior

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 EAST AND WEST
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Eastern vs. the Western Consciousness

 The Western Consciousness

 

The Eastern Consciousness

 

SUPPORTING ATTITUDES & VALUES FOR PROGRESS
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Also See: Personal Values | Values in Business
 

Society's Attitudes

Cheerfulness in Social Entity Enables Accomplishment
Cheerfulness in a social entity, such as a family, contains the right condition for accomplishment and positive. A family does as well as there is harmony there. Lack of harmony will lead to less accomplishment. Partiality by a parent to one child is unpardonable and have negative repercussions (e.g. Mr. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice).

Untitled
 A happy optimism at the start of an emerging situation is a sure sign of accomplishment and success. We see this amongst the members of the Bennett family at the outset of Pride and Prejudice that ends in three marriages, and wealth accumulated for the family. On the other hand, a small internal squabble at the outset can point to an eventual doom. We see this at the beginning of the true-to life-film A Perfect Storm when two of the fisherman show great contempt for one another, only to see al members perish at the end due to coming together of two enormous storms.

There are always predecessor events that point to the bigger events. To know those smaller acts can help us control the bigger ones; turning them into great accomplishment and results.

Prosperity of Society Where People Appreciate Other's Success
In societies where people appreciate another person's rise in prosperity, the country tends to prosper. In countries where people are keen to put the person down when an individual rises, they tend to remain poor. 

Places of Generosity
Certain places are populated entirely by generous people and generosity is found throughout the district. In such places it is rare that one is given a nickname. Personal defects, family misfortunes, etc., will NOT be referred to in conversation with the concerned person. Not to discuss such things, even in his absence, is true generosity of culture. (MSS)

World is Unreceptive to New Ideas: We Can Find out Why
-The world is not receptive to new ideas, particularly new boons. If one goes on the Internet and learns how the major discoveries were received by the world, one will be appalled at the treatment they had received. The world was conservative. It is conservative to the core today.

-Man is conservative, traditional and will oppose tooth and nail every good thing that develops.  

-It will be a GREAT project for a PhD student of an advanced university if he lists all the BOONS at our doorstep - organisational, political, technological, educational, social, etc. - and evaluates them in terms of their contribution and records the reception they get at various levels of the society. Man's dire need is AWAKENING to the new world that is springing up around him. (MSS)

Overcoming the Ego of the World

Freedom has spread around the world. Economic prosperity, despite the financial pain of the present, continues its rapid march across the planet with the goal of including all. In the new world environment, increasingly every person has the ability to become anything he chooses. The frontiers of what we can become and the ways in which we can be fulfilled are becoming limitless.

And yet within that freedom lurks a central falsehood. There is ego at the center of the world, as each grouping or collective -- whether nation, community, business, or family -- pulls in its own direction, at the expense of the ‘Other.’ For example, in America, virtually every news report is presented in terms of how its own citizens are impacted. If ten Americans perish, it is devastating. If it is thousands perish in another country or region, the story may be buried deep inside the local newspaper. It is wrought selfishness at the heart of Man. When millions die of AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases in Africa and elsewhere, and we in another region turn away saying, “What can we do,” it is callousness of the worst kind.

Of course, such self-centeredness and insensitivity does not apply to the US alone, for nearly every nation has the same provincial attitude. For example, before WWII, each European nation pulled in its own direction, creating a vacuum that fascism gladly filled. As a result, more than sixty million died.  It is an example of the ego of individual nations that opens the door to extreme negative consequences. Similarly, a financial crisis has risen today because earlier on the individual nations would not collaborate on a global monitoring system for such transactions. In fact, it was hardly a thought in their minds, as each nation sought to gain the upper hand in the name of speculative gain. Because the ego asserted in each case, Nature pushed back and smacked the world with a cathartic like crises. It could have been much worse.

There is a Divine aspiration for ever-increasing harmony in the world. It secretly knows that humanity is capable of transmuting its ego into ever-increasing forms of cooperation, collaboration, unity, and oneness. It perceives that we can only fulfill our human potential when we shed our selfishness, self-indulgence, and self-aggrandizement, and perceive the needs of those outside our immediate family, community, region, or nation. It is a movement that connect us to the heart and soul of Others.

We can begin to overcome the selfishness and ego that lurks in the heart of every collective by making a psychological shift. We need to stand back from things, quietly scan the world, and understand where we as a collective are relative to others. From that vantage point, we become cognizant of the outer social milieu and conditions, and therefore more readily reach across the gap that divides us. Making that small psychological adjustment to connect with the Other is a sign of growth and maturity of that collective. For example, as one of the managers of 'District A,' I can move to a wider consciousness and think deeply about the issues and concerns that we and surrounding districts share. Perceiving the reality this way, I am more likely to see things from the other collective’s perspective, establishing conditions for greater cooperation, collaboration, and integration. This approach can be taken for any group we are part of or have influence over -- from family head to global leader.

In addition to this psychological change from “below,“ institutional changes can be adhered to from “above” that also forge greater harmony amongst the collectives; that also, in effect, break the ego of the World. For example, a World Parliament could be established to negotiate ever-increasing, ever more complex problems that can no longer be solved at the national or local level.  Issues of the environment, poverty, economics, education, etc. can be rapidly discussed, agreed upon, and implemented to bring practical results to the world. Similarly, a global financial institution, such as a World Fed, could be established to set standards and monitor monetary transactions throughout the globe. The recent financial crisis showed the extreme need for such an institution, as money flowed among global institutions without the most basic controls, standards, and values. It too would keep the World Ego in check from above.

Likewise, one could imagine a Global Rapid Reaction Force or World Army to solve compelling security problems that cannot be left alone to single nations like the US, nor regional alliances like NATO, which tend to act in their own self-interest. For the world to live in harmony, a more neutral, all encompassing security institution should be put in place so society can get on with the business of economic, social, and cultural integration. This too would help keep the World Ego in check.

Finally, eliminating all nuclear weapons and dealings in soft arms is another important tact for creating greater stability and world harmony. This is increasingly necessary as other nations seek to expand their arsenals in the vacuum of US-Russian inaction on substantial nuclear arms reduction. It is important to keep in mind that if we fail to take such action, life will turn on us with all its fury. We see that our inability to develop a global financial regulatory institution “attracted” the financial meltdown, beginning with greed and speculation of the US real estate market. In the same way, nuclear arms are bound to spread and be used if we fail to come to substantial agreements on their reduction. (Certainly, others, including rogue-nations, will be compelled pursue that path without such an agreement.)

In sum, the world is changing rapidly, and global solutions that the local domain cannot solve are increasingly in demand. Cooperative change from above can control the narcissistic Ego of the collectives of the World, while harnessing world power for social progress and evolution. And yet this movement must also occur from the other direction. Each collective, from family to nation, must stand back and see the world for what it is, i.e. from all viewpoints, and thus clearly perceive the utility of cooperation and collaboration. Better still is to see that we are all parts of a whole, and cannot progress when we think only of ourselves. That the needs of the Other are essential to our own success, accomplishment, and delight.  Best of all is to take pleasure in the success of the collectives outside our own. It is a spiritual position of the Soul that sees the world through the eyes of another, sincerely aspiring for their happiness and success.  It is the most conscious and powerful way to bring about progress in the world.

Humanity has made great progress in the last hundred years, and especially the last thirty. Man has become more mental, shedding much of his physical consciousness and animality. Slowly his mind is opening to wider vistas, embracing the variety of truths about any matter, not just those that one is comfortable with or are self-serving. Education, Internet, and Media push us in that direction -- making us more aware of global conditions and possibilities; breaking down the mental barriers we have erected that support our selfish concerns and interests.

Still the knot of the Ego of the World is wrapped tightly. It strangles minds, preventing openness and tolerance; blocking our ability to see multiple truths beyond our own. That knot must be loosened for Man to progress without the threat of danger; without the inevitable travail and suffering. That can only occur if the collectives of humanity looks out through a wider lens, perceiving the needs of Others as inextricably linked to their own. At that point, we begin to shed the Ego of the World, opening the door to a New Age of common interest, shared accomplishment, and deep fulfillment in life.

Decentralized and Centralized Progressive Movements in the World
There is a dual movement in life; decentralized which expresses our freedom, centralized which expresses our commonality.  The former is well under way, led especially by the US and I advocate it fully. It is in step with the West's overall advocacy of freedom for the last 200 years.

There is also a movement needed from above to solve international and other issues. It is why nations have come about. The ego of the individual (especially in the West) is opposed to these. It wants to assert only in its own direction, negating what comes from above. Thus, we nearly had the collapse of world capitalism. A little more collaboration (from above through accepted international standards) and it could have been avoided (just like WWII).

The East is much more open to the power of the collective. It is why it is increasingly her time.

Sri Aurobindo gives us the integration of decentralized and centralized with the statement "Unity in Diversity." It values the decentralized and centralized movements simultaneously.

As for the criticism of the solutions I have advocated, they are being discussed increasingly in many global forums such as the World Academy. (Interestingly these are taking place at the decentralized level. There is also a new movement that is advocating elimination most nuclear weapons. It is likewise discussed locally and implemented globally.)

What enables this to occur is the giving up of the ego, which only wants what it wants. It asserts in its own directions, whether an individual, collective, or nation. That time is coming to an end; even as each person is moving towards ultimate freedom and fulfillment; but of his higher order, not to be an animal, but a full, free, aware, conscious, collaborative, respectful human being.

The universe works simultaneously in the descent and the ascent. Spirit enabled the infinities of forms, including man. Man as true individual reaches to fulfill himself while creating greater bonds with others, including those of the collective. Look below the surface, you will see it everywhere.

 

Society's Values

Power of Values
The deepest poise for an individual, business, or society are its values. When values are implemented or are newly developed, then outer circumstances can change ten times faster (and better) than merely trying to change things on the surface.

Values Reflect Highest Aspect of Mind
Personal values for an individual, business values for the company, and social values of the society are a reflection of the highest principal of mind and thought, and may even be part of the spiritual domain. Values release tremendous potential for success, accomplishment, and happiness.

The Fabric of Society and Values
 The fabric of society consists of intricate interrelationships and interactions between different activities, systems, organizations, institutions, ideas, beliefs and values. (MSS)

Goals in Society Can Only Be Achieved through Values
 Beyond a certain level in the society, no goal can be reached without positive values. (MSS)

Social Organization and Values
 The ultimate determinants of the power of social organization are the values of society. (NSS)

True Value of an Event
 The greatness and nobleness of an event do not depend on material success, but on the feelings which inspire it and the goal which men have pursued. (The Mother)

Values and Individual, Social Accomplishment
Values represent the highest and most powerful individual capacity for accomplishment. As skills direct the use of physical energy, values direct the use of the psychological energy of the personality. Therefore the highest levels of individual and social accomplishment demand very high values.

Organization and Values
Values are the deep-seated beliefs that people, institutions, and societies share. The richer the values aspired to in any form of organization, the greater the energy and capacity of that organization. For example, an organization which adheres to a value, such as systemization or standardization establishes the possibility for a richer, more complex organization than one that doesn't.

Examples of values that an organization can adhere to include physical values such as speed, timeliness, efficiency and productivity; organizational values such as standardization, systemization, coordination, integration and communication; and psychological values such as equality of access, public service and empowerment of the individual.

Having values is one thing, carrying them out is another. The richer the implementation of values is in an organization, the more it is energized, the richer is its complexity, the more it can be a spur to development in society. In addition, the more the value is pushed down into in every act, system, activity of the organization, the organization develops a titanic power for accomplishment. One could say that values are the ultimate determinant of the quality of the complexity of an organization.

Power of Values in an Organization
 Ultimately organizations derive their power from the values they embody and express. Although some people decry the absence of values on the Internet, by which they mean the lack of control over the suitability of content, the Internet actually embodies high and strong values from which it derives an almost irresistible strength. These include physical values such as speed, timeliness, efficiency and productivity; organizational values such as standardization, systemization, coordination, integration and communication; and psychological values such as equality of access, public service and empowerment of the individual.

Values & Development
-Values are a powerful instrument to spur development. They are goals or standards that set the direction and mobilize the collective cultural energies of the society for great accomplishment. They prompt us to strive for the maximum that is conceivable, rather than the minimum that is achievable. Values form the basis for the tremendous developmental achievements of the past two hundred years, such as the Japanese commitment to teamwork and consensus, the American devotion to enterprise and innovation, the German dedication to quality, and the Dutch commitment to partnership with other people, rather than exploitation. Development is retarded by the slow pace at which new values are acquired, which normally requires a change of generation. But values can also be consciously transmitted through education in order to abridge the time needed for transition. The efforts over the last ten years to implement the value of environmental security illustrate the range of knowledge, information, attitudes, institutions, systems, and skills needed to achieve any high value in life. The recommendations presented in this report are intended to form a basis for identifying and providing the values, attitudes, organizations and skills needed to achieve peace and prosperity at the dawn of the third millennium.

-Over the last two centuries in countries around the world development has strengthened expansive values that encourage greater freedom, tolerance, individual initiative, self-confidence and self-respect, dynamism, risk-taking, efficiency, punctuality, organization, communication and cooperation, open-mindedness and respect for new ideas, innovation and creativity. At the same time development has weakened values that support respect for tradition and hierarchy, seniority and authority, self-effacement and humility, patience and perseverance, generosity and self-sacrifice. The nineteenth century tolerated values based on the exploitation by people over people through slavery, colonialism and war, and the domination of nature by man. The guiding values for the coming century are freedom and respect for the individual, social equity, tolerance of human diversity and harmony with the environment.

-In order fully to harness cultural potentials for development, we need to understand better the natural process of value formation in society, to discover the circumstances and conditions under which new values are accepted, and the factors that retard or facilitate this process. In other words, we need to evolve a theory of value formation which will ultimately enable us to consciously identify and instill values that are most conducive and supportive of a peaceful, prosperous life for all humanity.  (Extracted from Uncommon Opportunities of the ICPF; Zed Books)

Values and the Culture of the Collective
Hospitality to strangers is seen as an index of culture of a community. Friendliness of a population is always valued by tourists from other countries. Landing in a foreign land, one is struck by the orderliness that catches the eye and the cleanliness that pleases.
 
Cleanliness is physical, hospitality is vital, trustworthiness - honesty - is mental. Kindliness to children, respect to the elderly, tenderness to women are hallmarks of high civilisation. If these are the only marks of a nation's progress, one can easily complete the whole scale on either side and it will make evaluation of a community possible.
 
Again, "In all my community there is not a single man who can even consider doing this generous act, even in his dream." That is the upper limit. To fix these extremes is not difficult, but the undulating variations that are odd mixtures in between need not merely a study but a scale of values governed by a theory of values.
 
How they mix and exist at a given moment is seen by the poet or a writer of insight who loves to portray them as they are. It is not for him to construct a scale of values. It is left to a professor of a university. Though it is complex, it is not utterly impossible. (MSS, extracts)

The 100-fold Power of Values
A thousand years ago man was physical. His life was elementary. He survived. Today he has multiplied his comforts, enjoyment, reach, mastery a hundred or even a thousand-fold. The progress in one millennium has been phenomenal. This occurred because man moved from being physical to being mental. Though he has not yet acquired a fully formed mental life, a rational life, certainly he has moved away from the physical to the vital life. Both body and vitality accept the guidance of the mind, at least in material matters. Thus, we can say that man today is mental.

If this phenomenal expansion was the result of moving from the physical to the mental, moving from mind to the Spirit can bring another phenomenal expansion of similar magnitude. Today's life will further expand in its richness, inner peace, outer security, harmony and, especially, in Prosperity a thousand-fold.

Though Spirit in its original splendour is a high goal, its values of honesty, loyalty, truthfulness, cleanliness, and silence are what we can now know and follow. By adhering to these values seriously, one can bring the power of Spirit to bear upon life. Values, which are really spiritual skills, can raise the results of work a hundred-fold or more.

We consider money as a thing of use. Spiritually, money is a force of the Divine. An unceasing in-flow of money will begin when the money we use is fully supported by all the Spiritual values. But the effort must be exhaustive and strive for perfection.

A long list of spiritual values can be applied in a company. Paying greater attention to the needs of all others in the company than to one's own needs is a spiritual value that can turn a losing company into a profit making one the next month. Results of Spiritual Power when released into action by the truth of inner sincerity are INSTANTANEOUS. (MSS)

Higher Values that Have Not Come Yet into Society
Truth has never been valued in any society like any of the above.  Values, devotion, loyalty, and purity have not yet come into their own in any period in any country. (MSS)

Society Energized by Application of Mind through Values
The development and application of mind energize society by technological and organizational innovation, spread of education, acceptance of new ideas and higher values.

Mental Age and Values
Freedom, democracy are unstoppable forces that have emerged in the last century or two. These are products of the rationality of the mental age; an acknowledgement of the needs for these essential values in life. Now that same freedom is extending further as we each as individuals become aware of our ability to fulfill our individual dreams, our own self-fulfillment and human potential. 

The Mental Path of Rationality to See Values
To see values clearly humanity must become more mental, which is the plea for rationality and away from superstition and surface perception; i.e. Ignorance.

Abridging the Gaps in Society through Values
The differential between the energy that is blossoming as a new expansion in society and the organization of that society to sustain that expansion shows itself as the acute pains, problems, and sorrows we see all around us. What begins to fill this gap, to overcome the differential are the discovery and implementation of the requisite missing values.

Values and the Spirit
 Values are increasingly spreading around the world. E.g., the book 'In Search of Excellence' from 25 years ago called for the empowerment of the employee in business. New values like respect for the individual and tolerance were advocated and embraced in many organizations. These social reflect our own personal values, which are similar. E.g., I value the community, the input of others, etc.

Values are higher forms of mental consciousness on the way toward supramental consciousness, and opening to Spirit.

In 'The Life Divine,' Sri Aurobindo describes what he calls ''comic determinants," which are forces, powers, and truths intended by the Divine to spread throughout the universe in creation. For us it takes form as the spiritual aspects of Beingness, Oneness, Knowledge, Power, Love, Beauty, Creativity, Bliss, and several others. When we embrace values, we are actually taking to one or more of these spiritual aspects. E.g. if I am a manager who is seeks to gain he inputs of others, this value reflects Oneness (between the individuals), and somewhat Knowledge and Love. In that way, every value can be seen in terms of these spiritual aspects. (Some time ago, I did a study connecting human values and these spiritual qualities in terms of percentages.)

Each time we embrace a human value, we take a subtle step toward one or more aspects of the spirit.

Human Values to Spiritual Values to Spiritual Essence (MSS Comments are in red)

  • Though in the West we have organized  the physical to degrees bordering on infinite, it has come predominantly as a result of limited mind  very right  seeing the physical; only peripherally touching on the vital, i.e. the vital needs of people and man, or the mental ideals and values further up, that take us to the deeper truths culminating in spirit.

  • We can move up to truly fulfill the vital needs through an ascent to the mental sentiments, values, and ideals. yes

  • However, there may not be a mass movement in this direction until we shed our physicality. exactly

  • Is there a positive way, without tragedy, to embrace such values of mind that will help us develop a well-rounded society beyond the physical infinity being released now? There is. It only needs a pioneer.

  • We see such values being utilized in business. Many values are used. It is becoming a conscious phenomenon there. yes It can spread from there to the wider society, as people learn its lessons  and apply it to other fields and aspects of life. Education can become an essential bridge in this process. The scope here is greater. It can be seen there too in the family, at least in potential.

  • When we accede to these values, we are taking small but essential steps to spirit. yes In this way even now we are secretly moving towards spirit. We can move closer still to spirit, without directly invoking pure spiritual essence, by applying spiritual values such as self-giving, silence, silent will, taking the other person's point of view, harmony, gratitude, and others. It will work.

  • Maybe these spiritual values need to be discovered and fully saturated before true spiritual essence can be discovered and released en masse in the world. The book on Life Response can be a beginning which can culminate in such a book explaining personal experience.

  • A positive way out of our physicality, it is worth finding. and far beyond to our full potential may occur in the following sequence: subscribing to and saturation of human values; awareness and saturation of higher spiritual values; and an opening to the pure Spiritual Essence locally and then en masse. This is a right sequence

Power of Values in Action
Values multiply the power of action and its results. Values express in physical acts, in attitudes and in thoughts. Each has its own power.

We all know that a skilled act generates greater results than an unskilled one. The skilled worker --carpenter, painter, accountant, salesman, lawyer, physician -- produces a more useful, beneficial or beautiful result in a shorter period of time with less waste. What is not often recognized is that skilled work expressing values produces far greater results.

The master chef may find his finest dish rejected when he fails to serve it on a clean platter. The skilled driver who lacks the value of punctuality may cause his employer to miss a crucial meeting or a great opportunity. The clever accountant who lacks the value of orderliness can misplace an important document or even a customer's payment, as an accountant in a public sector transport company once misplaced a draft for a crore of rupees. The brilliant arguments of a skilled advocate may fail to persuade when the judge that knows he lacks the value of truthfulness. The dynamic, visionary businessman who lacks the value of taking the other person's point of view may fail to win the favour of a big customer or the support of his own people at a crucial moment.

Values exist in an ascending series of planes, each higher plane being more powerful than the one before it. Physical values express in how carefully and reliably we handle material things. Vital values express in how pleasantly, harmoniously, generously we relate with other people. Mental values express in honesty, truthfulness, trustworthiness and idealism. Spiritual values express our faith, sincerity, patience, perseverance, goodwill and self-giving. Every act is a universe which can express many values. The more it expresses, the greater its power and effectiveness. (MSS)

Values are Being Embraced at All Levels of Society
Fortunately, in the last 100 years we have seen a gradual movement away from an empirical-oriented commerce to a more values-oriented approach. What was subjective then -- i.e. values -- has become the objective and concrete now. What was beyond mind's conception then has now been accepted as a rational and effective method for uplifting all aspects of life. For example, leaders of corporations now engage in strategic planning in which the values of the company -- such as integrity, customer delights, maximum utilization of resources, etc. -- are integrated into its mission statement. No longer are values for the intellectuals or college professors or elites. Values are now lauded as being of great utility throughout society, whether in business, government, education -- even amongst youth. In fact, a good one-half of the readers of our articles on personal, business, and society's values at Growth Online are college students and teenagers! What was once subjective and "not supported by an intellectual foundation" has now percolated up through society, and has begun to be accepted as part of the new objective reality.

Internet and Values
One of the great powers of social development is the power of values, i.e. what the society really believes in. In the emerging mental stage of evolution the values of society and of the individual come into greater play, and reinforce one another.

Organizations, whether business, economic, or social ultimately derive their power from the values they embody and express. Although some people decry the absence of values on the Internet, by which they mean the lack of control over the suitability of content, the Internet actually embodies high and strong values from which it derives an almost irresistible strength. These include physical values such as speed, timeliness, efficiency and productivity; organizational values such as standardization, systemization, coordination, integration and communication; and psychological values such as equality of access, public service and empowerment of the individual.

The Internet is far more than a system for accessing information that overcomes the limitations of time and space. It is a reflection of the social evolution of our society in the current mental age -- by its empowerment of individuals, through new and vibrant organizational complexity, and its ability to unleash fresh energies by adopting personal and societal values.

Education & Values
Education has a vast scope for enabling values to spread throughout society.

Values in Government
The values of governments are the values of any organization or institution. Several values (or value-oriented capacities) in government that jump out are: efficiency, honesty, responsiveness, leadership (i.e. believing in leading), collaborative-capacity, problem-solving, authority, compassion, strength, fairness, respect for the individual, valuing education, progress, etc., getting things done, following the will of the people, compromise, valuing the progress of the individual, even the growth of the individual, protection, security, support, open to the possibilities, valuing planning, concern for the future of the people, valuing law and authority, tolerance, diversity, unity (within gov't, and in nation), the real truth of things (not just the surface), teamwork, camaraderie, opportunity, embracing all sides of the truth (not just one limited side), inspiring others, opening up opportunities for the people, etc.

Money Power and Values
The remarkable creativity and productivity of money is itself based on a bedrock of other social values without which it could not produce anything of worth. The value of money depends directly on all the values that support its functioning as an organization. These include physical values such as accuracy, orderliness, punctuality, regularity and efficiency; organizational values such as discipline, standardization, systematic functioning, communication, coordination and integration; and psychological values such as trust, integrity, harmony and creativity.

Values and Prosperity
How can someone working in an office or factory become vastly prosperous? No one will deny now that education is the foundation of today's prosperity. Money that issues out of physical labour is better earned when education, a mental tool, is added to it. I advocate the next higher TOOL. It is seated in the Spirit as skills. Values are spiritual skills.

Whatever your vocation, when you add values to it, you will see Prosperity in abundance is the result. Honesty, integrity, truthfulness, fairness, and justice are higher values. Punctuality, politeness, pleasantness, record keeping, orderliness, soft speech, cleanliness, accuracy, precision, workmanship, and thoroughness are physical values. Perfection is the wider term that covers both. Be where you are. Do what you are doing. Add values to your work. Go on adding them in quantity and quality. You will reach the heaven of Prosperity. (MSS)

Power of Values to Earn Money
Earning money is an act, like any other act of winning the elections, passing an exam, etc. The components of an act are energy that comes from interest, goal that gives the direction, organisation from which power issues, and skills that convert that power into results.

Each component goes to decide the quantum of money earned, but the earning itself depends on the harmonious functioning of all these components. None of these components can be missed or supplied in half-measure. When all the components are adequately present and harmoniously functioning, the result, the amount of money earned, is decided by the values of each component. This is so because values are spiritual.

One who is earning Rs.10,000 or 1,00,000 a month can raise that income five fold, if he introduces values at every stage and gently raises them to their maximum. By this approach a company that is marginally losing will at once become marginally profitable. The profits can be raised further by raising the values or organising better or employing any other method the company needs.

There is no work where values do not arise. Attention, organisation, comprehension, integrity, truthfulness, etc. are just a few of the values we know. The list can be endless.

A family presided over by a person whose priority is his own wants practices selfish values. If he decides to meet the needs of all others before meeting his own needs, he practises selfless values. Or, he may decide to practise Self-giving, which means going all out to meet everyone's needs which lie within the ambit of his duty or not. Soon he will witness a burst of income.

Owners of companies taking such an approach will discover the ORDERS for which they have been searching all over, like a needle in a haystack, will start coming on their own.

Values are spiritual. They can earn a vast quantity of good money. (MSS, slightly modified)

Wealth Comes from Within; Based on Human Value
 All wealth comes from inner status, but we perceive it as the status accorded by wealth from outer work. The wealth of someone is based on and is proportionate to his own perception of human value. (MSS)

How Money Trust Creates Greater Wealth in Society
How is greater wealth in society produced?

Money is goods. So also, money is TRUST. Today values of life are deteriorating on one side. On the other side, banks recover over 90%, perhaps 93% of consumer loans.

Money was created as a medium of exchange. It has always represented Man's Trust in currency and the government. That trust is, on the balance, more today. Hence there is more money in circulation. This answer is vague.

Individually, one can see that NOW he who is optimistic is better off. He who avails of confidence-raising schemes is better off, as he rises with the rising confidence of the nation. All those who have risen meteorically are people whose work is trusted. One way of becoming prosperous is to raise that level of trust in our lives. (MSS, slightly modified)

Truth, Honesty, Integrity Accelerates Development
More than their genius or insights, it is TRUTH, fact, honesty, and integrity have fostered the development of science in the West. These elements are essential keys to many facets of human development, including the social and economic sphere. In those nations where these elements are lacking, their implementation will be a fast-track to vast and rapid economic and social development.

European and English Character, their Success, and Values
 The Europeans, especially Englishmen, are men of character, integrity, self-respect, individuality, and independence. They practice the work ethic of Protestantism and work tirelessly. Modern science, the several empires, post-war development, and conquest of disease are the direct result of these VALUES, all of which are spiritual in origin and content. (MSS)

The Westerner & Values
The Westerner has material success in matter because he has applied true spiritual values to that endeavor such as honesty, orderliness, systemization, etc. Yet he knows practically nothing of spirit. (MSS)

Upgrading Values of Westerner
The values of the Westerner are work values. They should be upgraded into life values, mental values, spiritual values and finally values of the evolving soul, the Psychic Being. (MSS)

Ways to Evaluate Values
Values can be evaluated in terms of energy, force, power, skills, results, enjoyment, accomplishment, progress, Time, Space, matter, life, mind, spirit, the twelve aspects of the Spirit and every known aspect of life. (MSS)

Values as Higher Consciousness
Values are higher consciousness that enables a movement to the next higher plane.

Values as Spiritual Skills
-Values, which are really spiritual skills, can raise the results of work a hundred-fold or more. (MSS)

-"The Universe comes to us as values" --Sri Aurobindo

-Sri Aurobindo says that the universe comes to us as values. Whatever values we seek is our universe. In this way, our conception of the universe can be widened. Our experience of our universe too can constantly increase. (MSS, slightly modified)

-All values ultimately are manifestations of the Divine and derive from a common source. (MSS)

Article on How Values are Spiritual Skills
http://www.motherservice.org/Essays/TheSecretofValues.html

Powers of Spirit Known in Mind through Values
The body is unconscious. It has no sense of values. The vital has emotions, feelings, attitudes, and skills of living. If the vital endorses a value one day, it can oppose it the next because it is unstable. The middle mind is the seat of values and sentiments. However, even the mind does not have to have any values it believes in. In spirit values truly take shape. In spirit one can come to know spiritual powers that can be adopted as values of Oneness, Truth, Knowledge, Power, Delight, Love, Beauty, Infinity, etc. Values in mind are spiritual skills that incorporate spirit's powers through mind's thought felt through the vital's emotions.

Values and Powers of Spirit
We can devise a list of spiritual powers, including Harmony, Unity, Oneness, Perfection, Gratitude, Self-Givingness, (spiritual) Peace, Equality, (divine) Beauty, (divine) Love, Truth, Integral Knowledge, and others. We know of practical values in life like honesty, self-reliance, openness, tolerance, organization, maximum utilization, attention, continuous improvement, simplicity, respect for the individual, etc. We can associate each human value to their appropriate spiritual power.

Spirituality Translated as Values
Spirituality can be translated as values of the work place: exhausting our potential, paying the greatest attention, using the available technologies to exhaustion, avoiding and eliminating unavoidable waste by appropriate systems, saving every minute of Time that could be saved, etc. (MSS)

Spiritual Values
 (Click here to see entries)

MSS Articles on Values
 The Secret of Values

Individuality of Values and Light in the Body
 

 

Values-Miscellaneous

Great Cultural Values that Lose Life Reared in Artificial Context
Melanie in Gone with the Wind is pure goodness. It will thrive in an atmosphere of pure goodness. The value of the Southerners was real in earlier times, not then. It was against the spirit of Times. It upheld slavery. Great cultural values reared in an artificial context lose life. (MSS)

Redefining the Lost Ideal, Value After it Fades
-When organisations fail, they move away from their original Ideals.

-National and international movements generally start with an idea. It becomes the Ideal. As days pass, the practical dominates and the ideal goes to the background.

To constantly renew the intellectual content of a movement is to renew its vigour. Had [the] Congress [part of India] defined what it meant by Prosperity [which it earlier espoused] and how it was going to achieve it, she would not have deteriorated within thirty or forty years after Independence.

Any movement, national or international, will do well to fill its life with the needed intellectual content when it finds itself on a downward turn. That organisation will become dynamic if that content goes with a plan of action. Anyone who thinks of filling his life with both will see the SPIRIT moving towards him without his invoking it. (MSS, extracted)

Perfection in Values
Perfect values are recognized only when they are perfect, not while they are partial. What makes a value perfect is its highest reach is unblemished. An absence of compromise all along makes for perfection. Unless values are perfect they come to nothing (with a few exceptions).

Perceiving the Necessary Higher Value that Solves Problems
Man normally reacts to the problems and comes up with the solutions, partially neglecting a CLEAR understanding of the current value, which is not enough, and the necessary higher value that would enable the expanding energy to flow harmoniously. (Man does not use mind to know this clarity. He is vital, and thus solves problems as they occur, missing the clarity of the deeper value that needs to shine for all to see.)

Untitled
 [Referring to the time that the novel Pride and Prejudice took place] While France resorted to violent revolution, English society at the time chose the evolutionary path. England had evolved beyond the static stage of feudal privilege. Society was becoming dynamic. It required men of energy and bold initiative, which were not being generated in sufficient numbers by the landed aristocracy. The evolution involved the necessary destruction of old structures and values, particularly the institutions based on physical values of heredity and land, which gradually gave way to vital values of money, merit and individual initiative.

Values Give Meaning
 In one sense personal values have emerged because people are not satisfied with the way life is at a point in time. The hippies felt that the material view, the "keeping up with the Jones's" view of life blocked out so much more that life had to offer. On the other side of the spectrum religious people also see the limitations of a just-material life existence. In both instances there is a movement from the material view to the deeper view expressed as values; such as freedom, creativity, and multi-culturalism of the hippies, and community feeling, faith, and family values for the religious. Of course, each side creates its own limitations as the necessary quantity of values are not there, or are not applied in right balance. Nevertheless, people perceive that values give meaning to things in an often empty material world.

As people discover higher psychological, social, and spiritual values, one can experience ever-greater meaning, purpose, capacity, power, and delight in living.

Values, Ascent, and Descent
High values rooted in mind's rationality in the ascent enables right actions in the planes in the descent. [E.g. you value safety, which enables you to make decisions to improve the physical condition of those around you.]

On Values
Talents raise one. Values uphold it. Slighted values slight the person. I am tempted to say there is nothing so valuable as values. Values lend man his inner lasting values as a member of the society. (MSS)

List of Society's Values

Values for Individual Achievement

Values in Business

Values as Spiritual Skills

The Value's Center

 

CHANGE IN POLITICO-SOCIAL SYSTEMS
(top)

Thoughts on Socialism and Capitalism

Thoughts on Democracy

 

UNITY AND ONENESS
 (top)

 Harmony as Solver of All Individual, Social Problems
All problems of life can be solved through greater harmony. Likewise if there were human unity on earth, then any problem of social development can be overcome.

The Power of Union
The power of division is unsteady and impermanent. Union works for a steady power and a harmonious future. (The Mother)
 

New Definition of Survival of Fittest
Survival of the fittest is not through territoriality and conflict, but through harmony of purpose, oneness, and love of others. In that way the race survives and evolves further. If women instinctively know this, why not men?

Coordinated Energy
When two or more conflicting groups move closer together to create a greater harmony, they are actually tapping the highest aspects of organization, which enables a vast coordinated power of energy to be released that can result in vast accomplishment.

Inner Oneness
Surface relations are an expression of inner oneness. The connection between external events exists because division is only on the surface of life, consciousness and existence. Beneath the surface, there is oneness of consciousness and being. We see separate and apparently individual actions and people on the surface, but underneath there are movements of a common force and one consciousness expressing through multiple forces and forms. That which moves from one person to another or one event to another is a force or vibration of a single underlying being and intention, social or spiritual, just as the different words and actions of an individual emanate from the same being.

Raising our Consciousness Resolves the Contradictions
The great contradictions we see in life between spirit and matter we resolve by raising our consciousness to the point where we see their opposites in their inherent unity and oneness.

Unity in Diversity
All things are one in their being and origin, one in their general law of existence, one in their interdependence and universal pattern of their relations; but each realises this unity of purpose and being on its own lines and has its own law of variation by which it enriches the universal existence. (Sri Aurobindo)

Leader Creates Higher Harmonies
A great politician is not just someone who takes an initiative or extracts the best of both sides on an issue, but is able to create a resolution at a higher level that both opposing sides can understand and benefit from. This is true for any leader, manager, person of influence, etc. It is the essence of what we mean by harmony.

Gorbachav Solution as Higher Harmony
The Gorbachev solution that ended the Cold War was not a compromise of conservative and liberal political values of the West, but an action of a higher harmony that both views could relate to; strength towards the Soviets that would appeal to conservatives, and peaceful solution and outcome that the liberals favored, though in reality it was an integrated higher harmony that included yet transcended both. In this way it was a creative solution from the causal realm of the Force moving in the world.

See Thoughts on Society's Movement Toward World Unity

See Thoughts on an Individual's Experience of Harmony, Oneness and Unity
 

MISCELLANEOUS
(top)
 

MSS Articles on Society  [to be parsed out]

 Youth and the Wisdom of the World
The Great Institutions of the Society
Individuality of Values and Light in the Body
The Actual Reason and the Assumed Reason  
 The Power of a New Ideal
 Self-Generation of Prosperity by the Society
 Corruption
 The Creative Collective in the Emerging Individual
 Planes of Existence and Strategies 

Continuum from Acts to the Collective
Act - Activity - System - organisation - institution - culture - collective sensitivity - Individual sensitivity - (Physical, vital, mental) is a continuous chain.  

Materialism; US as Leader
 Materialism is the solid foundation from which spirituality can arise. US can lead the world into spirituality from its material base. Of course, it hasn't the spiritual knowledge whatsoever. That it will need to gather from the East, in particular India.

Change in Family
We are moving from the large, multi-generational extended family to the nuclear family, to the individual "family", to the spiritual-based collective family.

For the collective spiritual life to emerge, there must first be an emergence of the spiritual consciousness in those individuals who will eventually make up the collective.

What It Takes for a Team to Win
There were two teams; one was intense; the other was balanced. They were of equal talent. The one that was both intense and balanced in the final game won the series. The one that will always win is one that is intense, balanced and calm, and utilizes the Force.

Two Sides of Gandhi, Churchill; Many-Sided Insight
The genius of Gandhi is that he united the country. His tragedy is that he also helped divide it. The greatness of Churchill is that he stood strong against the Germans. His tragedy is that he supported the evil of the colonial masters. (E.g. he was happy when Gandhi was incarcerated!)

Such an analysis indicates that true insight is to objectively see the whole picture of the individual, or the nation, or the situation without prejudice. It is a very hard thing to do because we are filled with our own baggage; our own ignorance, falsehood, and prejudice.

Falsehood of Journalists
Journalists in their pursuit of objective facts are in fact non-objective, prejudiced in a particular, subjective direction, and are mercenary to boot in their work. It results in the psychological counterpart to the falsehood of the physical terrorist. 

ARTICLE: What Is Social Development?

ARTICLE: The Four (Historical) Stages of Social Evolution

ARTICLE: The Process of Social Development

The process by which social entities grow and develop. If followed, it will dramatically accelerate social development.

ARTICLE: Summary of Social Development Ideas

ARTICLE: Social Development Theory

A profound theory of social development is presented here.

ARTICLE: The Rise off the Creative Class (Summary of book)

There is a dynamic creative class emerging in the US that can lead it to greatness.

ARTICLE: Human Choice: The Ultimate Determinant

Why what the individual chooses is ultimately determining in social progress, and how society can support that possibility.

ARTICLE: The Role of Money in Social Development

ARTICLE: Social Development in Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice

How society changes and evolves can be observed in the novel. (Considerable research by Growth Online affiliates went into this study.)

Parallels of Subtlety Between Emerging Individuals and Technologies
Just as there are individuals of mento-spiritual bent, indicating a more subtle quality of human emerging, there are occupations emerging that reflect a parallel subtlety. E.g. we can see this in the forms of higher technology, such as computer software. If we observe the world around us we can see how products and services are moving towards ever-greater subtlety of form reflecting the subtlety of spirit emerging in human life.

Positive in Negative, Negative in Positive in Historic Individuals
 Stalin, Mao, Gandhi, Churchill. To know them fully and integrally, we need to see the good in the evil, and the evil in the good.

On Child Rearing
 We have come a considerably long way -- some 100 years, when society was considerably more violent -- from the point where the rod was used in child rearing. Now we have come up with a science of child rearing to replace such physicality. We can go further still and ask that the parent discover his own deepest consciousness, which will enable profound subtle insight and right action in relationship to the child. A step even further is to develop the subtle sense to know the child's very own true being and will of soul, which will enables the greatest support, love, understanding, knowledge, insight for action right action for the parent, and create the strongest foundation for the rapid and happy progress of the child in life.

Traits of Succeeding Generations
Biological and psychological rules about the succeeding generations are worth considering in our context to know where we have fallen into their trap.

  • Traits become more pronounced in the next generation.

  • They reverse as a subconscious complex.

  • The next generation sticks to the same trait in a sublimated fashion under the impression of having given it up.

  • They follow the earlier generation in another walk of life.

  • The truth is the succeeding generation can change ONLY to the extent the society has changed.

When moving from the social surface to the psychological depth, one can SEE he is exactly in the mould of his own family in one way or another. (MSS)

Victim's Limitation that Attracted a Wrong
We, society are conscious of the wrong, the bad, the evil done by one individual or party to another. Rarely, however, are we aware of how the victim attracted through their own falsehood, error, and ignorance this negativity from the negative doer in the first place.

On Rumour
The great majority of the "informed public" are anxious to readily accept a rumour because it gives a certain relish to their psychological existence. [Rumour spreads by word of mouth and each mouth expands it exponentially. In an institution whose sixty years budget total was Rs 50 crores, highly educated professors were outraged that Rs 500 crores had been swindled.] Therefore, one way of our knowing our own worth is to observe how often we have believed rumours and how readily they were acceptable to us. In one who lives by the Spirit or in the habit of invoking the Spirit, something in him readily rejects the onrush of rumour. Its very atmosphere is unsavoury to him. One can evaluate one's self worth by this yardstick. (MSS)

 

 

To Be Categorized

 

III

Nature of Society,

History

Periods of Transitions When the Bottom Rises to the Top
Transition is a period when talents rise from the very bottom to the very top.

In India, a poor Brahmin boy, one from a cobbler's family, a trade union leader, a small farmer, and the son of a village munsif, rose to the Presidency. A rural youth became the Prime Minister. Before 1947 this was not on the agenda.

The Industrial Revolution made a shepherd the Chief Engineer of the Railways. In India, it was a political revolution. In France, it was a great Revolution that changed the course of history. In England, it was an industrial revolution.

America underwent a social revolution. An errand boy, Thomas Edison, by dint of merit patented one thousand inventions. Lincoln rose from the log cabin to the White House. The personal computer ushered in a technological revolution. Bill Gates became a phenomenon. (MSS)

 III 

Nature of Society, Keys to Social development

Human Development and Choice
 -Human development is about expanding the choices people have to lead lives that they value.
-Fundamental to enlarging these choices is building human capabilities - the range of things that people can do or be in life. The most basic capabilities for human development are to lead long and healthy lives, to be knowledgeable, to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living and to be able to participate in the life of the community. (ICSD)

 III

I

Nature of Society, Keys to Social development, Mind

Human Evolution

Human Development and Mind
The main factor which determines the speed and quality of human development is the human mind, and the conscious level of that mind. (ICSD, slightly modified)

 

 

I

III

Social

Spirituality

Grace of a Single Good Man in Community
The presence of a single good man is grace for the community. (MSS)

I

Social

Helping Others Up to a Point in the Yogic Life
Good souls discovering a new capacity in themselves will be eager to help others. It is a good attitude socially, but not in yoga [spiritual life]. In life, to be helpful to another is to play the Good Samaritan, not so when you move into weightier realms. We teach our children when they are in school. When they move to the college and begin to specialise, they are moving into realms unknown to us. We cannot then help them. Our insistence on helping them at that stage or their willingness to receive our help will lead to their failing in their courses. In our personal life too, there are such limits. Up to a point, help is a blessing of generosity. Beyond that, it gradually turns into a curse.

Devotees of the Divine Mother who quickly find out that all their prayers are answered start a long chain of prayers for parents, brothers, sisters, friends, etc. It is very good. Most of them will be a success. It is good not to take such efforts to their logical conclusion, but to see one's limits of responsibility or capacity. (MSS)

 

III

Nature of Society, Freedom

Capacity to Defend One's Self
 -Capacity to defend oneself, I said, is a sacred right for the Individual; but the capacity NOT to defend oneself is a sacred value of the Soul.
-He who does not defend himself defends the culture of his community while he who defends himself defends only himself. (MSS)

III

Nature of Society

What is Unfortunately Not Given Due Status
Academic eminence, cultural pre-eminence, long-standing high traditional values of the family, piety and devotion do not carry the status that money or political power does. (MSS)

 

 

 

III

Nature of Society

Great Movements Originate in Mind of Sages
All great movements of the world have emanated from the Minds of Sages. Mostly they dispel or dissolve hostile forces; often they set Revolutions afoot. All the discoveries, explorations, and inventions are first suggested to a Saint of that region and later sprout through a lesser mind or minds. (MSS)

III

Nature of Society, Anachronisms

Computer & Internet

Errors in Health Systems Corrected by Computers; Unwillingness of Institutions to Change
Interns work long hours, miss their sleep, have to take important decisions in emergencies. As against a normal work week of 40 hours, they go up to 80 hours ordinarily, or occasionally to 130 hours. The wrong diagnosis in ICUs is up to 39%. It is a surprise that in these advanced nations, even in sophisticated hospitals, the capacity to change, change for the better is little. There are some hospitals which abound in errors in prescriptions, often leading to fatality.

The computer was introduced and 86% of such errors were eliminated. This is their own experience. Still, the resistance to avoid these errors, the unwillingness to change old habits, is great. Any new invention corrects to a very large extent, even up to 90% the errors of an old method.

The ills of such hospitals can be minimised or eradicated if computer is introduced to prevent them. They know that pilots double check before they enter their planes, but are unwilling to adopt similar measures. A machine - computer - cannot err, where a man out of laziness or forgetfulness errs. In this sense, the computer is a boon. The scope of introducing the computer is vast. E.g. the 40% wrong diagnosis can be fully avoided if computer crosschecks the diagnosis.

Man can be tense in the ICU, not the machine. Man forgets many related aspects, the computer will not. To avail of a comfort is to be civilised. To do so for purposes of saving lives is to be human. Avoid the errors, usher in Prosperity. (MSS)

III

I

Social Value of Trust

Personal Value of Trust

How Money Trust Creates Greater Wealth in Society
How is greater wealth in society produced?

Money is goods. So also, money is TRUST. Today values of life are deteriorating on one side. On the other side, banks recover over 90%, perhaps 93% of consumer loans.

Money was created as a medium of exchange. It has always represented Man's Trust in currency and the government. That trust is, on the balance, more today. Hence there is more money in circulation. This answer is vague.

Individually, one can see that NOW he who is optimistic is better off. He who avails of confidence-raising schemes is better off, as he rises with the rising confidence of the nation. All those who have risen meteorically are people whose work is trusted. One way of becoming prosperous is to raise that level of trust in our lives. (MSS, slightly modified)

 

 

 

 

III

Achievement, Affect of the Society

Individual Achievement and Achievement of Society
Man can achieve anything on which he sets his Mind, provided it is already an achievement of the society. It is unthinkable for us to conceive of hundreds of geniuses in the future. It will be real when the society fixes its mind on it. (MSS)

 

 

III

Nature of Society, Evolution of Man

Governance,

Economics,

History,

Spirituality

The Invisible Movement of Rights in History, & the Emergence of Spiritual MAN in the 21st Century
There is an invisible movement in the air all over the world which espouses the Rights of the oppressed. Now it is the Blacks who are in favour, next it is the women. The street children get their turn. The poor suddenly come into the favour of the world and the whole world sings the chorus of the Right to Food, Right to water, Right to Peace, etc. All types of Rights have emerged as the target for the awakened world. It is a balm to the hearts of idealists and visionaries the world over as the have-nots, downtrodden, the oppressed and the invalids have now their share of the limelight. The UN is the spearhead for most of these movements. The world is awakened enough in her conscience that the world opinion readily swings to this call. This development is imperceptible but unmistakable. I see behind all these urges that MAN is emerging as someone to be counted hereafter. The Spirit in MAN seeks expression, peeps out from its hiding place. The symptoms are well-defined. He who seeks expression is no longer the social man, but the Spiritual Individual. The 21st century will be his century. (MSS)

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I

Nature of Society, Evolution,

History

Achieving, Spiritual, Self-Giving

Existence to History to Culture of Selflessness -- through Compulsion of Life or Self-Directed Spiritual Values
Time never stops. It is relentless. Its march is called the progress of civilisation. Century after century, decade after decade, progress continues. Thus the mere existence of Man becomes history. His mere existence is now denoted as pre-historic period.

As existence matures into history, history ripens into culture. Man was physical, selfish. Now he is mental and aims at being selfless. Man does not become selfless on his own.

He is compelled by circumstances to be selfless. When other tribes attacked, man organised collective defence, impelled by his own selfish security. The ultimate goal of that movement is self-giving, the Spiritual progress of the collective Man. The March of Time compels Man to be selfless and practise Self-giving.

Such a movement is there in commercial technology, education, democracy and the Pure Spirit. [E.g. in education he is compelled to expand that education to all members of society, including invalids. Beyond the compulsion of life to enable greater culture is our direct conscious spiritual will to achieve based on spiritual values such as self-givingness, oneness, etc.. This is the approach of the future. -editor] (MSS)

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Nature of Society, Idea

Positive Ideas that Now Rule the World
Gender equality, sustainable development, job-led growth, human rights, rights of the invalid, civil rights, Food Security, population control, right to water, conflict resolution, and a host of other ideas now rule the world. (MSS)

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Nature of Society, Idea

Every Movement, Revolution is Preceded by an IDEA
Every movement is preceded by an IDEA; every revolution was given birth by an IDEA circulating in the world. Right to food is one such idea. By advocating this idea, the sponsors of it are unaware they are sowing the seeds of a Revolution, the scale of which the world has not witnessed.

By implication, they are voicing the Right of MAN, the individual. (MSS, extracted)

 

 

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Nature Society, Emerging Stages

History, How It Unfolds

Nature Creates New World Free of Class and Cast
If human progress is stultified by classes and castes, Nature creates a New World free of them. (MSS) [e.g. Immigrants from limiting Europe came to the wide open possibilities of the US.]

 

 

III

Social, Values

Great Cultural Values that Lose Life Reared in Artificial Context
Melanie in Gone with the Wind is pure goodness. It will thrive in an atmosphere of pure goodness. The value of the Southerners was real in earlier times, not then. It was against the spirit of Times. It upheld slavery. Great cultural values reared in an artificial context lose life. (MSS)

 

III

 Nations, India

The Role of Nature and Soul in Progress in the World
Nature does not work for progress in all fronts at all places simultaneously. Nature herself is a partial force. Soul and Nature together make for the whole. Nature is a part. A partial force cannot work for total progress. Hence Nature has decided to develop emotion in Asia and Mind in Europe. India was chosen by Nature to develop the Spirit. (MSS)

 

 

 

 

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Nature of Society

Evolution from Political to Economic to Cultural
Sweep has been there. So far it was political. Now it will be economic. We await the sweep of cultural values in the beginning of the next [21st] century. (MSS)

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Nature of Society

Nations

The Ridiculed of the Past (as in USA) Become the Admired
Until the First World War, America was a contemptuous word. Before the Second World War, the continental people lost their contempt and replaced it with ridicule. No longer does the word American excite any ridicule in any nation of the world including England, though it is nowhere received with respect.

American military prowess is unrivalled. Its political eminence is seen all over the world. Her economic power dominates more than half the world. She is becoming a cultural leader of every nation. Her food items, dress style, and way of life are welcome all over. One may question their desirability or not. But this remains a fact. She has reached this position because once she was a neglected continent, if not oppressed.

The oppressed of yesterday will be the adored of tomorrow, is a rule history has honoured. (MSS,, extracted)

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Nature of Society 

Nations, Africa

The Future of the Blacks, and How the Oppressed of Yesterday will be Adored Tomorrow
Phraseology changes with time. Backward nations have become underdeveloped nations. Later they are upgraded into developing countries or the Third World. So, Blacks have come to stay.

After the war, the newly emancipated nations have shed their colonial versions and acquired names appropriate to their new status. Many towns have found the charm of going back to an earlier name. It is a great good symptom of coming into one's own. It is an indication that these nations do aspire to reach a greatness due to them. History has its lessons for us.

It has its cycles when different nations presided over the destiny of the world. The Blacks in the USA are a significant community. They have excelled in sports and athletics. Otherwise, they seem to be a contented lot.

I have a different view of them. I feel the future belongs to them. My view or claim may appear to be a high sounding NOTHING, devoid of sense. I believe in my view as it is based on a historical understanding or an evolutionary perspective. Until the First World War, America was a contemptuous word. Before the Second World War, the continental people lost their contempt and replaced it with ridicule. No longer does the word American excite any ridicule in any nation of the world including England, though it is nowhere received with respect.

American military prowess is unrivalled. Its political eminence is seen all over the world. Her economic power dominates more than half the world. She is becoming a cultural leader of every nation. Her food items, dress style, and way of life are welcome all over. One may question their desirability or not. But this remains a fact. She has reached this position because once she was a neglected continent, if not oppressed.

The oppressed of yesterday will be the adored of tomorrow, is a rule history has honoured. The sober among the Blacks have a poise, a calm, a goodwill that is admirable. Those who have distinguished themselves in any field exhibit these great qualities without exception. It may be true that so far no Black or Jew or woman has been nominated to contest the Presidency of the USA. They are slow in coming into their own. When they do so, they will be there solidly for a long time, as tiny Britain ruled over the world or tinier Greece had offered intellectual leadership to the entire West for two millennia.

It is happening in India with the support of the government. The society has not yet taken the role of offering support to its erstwhile oppressed. They will all have brittle results that are feeble. When the oppressed, whether they are Blacks of the USA or the downtrodden of India, come into their own by their choice, they will rule with distinction. (MSS; italics added)

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Nature of Society

Spirituality

A Resource, a Multiple Resource, and Resourcefulness
-If one can go to a source several times, it becomes a resource.
-One can do so for the same purpose or different purposes. That source which lends itself to be of use again and again for different purposes is considered a multiple resource.
-Minds that are so, are described as prolific.
-Sand is one such resource when apart from being a raw material for house building and glass making, it lends itself to be used for making chips. Electricity was found useful for hundreds and thousands of purposes. Coal proved to be so earlier. When we look at these phenomena closely, we may feel that it is our MINDS that make raw materials resourceful.
-Mind is far more resourceful than matter or material objects.
-Spirit is the origin of the Mind. Logically, it must be more resourceful than mind. (MSS, extracted, reorganized)

III 

Nature, Organization

Pioneer

The Process of the Collective Creating an Organisation in Society
The process of the collective creating an organisation has a subordinate action where the collective subconscious experience matures in the pioneering individual as conscious knowledge ready for action which when the society at large endorses is accepted as a way of life by the whole society, thus creating the psychological basis for the birth of a social organisation. In the measure this new organisation that is born by the psychological growth and sanction of the entire society draws upon its roots to convert that sanction into laws, rules, procedures, customs, usage, belief, social system and social culture, that organisation takes root in the society. (MSS)

 

 

 

 

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Nature of Society

Dissolution of Society
What now faces dissolution is not one form of organised society, but the entire society itself. (MSS)

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Nature of Society

The World is One Psychological Unit
The world today is not one unit culturally or politically but with respect to these expectations, the world today is one psychological unit. (MSS)

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Nature of Society

Three Success Levels of Society
The essence of essences is called quintessence. Successful societies know the secret of production, production of the primary needs of food, shelter and clothing.

Expansive societies know of the ORGANISATION of these productive processes such as collective co-operation, mutual help, trade, commerce, service, etc. A higher society in the urban pockets has discovered the value of education, especially the value of education that is entertainment. (MSS)

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Nature of Society, Evolution of Society

Civilizing One's Self
Moving from gross physicality to subtle mentality is to civilize oneself. (MSS)

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Nature of Society, Evolution of Society

Health

The Greater Respect Shown to the Invalid is Indicator of Evolution of Society
Moving from gross physicality to subtle mentality is to civilise oneself. The 20th Century has witnessed the latest expressions of such symbols of civilisation. One of them is mankind is awakening to the fact that an invalid is really not an invalid but one who faces a greater challenge from the physical social environment.

All over the world governments have recognised the necessity of supporting their existence. They are given preference in the field of employment. Laws have come to compel public utilities such as airports to design their buildings so that a wheelchair can always be accommodated at entrances. The progressive nature of a nation can be measured by its attitude towards an invalid population. Presently it is done as a concession to the invalids. A better step will be to recognise such accommodation as their natural right because there is a higher truth about them. The oppressed of all nations are slowly emerging into their own.

Though this too is done as a concession, there is a little more awareness now that it is their due. In recent decades, there has been a spate of apologies for sins of omission in the past centuries beginning with the ostracism of the Jews and ending in the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Negroes of the USA, the untouchables of India were socially oppressed. Invalids are oppressed by Nature or biologically handicapped.

Spiritually, one is born with no eyesight or a crippled arm because his soul has chosen that experience. When one part is not functioning, the other parts become more sensitive and efficient. Since the soul has chosen that experience, it is not right for us to despise or neglect such a person. (MSS)

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Nature of Society, Social Development

Human Development is the Only Type that Matters
Development of resources, economic development, technological development are all the achievements of man. Hence human development is the only development that matters hereafter ... (MSS)

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Nature of Society, Social Values 

Spirituality

Humanity's Ideal has Echo in Distant Past; and in the Absolute
The integral nature of society or creation is such that any farfetched ideal humanity has had, had its distant mild echo in the past. Our rule is nothing can emerge which is not in the Absolute. That Absolute seems to be peeping at us from the distant past. (MSS)

 

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Social Development

Present View of Limits of Physical Resource to the Limitless View of Mind
The basis of the present society is 'Limitation of the Physical', i.e. resources are limited -- water, land, air etc. -- whereas the society we are entering into is based on the limitlessness of the mind. From the limits of the physical realities to the limitless possibilities of the mind, is the view. (MSS)

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Social Development

The First Step in Society's Development
The first step [in society's development] is to abolish poverty, disease, ignorance and SORROW. (MSS)

 

 

III

Nature of Society

Anachronisms, Negative

Man Rejects Anything that is New,
(As it Disturbs the Equilibrium of Security as Seen by Partial Mind)
If you are doing research to know how well the world has received new inventions, new ideas, or anything new which is most widely used today, the list you get will be miles long. Some of the comments of the greatest minds will surprise you at the human ingenuity for folly.

One can safely declare that anything NEW has so far been greeted unanimously with disapproval, dissent, resentment, and solid resistance. Humanity arrives at an equilibrium from time to time which is security of existence.

Anything new disturbs that equilibrium. It is seen as an attempt at insecurity. Hence the reaction. No reaction can contain any trace of reason. Man reacts, as he has no reason. This is so because the highest instrument of man is Mind. It can see only one side. Even the Rishis saw only one side of Sachchidananda. (MSS)

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Nature of Society

History

Civilization Marches Ahead through Wave Movement
The wave moves by an undulating motion. The unmoving sheet of water is quiet. The wave rises and falls. The rise and fall causes the movement. There is no movement without that rise and fall.

Civilisation marches ahead through a wave motion of alternating peak and trough. The same Japan that was so insular earlier has now conquered the world market in several products.

America was isolationist in the 19th century. On Friday the reverse is true. She is all over the world. All the races on earth have come to the US.  (MSS, extracts)

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Nature of Society, Urban Living

Rustic Living, and Mindset Equivalent to Urban Living that Can Be Brought to Everyone
The rustic living in the village not only lacks comforts and conveniences of the modern urban life, but lives in the mind set of a rustic to whom superstition is sacred and offers a mental security; he  is ruled by the fear of the new, the unknown. To urbanize a village will take several decades while a rustic moving to the city is able to shift to the new atmosphere sharing its beliefs. This new mental attitude enables him to take to modern urban life in a few years. The leaders of thought can bring about this 'change in atmosphere' in the minds of the entire population by enlightened social action that will bridge the gap between the old and the new. (MSS)

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Nature of Society, Values in Society, Spiritual Values

Human Values to Spiritual Values to Spiritual Essence (MSS Comments are in red)
 Though in the West we have organized  the physical to degrees bordering on infinite, it has come predominantly as a result of limited mind  very right  seeing the physical; only peripherally touching on the vital, i.e. the vital needs of people and man, or the mental ideals and values further up, that take us to the deeper truths culminating in spirit.

We can move up to truly fulfill the vital needs through an ascent to the mental sentiments, values, and ideals. yes

However, there may not be a mass movement in this direction until we shed our physicality. exactly

Is there a positive way, without tragedy, to embrace such values of mind that will help us develop a well-rounded society beyond the physical infinity being released now? There is. It only needs a pioneer.

We see such values being utilized in business. Many values are used. It is becoming a conscious phenomenon there. yes It can spread from there to the wider society, as people learn its lessons  and apply it to other fields and aspects of life. Education can become an essential bridge in this process. The scope here is greater. It can be seen there too in the family, at least in potential.

When we accede to these values, we are taking small but essential steps to spirit. yes In this way even now we are secretly moving towards spirit. We can move closer still to spirit, without directly invoking pure spiritual essence, by applying spiritual values such as self-giving, silence, silent will, taking the other person's point of view, harmony, gratitude, and others. It will work.

Maybe these spiritual values need to be discovered and fully saturated before true spiritual essence can be discovered and released en masse in the world. The book on Life Response can be a beginning which can culminate in such a book explaining personal experience.

A positive way out of our physicality, it is worth finding. and far beyond to our full potential may occur in the following sequence: subscribing to and saturation of human values; awareness and saturation of higher spiritual values; and an opening to the pure Spiritual Essence locally and then en masse. This is a right sequence

 

 

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Nature of Society, Values

Scale of Values that Will Indicate the Level of Culture of that Collective
Hospitality to strangers is seen as an index of culture of a community. Friendliness of a population is always valued by tourists from other countries. Landing in a foreign land, one is struck by the orderliness that catches the eye and the cleanliness that pleases.

Cleanliness is physical, hospitality is vital, trustworthiness - honesty - is mental. Kindliness to children, respect to the elderly, tenderness to women are hallmarks of high civilisation. If these are the only marks of a nation's progress, one can easily complete the whole scale on either side and it will make evaluation of a community possible.

Again, "In all my community there is not a single man who can even consider doing this generous act, even in his dream." That is the upper limit. To fix these extremes is not difficult, but the undulating variations that are odd mixtures in between need not merely a study but a scale of values governed by a theory of values.

How they mix and exist at a given moment is seen by the poet or a writer of insight who loves to portray them as they are. It is not for him to construct a scale of values. It is left to a professor of a university. Though it is complex, it is not utterly impossible. (MSS, extracts)

 

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I

Nature of Society, Keys to Social development, Mind

Human Evolution

Human Development and Mind
The main factor which determines the speed and quality of human development is the human mind, and the conscious level of that mind. (ICSD, slightly modified)


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