Skip to Content

Change, Survival, Development

(2)        Social existence is one of change. It is not static or stagnant.

We are considering social life under the head Social existence. Life is live. We talk of static societies giving rise to great literature after a long period, as in the period of Elizabeth. By static we do not mean stagnant, we only mean the society that acquired certain forms keeps those forms for a prolonged period. During such a period, the life of the society is neither ossified nor dead, but invisibly - subconsciously - matures and ripens. Therefore such periods do produce immortal literature. If the question arises whether there are periods of stagnation of a society, we would like to answer No. It is an emphatic No. As the human body is always live, never dead, the society is always alive.

As the period of Elizabeth created immortal literature, social processes unknown to us are passing through what we style as static societies.

In the social existence there are periods of growth, periods of decay, golden periods, periods of vast expansion, but there is no period of stagnation.

Society has positive and negative sides. To us only the positive side matters. We avoid the negative side. For a prolonged period Society develops only its positive side which we know to be social progress. There comes a time when the society needs to overreach its growth on the positive side and include the negative side. It occurs sporadically which we either ignore or absorb as the context permits. During serious landmarks of social growth, the society is determined to fully absorb the negative side and empower them with the authority of the state. Generally they are characterised by Revolutions such as the French Revolution or the Russian Revolution. Or it widens the physical space humanity occupies and there works on all the lower, negative elements of the society as in opening of the New World. Unseen by the rest of the world the negative side of the erstwhile society works its propensities out to become positive. In this endeavour they become positive, more than positive and better than positive so that the erstwhile world begins to imitate them. At those moments society evolves newer forms of life based on wider principles of life empowering newer sections of life, creating fresh strategies of life many of them exactly opposite to the bases of earlier life. This is a process in which the Being dissolves in the Non-Being and emerges to the surface as the finite individual soul.

Earlier or elsewhere we said Society is at bottom an organism. It is an organisation only on the surface. If it is conceded that it is an organism, there is no question of any period where it can be static or stagnant.

20)Social development is moving from the subconscious physical experience to conscious mental experience.

  • Social development is Man moving from the physical to the mental.

Man is consciousness in the Mind. His body is subconscious. Below the subconscious is the inconscient, inert matter. Society is not in the inconscient. It is in the subconscious. The subconscious is the evolving inconscient.

  • The primitive man lives in the body.

He does not function in the Mind.

  • Man, at present exists in the Mind and functions from the Mind.

So, we say man is mentally conscious.

  • Our theme here is Man moves in his functioning from the body to the Mind.

It is said in other words that Man moves from the subconscious to the conscious.

  • Another way of saying it is social development is Man moving from the physical to the mental.

Let us consider Man's gathering food today and in the primitive period.

In the primate period when he was hungry he went about hunting and gathering food or fruits. It was entirely a physical act, urged by a physical sensation. Today governments plan food production, decide how much is to be cultivated where and when. They plan its distribution; ensure it is available to every individual. Man has a mind. It plans in the mind and executes by his organisation which is a physical act. Today airports are planned, new cities are constructed, bills are passed in the Parliament, educational curriculum is planned, all of which are mental activities. The mind conceives and executes. It is the individual mind as well as collective mind. Man lives in the plane of mind. His actions are conceived in the mind and done by the body.

Before society formed as an entity and began to develop as an organisation Man never had a Mind. He felt physical sensations which led him to act physically i.e. subconsciously. A thirsty man walking towards a water source is not a conscious act. He does not think, "I am thirsty. There is no water here. Water, I know, is there at a distance in the east. I must go there to drink of it." No, he does not do so. There was no mental instrument for him to function like that. Thirst is a physical sensation. His subconscious awareness knows where the water is available. His body gets up. He does not order his body to go there. It is not his Mind that tells his body to act. The body acts on its own as we turn around in our sleep to relieve the pressure on one side.

  • It is a subconscious act.
  • It is not an act of Mind, a conscious act.
  • Society by its coming into existence and continuing to develop, moves from the subconscious existence to the mentally conscious life of the modern man.

30)Social evolution begins not at the conscious or even the inconscient part but at the subconscious level, as the base of the society is subconscious.

There is something called Spiritual evolution and it begins in the Inconscient. The mental evolution which we witness from the days of the Greeks is a conscious evolution. Here we confine ourselves to Social evolution which is neither Spirit not mind, but is in the vital plane. So we begin with the subconscious and end with the conscious. It is really a segment of the whole evolution of Earth.

For this purpose we divide human existence into 3 levels, physical, vital, mental levels. We presently do not consider the spiritual level. In another big section of about 150 pages these 9 levels are analysed threadbare in very great detail. Here we simply subdivide the three levels into 9, i.e. each level having sublevels, i.e.

           

Mind      -

Mental       -

Mind   

Vital         -

mind

Physical  

mind

1  -

2  -

3

 

 

Vital       -

Mental       -

vital       

Vital         -

vital

Physical  

vital

 

4  -

5 -

6

 

 

Physical  -

Mental       -

physical

Vital        -

physical

Physical  

physical

7 -

8  -

9

 

 

 

We name them No.1 to No.9. Also each number is subdivided into surface and depth. They are better called consciousness and substance. Each such part of these 18 is given a core word description from which one sees what we call social development begins with a live clod of a physical man and moves to acquire a sense and skill. Moving up to the vital one moves into passion, courage and cunning. In the mental plane he begins with decisive organisation, becomes an emotional poet and finally ends up as a concept making philosopher.

           

1.

           Concept

      -----------------

 Self-effectuating Idea

 

2.

          Sensation

          ------------

          Emotions 

3.

           Decision

        ----------------

        Determination

 

4.

            Cunning

    ----------------------

    Shrewd astuteness

5

          Courage

         ------------

          Heroism

6.

          Attachment

        -----------------

             Passion

 

7.

            Skill

        -----------

         Capacity

8.

    Sensational Poetry

    -----------------------

            Folklore

9.

          Live body

     -------------------

       Animate Clay

 

 


(31)Readiness of the society emerges in the individual, not in the whole society because the emergence must be organised knowledge or organised action. It is not enough the consciousness is ripe.

An act is the unit of life. It is a microcosm of the universe that is macrocosm. When an act is passed by the Parliament, it becomes law but does not go into action. The executive must apply that law in each department and convert it into rules applicable to that department. If that law is to be enforced all over the nation, each state legislature too must endorse it. The rule of the department that comes to an officer cannot be directly implemented. The head of the department must change it into an order. It takes time to pass through all these stages. This is so when a democratic government is functioning for some centuries. Let us imagine a time before democracy was born. England, when it was ready for democratic rule, emerged as the Individual aspiration of Oliver Cromwell. When France was ready for the Revolution, that consciousness was to be organised into knowledge and Voltaire and Rousseau had to voice it. Marx supplied in the Communist Manifesto the knowledge for the Russian Revolution. When Indian Freedom was to be achieved Non-violently, Gandhiji conceived of the theory of Non-violence and described it in his journal ‘Harijan.'  The stages are
  • Society feels a new need such as democracy, speech, air travel, education, etc.
  • Prior conditions must rise in full ripeness to make this possible.
  • Thus the consciousness of the society is ready.
  • It always emerges as an aspiration in an Individual.
  • From that individual, over centuries, that knowledge again spreads to the whole society.
  • Organisation plays its part in its first emergence in the individual as well as its spreading from him to the entire social fabric.
  • It is necessary that the consciousness must be ripe, but it is not enough.
  • It must be organised into individual knowledge as individual consciousness and individual action.
  • Once several individuals act in such a fashion then the individual consciousness, knowledge, action must be reorganised on a wider scale as collective consciousness, collective knowledge and collective action.
  • Both, though similar, vary in their emergence and expression.

(32) To organise consciousness into knowledge or action in one individual, the whole society must supply the consciousness.

Imagine the first book printed or written, the first T.V. made, the first word man spoke or any such first. What is the process by which that first act is done? What is the energy required? Who supplies that energy? Of course the first word a child speaks now is different from the first word ever spoken. India building the first ship or plane is different from the first ship or plane ever built.

  • It is a creative act in itself.
  • It is a result of the aspiration of the entire society.
  • Aspiration releases energy aimed at creating such a work.
  • That energy is different from the general energy we know.
  • No original scientist has ever been created in the last few centuries in India since the nation does not have such an aspiration.
  • No Rishi has been created in America in her four or five hundrred years of social existence. Their life, thought, creative aspiration, etc. were on the lines of material welfare, and material prosperity.

Anyone who has endeavoured to erect a factory in a village will surely feel the absence of the mechanical infrastructure there. More so, the absence of the psychological infrastructure will be frustrating. At a time when reading and writing were known for centuries, the first printing press coming into existence endeavoured at what levels is what we know. From that time till the first book was printed, one can imagine or read the myriad various developments that took place in the printing industry to make that book possible. Printing is one major act. Sales are of another type. Each time consciousness is organised into knowledge or action, millions of individual acts contribute to its consummation. Some examples are,

  • The first house Man built.
  • Creation of the first modern army.
  • The first city in civilisation.
  • The first social revolution.
  • The first nation that became free by non-violence.
  • The first man who climbed the tree.
  • The first computer made.
  • The first man who landed on the moon.

There are events of evolutionary significance for which the evolutionary aspiration of the entire society releases an energy which it has not yet created. Its consciousness is fresh. Its structure is a new one. It works in ways hitherto man has not known. It happens when consciousness is organised into knowledge or action for the first time.                                                                                     


(33) Evolution from one plane to another demands conversions of energy on the scale of liquids becoming vapour.

To raise the water level in a tank, lake, or sea by one foot, the water level should rise all over the surface. It is not a volume of water in one spot, but all over. In a culture alien to a way of life, one single act has this character. Give an Indian a new gadget - camera, computer, etc. and a manual of use, he will not read the manual but will tinker with the instrument and spoil it very soon. Ask an American to meditate for five minutes which any Indian can habitually do, he will be bewildered. These are simple acts but alien to their upbringing, their culture. Vapour becoming liquid or vice versa is a new dimension. As both are of the same substance one can go into another but an ocean of energy needs to go into the conversion. Simpler examples will be 1) college graduate entering an office, 2) Girl working in an office taking to kitchen work, 3) Officer transferred from one department to another, 4) Bank Agent turning into an entrepreneur. Most of them are dismal failures. If at all they make it up, it is at the cost of a great struggle. There is a theoretical fact behind all these phenomena. In each plane, a structure takes shape. Energy of that plane goes into the building of that structure as the society creates the structure of a government. It starts with a leader at the top and an immediate structure governing as 1) defence on the borders, 2) law and order in the country, 3) the management of the household of the leader. Such things were created several thousand years ago. Between now and then those structures have developed a thousand intermediate steps and innumerable subsidiary steps. These were done by the creation of a constitution, a Parliament, enactment, passing of laws, creation of rules, etc. An administrative structure to manage these came into being. Beyond the rules are the order, custom, usages, procedure which are outside these structures. In the formation of skill, capacity, talent, ability man undergoes a similar creation of main and subsidiary structures. An enormous amount of energy in varying measures depending upon the circumstances goes into the creation of these forms that are structures. The physical is a plane which can rise to the vital. Or the vital can raise itself to the mental and so on. To raise one level, say the physical, all the structures of that plane must be saturated with energy and the remaining space must also be so saturated - the saturated energy spills over to rise to the next plane. That is one step. Once the higher plane is reached it slowly gets filled up to saturation. Having saturated that higher plane, it begins to descend on the lower plane. All the existing structures in the lower plane must become flexible and restructure themselves according to the new dispensation. This being the process, one can imagine the vast energies that go into action. So

  • A higher plane - liquid into gas - descending into the lower plane unleashes great energy.
  • A lower plane - worker becomes a thinker - rising to a higher plane consumes vast energies.
  • A structure restructuring itself too absorbs incalculable energies if the will of the structure first consents to the change.
  • Liquid and vapour are poor, partial analogies, but may serve some purpose.



story | by Dr. Radut