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Authority

133)     Even distant contacts to centres of authority accomplish in a vast measure.

Man's life is one of accomplishment.

He judges himself by that accomplishment; and the world does too.

What accomplishes is authority.

Authority is organisational power vested in a post and through the post in a person.

Power and authority are used as synonyms.

As the distinction between energy, force, and power is not easily distinguishable, here that of authority and power is.

In fact, authority is exercised as power.

Even after monarchy is done away with and democracy is ushered in, power and authority in their daily use remains the same wherever there is no organisational compulsion.

After the secret ballot was introduced, voters, in pockets of virulent authority, preferred to vote according to the wishes of authority and wanted it to be known thus.

The voters want to be above suspicion from the centre of Authority.

One characteristic of Authority is, wherever it is either at the top or at the bottom, if the link to the centre exists, it is proved to be fully powerful.

A proverb about Authority is -- he who has given up his authority to another is sure to become meaningless.

The entire power of the society collects at one centre and is exercised from there ruthlessly. Rightly or wrongly, Karl Marx identified its seat in the means of production. Hence he advocated violence.

Means of production is a material receptacle for power.

In the scheme of power accumulating at one centre, there is an upward movement.

In its exercise, there is a downward movement.

In the upward and downward movement, power courses through many human centres without which it will be sterile.

Those are the centres that have access to the full exercise of power for their purpose.

Such centres are generally negative. Only 10% are positive.

The negative exercise of Power creates the solid foundation.

Practically this is necessary to build any structure of power.

Theoretically this foundation can be laid positively by values.

To start with, that is, before the formation of social values, the negative process is indispensable.

Those societies which have earned Values - social, personal, organisational - will be inventing the wheel again if they tolerate the negative process.

Mankind has not acquired that wisdom consciously yet.

Its present wisdom is unconscious.

Knowledge of the Theory can endow man with that wisdom.

Then, a small significant act can accomplish a work that needs centuries.

The 1929 Depression, Hitler's attack on Poland occasioned the discovery of such acts which saved the world economy and democracy.

One such act in the negative direction displaced 10 million people in India and Pakistan in 1947.

134)     In an organisation there are innumerable pockets of authority equal in weight to the total investment.

By definition, a work is done withholding all the others.

The resources of those withheld areas are far more powerful than the one on which we focus.

Social festivals were organised outside the season of production.

Even within the organisation of production, any particular work can be done only when other works

are held in abeyance.

A time was when Man went to work and the woman cooked at home.

Her work was not always full time.

Hence her free hours carried a potential of energy.

Before the advent of the sewing machine, the lady took to needle work which was enormous.

With the advance of technology, the lady's work at home began to shrink leaving a potential for the house.

In a factory the administrative office is small and the productive organisation is big.

There were times when work was to be done successively by necessity or by choice; pockets of enforced leisure were generated in different parts.

The finest example is the army. It cannot be fighting all the time.

During periods of peace the army carries enormous isolated pockets of power.

The expression of this phenomenon can be seen in all walks of life.

In Money, each time it makes advancement, the unutilised pockets of power are very visible.

Social progress is facilitated by utilising these pockets of power.

The more fully a society uses these powers the more advanced it is.

Looking at the process of creation in the universe, a philosopher said that Nature which appears to be wasteful, initiates many works at the same time and keeps them going invisibly so that when they near completion, all complete at once. That made him say there is no waste in Nature.

At least we are familiar with the phenomenon that when one acts comes to fruition, all the other pending acts too come to fruition.

In The Merchant of Venice Antonio's lost ship was restored when Portia won the case against him.

America was unwillingly drawn into war by Pearl Harbour. She was only selling arms to the Allies till then. Now she became a member of the Allies that led to her founding the UN, discovering the bomb. In the end because of the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Cold War, America became the leader of the world unintentionally.

Only in 1950 or 1960 the world and America discovered the enormous pockets of potentials spread over the USA which she was compelled to use.

At a time when society becomes integrated, these unutilised pockets will not exist.

In Pride and Prejudice we see Lydia precipitates a catastrophe and Darcy brings her back to life solving a problem that could have annihilated Mr. Bennet's family.

Soon it was followed by Jane's wedding. Darcy too wedded Elizabeth.

All these were simultaneously planned when we saw Collins introduced to Wickham on the street corner. Darcy and Bingley met them on their way to Longbourn.

We see the particular. Nature handles the general.

135)     Positively authority achieves, negatively it destroys. Human choice decides the direction.

Life progresses by consciousness and consciousness progresses by organisation. (8-42).

Life is amorphous.

Organisation, skill, capacity, education, ability are structured.

A structure is far more advanced than the unformed society.

Authority rests in organisation.

Authority that is effective inside its structure is destructive outside the structure.

Authority is effective inside the structure because its energies are directed.

Outside, the authority has power without direction or discrimination.

Power without discrimination goes by prestige. It is naturally destructive.

The French are intellectual and cultured.

The British prided in the value of aristocracy and looked down upon education.

The second children of aristocrats took to trade and prospered, though they did not enjoy the prestige of the aristocrats.

Trade that was outside the structure of aristocracy flourished so much as to found an empire.

The French too founded an empire, not so big.

The British, as a policy, never interfered with the local religion or customs.

The French invariably did.

In India that alone was the cause for the British Empire and French conclaves.

The political instinct develops more accurately when the authority is positive.

In America Man concentrated on production and prosperity.

The shores were their defence. The army was for namesake.

The American was self-defensive.

He took the law into his own hands.

Police was not so organised as in Europe.

The government had minimum expenses and met them from the fines collected from punishments.

The American never paid any tax.

In the later centuries, government came into existence.

The American political instinct was not hedged in by tradition.

It evolved from the first principles on the ground.

This is one of the reasons they are ‘ruling' the world now when Britain is nowhere.

Power is neutral. Man gives character to power.

Power is an organisation of Force.

Man is a being who generates the Force.

His choice is decisive to give character to the Force from which authority arises.

Power within its realms achieves far for more than outside.

Outside its realm, power is uninformed, prejudiced, autocratic and negatively destructive.

The partial authority of organisations matures into the authority of the whole in the culture of the society.

136)     Between two levels of social, organisational existence, authority lies hidden.

Society constantly organises itself at higher levels, leaving behind less organised social potential that carry the authority of the previous organisation.

The educated functions with the less educated and sees at many points that the wisdom and experience of the uneducated exceeds his own.

This too is a general rule of evolving life.

The more organised find greater resources in the less organised.

There is no doubt about the higher equipment of the qualified engineer over the day labourer, but he often escapes the opportunities of handling the machines and materials originally as the worker has.

There was a film where Washington sent officers to investigate the murders of Blacks in a Southern state.

The officer who had the authority was educated in the rules of law.

The local officials were anti-Negro who connived to perpetrate the crime.

The inspecting officer had an assistant who hailed from that locality who was well versed in their tricky resources.

His gentle reminder to his boss was in vain.

Every move of the inspection was torpedoed by the local police.

At a point of frustration, the assistant quarrelled with his foolish boss and slapped him on the check.

Instead of being incensed, the boss came forward to follow the initiatives of his unorthodox assistant.

The assistant used the same local tricks to outwit the local authorities who were parties to the crime.

All of them were booked and sentenced.

Life is a whole.

Because a structure is advanced, it is not superior to the earlier one in all respects.

There is power and authority hidden in the recesses between the old and the new.

Only when they are drawn up, life emerges in fullness.

A famous Indian Finance Minister gave a sympathetic hearing to an NGO when he was initiating Rural Banks.

The NGO had presented twenty ideas. The Minister accepted 19 and refused the 20th as it was wrong.

It was an idea to draw upon the social resource.

Now after 30 years, I hear that idea has found favour with the authorities.

Basically structures are partial. Life is full.

To advance in efficiency advanced structures - organisations - are imperative.

For life to rise in fullness and deliver richer rewards, it has to avail of the resources hidden in the recesses between the past and the present.

137)     Authority transforms into loyal submission.

Life is Movement. It is not always linear.

As movement is constantly present, transformation by reversing the direction is also constant.

Without movement there is no life.

Without transformation there is no sudden great progress initiated.

This is the truth in the statement that failures are stepping stones to success.

Friends and spouses come back after a disagreement or quarrel and take all efforts to make up the losses. They find themselves closer together.

Quarrel may separate or bring them back together.

Reunion is a phase when an inner cleansing goes on and naturally people are closer together.

The greater the differential in consciousness, the richer the union when they come back.

It is aristocratic wisdom that to evoke greater loyalty one has to thoroughly thrash the lackey.

The conquered nation adoring the conqueror is a phenomenon observed during all periods of empire.

There is no post the criminal adores more than that of the policeman.

In the Burmese forest, two men came upon a tiger. One fell back and shot the animal and saved his friend. "I wanted him to eat me. Why did you kill him?" asked the escaped victim.

The frog enjoys being eaten by the snake. It is a play of pure divine love.

Divine love needs intensity for it to display.

The intensity of torture enables divine love to emerge.

An acknowledged method for reaching God is to oppose him tooth and nail.

The agnostic announces a higher faith in God.

No one who is not a good slave can qualify to be a good master.

Luther who vehemently protested the Authority imposed on the human Soul by the organisation of the church was more authoritarian in his administration, when he broke away from the Pope

Nature to preserve its gains of progress uses the past structure very much.

  • The entire past is not to be discarded.
  • The essence of the past must be preserved.
  • The dead form of the past that has become an obstacle is to be given up.

Authority is imposed from outside.

Submission is an inner discipline willingly imposed.

It is the will that transforms authority into submission.

The will is not cast into an unchanging die.

The will is alive. It functions in freedom.

It has the freedom to withdraw itself from a mould into which it was cast and remould it itself.

Wisdom detects points of transformation in life and honours them.

138)     Age carries enormous authority in India.

At different periods Authority rested with different aspects.

At all times, in all climes, money carried a considerable Authority.

Authority of age is common to all civilisations, but in India it stands out.

In America, Money carries all the Authority and overrules all other claims.

Spiritual realisation vests one with an Authority that excels all others.

It has a tendency to be usurped by a post in a spiritual organisation.

Age is more respected in Europe than in America, more in Asia than in Europe.

During Khrushchev's visit to USA, a young reporter asked Khrushchev an inconvenient question. He was incensed and said, "By age, I could be your father. If you address such questions to me I shall fly back to Russia in ten hours, while it took 11 hours for me to come".

Respect for age in government is replaced by seniority.

P.V. Narasimha Rao having decided to retire from politics did not contest the elections to Parliament. Congress won a large number of seats. They now needed a leader. By age Rao qualified. He was offered the post of Prime Ministership. Age carried its day.

A person one year elder will rule at home as age is the determinant.

Authority of age has been shifted to erudition.

It usually went to the Brahmins as they were the most educated.

For the purposes of power, it is not age or erudition but one must be of the royal family, even if one is young.

In public life even today, age rules, though for a mass leader the rule relaxes itself.

No bride senior in age is ever acceptable.

In the 50s the bride would be younger by ten years.

Now the bride must be younger is an absolute rule. Exceptions are rare and are outside the mainstream.

Even in love marriages, age rules.

A young boss or a young teacher is often seen, but it is odd.

Not one around Gandhiji was senior to him.

In Britain till the First World War, no public post of importance was for anyone below 60.

By age society means wisdom by experience.

Caesar, Alexander and Napoleon were the exceptions who offered to lead the world by the age of twenty.

Tradition vests age with a respect bordering on veneration.

As in democratic elections where even a majority of one counts, age counts to the detriment of experience, education, leadership and even wealth, not to speak of birth.

The Transfer of Power in 1947 in India was a unique occasion. It was arranged by Lord Mountbatten who was 38. Nehru was 58; Patel was 75 and Gandhi 77. Mountbatten's youth was overlooked because he represented the Crown. It was a unique occasion. I am tempted to think that his youth was the cause for Partition. Maybe, had he been 70 or 75, Partition could have been avoided.

139)     Authority of attachment is more powerful than authority of power.

Attachment is biological, physical, subconscious.

Authority is vital power - social, organisational or psychological.

There are times when the small reveals a greater efficacy than the great.

Attachment of authority is one such.

In a theoretical sense we can say authority accrues in all planes.

Obviously authority is between two things, either groups or individuals.

In a five hundred year old English story, the fond husband of a loyal wife, as a result of an intrigue, sent his lackey to murder his wife. The wife declares,

            "I shall be delighted to die, if it pleases my lord."

An Indian Guru, jealous of his disciple, proceeded to murder him. Another disciple overtook the Guru and urged the intended victim to run away so that his Guru should not be visited by the sin of murder. And the victim must not be the cause of that sin of the Guru!

Authority exercises from outside or above.

Authority of attachment willingly and voluntarily offers submission to authority.

In this Theory there is one fascinating sidelight, though it is a general rule.

Anything like authority going with another aspect like attachment takes on an appearance far different from it, occasionally its reverse.

Authority with pleasant manners becomes popularity of good will. To study authority one approach is to consider it with sweetness, information, subtlety, hardness, circumstance, money, aspiration, etc.

Authority with money is positively benevolence, negatively corruption.

With presence of Mind, it generates the expectation as from a genius.

Going with unpunctuality, it vests unpunctuality with the power of popularity.

Combine it with sweetness; a brute can be mistaken for high culture.

Authority with hardness creates

- Tyranny

- Success of a mass movement with an able leader at the top as he was the victim.

- A disciplined organisation dedicated to the tyrant.

Let it go with good humour, the result will be a widening of power.

Fad presiding over Authority makes superstition an ideal goal.

Authority and rashness destroy the organisation.

- It can produce revolutionary human material capable of great negative adventures.

- It can make rashness a national virtue.

- It can create an ideal couple whoever is at fault.

140)     Spiritual authority refuses to exercise itself.

Spiritual can be understood as the higher ranges of Mind.

When the authority saturates the substance, it has no need to exercise itself.

Biologically the female awaits the male to seek her.

It is so because her need for him is in the biological substance.

Bernard Shaw in his wisdom added a shade to it by saying the woman waits after setting the trap consciously.

Without going into the validity of that observation, we can see the truth in the power of the woman.

The woman's need for the Man is for a brief period till her young ones grow up and it is a material need.

Man's need for the woman is eternal and it is psychological.

Spiritual disciplines accept disciples only when they deny themselves this need.

In a bargain he who speaks less wins.

His thoughts will be expressed by others, often by the one who matters.

It avoids the natural opportunity of human negativism.

It is known as Silent will.

The idea that more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of can be replaced by silent will.

            It is a known fact that Silence accomplishes more.

After Nehru became Prime Minister, he went to America and met Truman. The idea was to solicit aid. Circumstances were not favourable. He could not bring himself to ask. He returned to India. The USA announced an aid of $150 million.

A company in promoting a product lends it to the distributors initially. When the product gains the market and needs no promotion any more, the distributors offer deposits to secure the product.

Here it is market authority exercising in both ways.

A new ideal is taken no note of, it is recognised by opposition, then finally it is ridiculed even after it achieves full acceptance in the world. The establishment refuses to give way, as royalty in England.

Today the Code Napoleon is all over the world. Yet no Englishman can ever accept the value of Napoleon to mankind.

After two full centuries, the values of the French Revolution have not come to stay acquiring spiritual authority.

That is the process of the substance of humankind getting saturated.

It is said Love and Mercy have the force of ordinance in heaven.

That is spiritual authority.

It need not exercise itself.

It cannot exercise itself.

Sunrise is not announced to the world on the TV.

Authority that becomes Power is Spiritual.

Authority and Power, as long as they are separate, have to be exercised.

As soon as they are merged, are one, no exercise is called for.

It is self-effectuating.

Then it is called Real-Idea.

It is situated not in Mind, but at the highest reaches of Mind.



story | by Dr. Radut