Fairness

October  20, 1998

Basic Ideas:

• Fairness is an attitude of the soul, not of mind or vital, never of the body.
• It is so because body and vital are unconscious and mind is partially conscious, while the soul is fully conscious.
• When it starts being conscious, even the soul chooses to be unfair because, in the beginning the substance of the soul acts.
• If you can divide the person into body, vital, mind and soul, you can see wherever the element of fairness exists there is the touch of the soul. This will be clear if one concedes the existence of all the other three in each part.
• There is no exclusively low man or exclusively high one, but we find everything mixed in every man. Further, the process of ascent is accompanied by descent. This will make it clear why, in the lowest of men, we sometimes find the highest of qualities.
• Fairness in the individual is because of collective fairness. As the collective tries to acquire fairness, several individuals acquire it first.
• Yearning for fairness is one symptom of an awakening soul.
• Appeal for fairness works if there is conscience or a possibility of the soul's awakening.
• Appeal for fairness fails in its absence.
• Grades of success:

Physical - liquidation of the enemy

Vital      -- Humiliation of the opponent

Mental   -- Winning the other over to your point of view

Soul       -- Desire to be fair to the other for one's own sake.

• As long as there is scope for fairness, i.e. in the recipient, it may work.
• Prior to fairness is RIGHT. It is preceded by sympathy. Pity is of the physical. This can be put into a tabular column:

Spiritual   -->   fairness

Mental      -->   right

Vital         -->   sympathy

Physical   -->   pity

• Specific instances:

1.  
   1. When Ravana was disarmed in the fight, instead of taking advantage of the enemy's weak point, Rama asked him to go home, arm himself and return for the fight the next day.
   2. Shivaji, the Maharashtrian hero, invited his enemy for an embrace as a ploy and with the tiger claws he had on his fingers did him to death.
   3. Krishna employed numerous ruses on the battlefield.
   4. When Nehru asked Mountbatten in Sept. '47 to help him solve the refugee problem, the Viceroy, whose duty does not include that, devised a devious way to help Nehru and Patel.
   5. U Nu, the Prime Minister of Burma, requested the military leader to rule Burma when  he went into silence. U Nu returned after one year. The General handed over power. One year later there was a coup and the general took over.

1. This is clearly a spiritual attitude.

2. This is treachery through a ploy which is below pity and negative.

3. Krishna had come to establish Dharma in a world of Adharma.

4. Lord Mountbatten was generous to go out of his way to help Nehru while it was his turn to laugh at him.

5. It started as spiritual, ended as physical.

I do not have striking, specific instances. I can comment on events given to me.

   In general, the idea of fairness to another, the compelling need to be fair for one's own sake is a symptom of the spirit awakening. It is an individual symptom. It also indicates that the collectivity is mature enough for an individual to feel it.

   All progress or development is between the appearance of the pioneer and the collective organising itself to implement it widely (Life Divine, p. 1, Individual revolution and collective evolution). The very first stage of the collective in accepting FAIRNESS of the pioneering individual is law and order, to establish it and obey it. The next stage is to create social organisations that will indirectly foster law and order. Further, it becomes institutions and finally culture. The brute enforcement of law and order is the fairness of the majority to the minority. Institutions like market help fewer people to steal. Any institution that fosters prosperity helps law and order to prevail. Unemployment dole, employment exchange and a host of other organisations directly help law and order prevail.

  Presently fairness is an individual ideal. It should become a collective organisation, social institution and finally the culture of a certain community. It can go further by becoming a global culture. How the collective organisation arises is the process of development. We talk of economic organisation.