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Attitudes for Effective Organisation of Knowledge

 

July 8, 2003

 

  • In India and the West, we see two phenomena of extensive spiritual potentials and exhaustive raw materials of information.
  • Academic organisation as known in the West is alien to the Indian genius.
  • In India, the collective pursuit of a subject was unknown till Western type universities were founded.
  • These universities have not struck roots in the Indian mental soil with the result real good work is scanty.
  • The West records its thought and shares it with other scholars with the result a community of thought emerges. All facts are in writing and each fact is the result of laborious study.
  • In India, pursuit of knowledge is given to the Individual. He has to play the role of a university of a wider community of scholars.
  • None of his findings are recorded, but remembered.
  • Such a process eliminates the average intellect entering the field.
  • The Indian scholar's observation is mainly inside his own personality in the sense whatever external observation is there he tries to transfer it inside and translates it in terms of the inner. The absence of written records makes his memory superhuman. Incidentally, this is not the memory of facts observed, but memory of understanding.
  • Understanding is based on a logic and each point well understood by the very strength of its understanding moves it to the next point, NOT on the strength of memory. This may be called the Memory of Understanding.
  • Memory of understanding is unfailing as its facts are all integrated.
  • Indian scholars of yore, known as Pandits did not carry book or notes or prepared speeches. It was all there in the head as the names of family members.
  • Which is of value -- the Indian method or Western style -- is not so much relevant here as what will be most meaningful in the future.
  • The Memory of Understanding is situated in the subtle mind where various facts relate themselves automatically and get integrated when the intelligence exercises itself on them.
  • In the Indian tradition, the disciple who learns at the feet of the Guru, the teacher, is less than a slave of the Guru's ego. It is physical obedience socially extracted.
  • With the rational or fair evolution of the guru-sishya relationship, the physical obedience grows into vital admiration. Further, the admiration of the guru ripens into adoration of his personality based on the mental understanding of the knowledge of the guru. Rising to the spiritual plane, it becomes the emotion of humility before the vast territory of knowledge possessed by the person of the guru.
  • Obedience of the physical, admiration of the vital, understanding of the mental, humility of the spiritual is the natural gradation of growth.
  • The Spiritual humility of the Soul matures into a comprehension of compassion of the Psychic when the mental psychic emerges.
  • Obedience, admiration, understanding, humility and compassion are the strategies through which the student avails of the ORGANISATION of knowledge outside.
  • We may say instead of strategies, it is his own organisation with which he approaches knowledge.
  • Indian soil has this enormous spiritual potential in the shape of light, tradition, organisation, etc.
  • There are stray cases of Westerners who are enamoured of the Eastern wisdom. In the process they collect an enormous amount of unrelated details each of which is a shining armour.
  • They are unaware of the organisation of knowledge which resides in consciousness. Nor are they aware of the strategies -- organisations of their own personalities that are needed for them to draw upon the vast resources that reside organised in consciousness.
  • As Truth is essential in the organisation of knowledge, humility is indispensable in the acquiring of it.
  • The Indian is able to offer obedience which may serve well if he is to memorise many facts, not acquire true knowledge.
  • The Westerner handles the gathered facts by his individuality, which he mistakes for independence. His facts are an aggregation, not an organised body of knowledge. His strategy is that of collection, not one of organised personality. When his personality of knowledge is organised to receive, it becomes the humility of the Individual, a concept that is anathema to the Western ego.
  • A child responds to attention but what he would fully respond to is affection. Similarly, the mastery of any subject requires humility of MIND before the vast ocean of knowledge.
  • Such a humility of Mind rises further as the humility of the Person when it expresses through his social or psychological personality which is essential for yoga, not indispensable to knowledge.
  • Any of these high traits do not admit any of the social deficiencies of any description.
  • Should a scholar in this field be benefited, he must be a pure psychological individual and approach the organised body of knowledge in the subtle plane with his own personal organisation as his strategy.
  • One who is endowed with such requisites will abridge the time of his labour and vastly raise the quality of his attainments.
  • Of the many such endowments, the one I used to insist on is error-free writing.

Comments

 1. 5th bullet point - the

 1. 5th bullet point - the sentence reads better when 'that' is added - with the result that community of thought emerges.

2. 12th bullet point - Indian scholars of yore, known as pandits, did not carry books

3. 13th bullet point - Which is of value, the Indian method or the Western style

4. Uniform expression of emphasis will be harmonious to the eye.



story | by Dr. Radut