Oct. 10, 2002

Intellect Acquiring Subtle, Spiritual Instinct

• It may take ages and finally it may or may not acquire it.
• All Spirituality is subtle.
• Spirituality, like other things, exists as knowledge, method, skill, intuition, as well as instinct. It is a subtle instinct at that.
• All the extinct civilisations were subtle civilisations. The Egyptian civilisation was occult. Indian civilisation is subtle spiritual.
• The Spiritual is overlaid by the subtle or occult or both.
• The Spirit evolved in one age was expressed through the vitality of life and the psychology of the mind.
• At that time, vitality and mentality were the versions of the Spirit.
• As conditions in the country change, varying changes occur at all levels.
• What obtains now is the unspoilt Spiritual kernel overlaid by the mental, vital values of the present day or the life of people from then up till the present time.
• Greek and Latin words coming to English come either directly or through another language, sometimes through two or three languages.
• We sift the roots, changes, and inflexions, understand the prefixes and adapt the suffixes and know the truth of the word and its linguistic significance.
• Spiritual vibrations surviving the onslaught of social, psychological influences can be seen by an analytic perception and we can, with proper training, appreciate the changes that are mutations as well as mutilations.
• Indian life is replete with these original wonders, shot through and through with distortions of several types. The rural side preserves it better. The more uneducated the people, the better it is preserved. Women are good spiritual preservatives.
• The intellect, especially the academic intellect is ell trained in Western youth. His personality will be complete only when it benefits by the Spiritual Touch.
• It will take ages for the intellect to mature to intuition.
• The bodies of Westerners are dark. Their practicality is the result of physical thinking. Their very bodies think.
• Whatever it is, it is NOT subtle.
• Aspiring Westerners endowed with spiritual curiosity can be taught to learn the subtle ways of life, the truth behind life and thus be led to experience the spiritually subtle life in a rural spot in India.
• They must come with a trained discrimination devoid of prejudice to look for the grain apart from the chaff.
• A course that teaches the ways of subtle life as distinct from the practical way of life, the spiritual expressions there, the mutilations of superstition and illiteracy can be designed so that the aspirant can be armed with what he should look for.
• By living in an Indian village for a year or two, one can have the practical experience of what Spirit means in Life.
• Well devised, this experience can abridge centuries into years.
• I conceived of one foreign youth in each Indian village with this end in view as early as 1975.
• It can serve its purpose if the programme is one of exchange.
• Life Response will be the Touchstone of this programme, if ever it gains any credibility.
• Indians in USA bring back to India when they return a rich technological experience impossible to gain in India, as they acquire it there in a cultural milieu out of which the technology was born.
• I am sure a programme well conceived and organised so that NO impediment -- diplomatic, bureaucratic, linguistic, cultural or superstitious -- will offer its benefit to the aspirant can go a long way in offering a spiritual education of Life to the youth of the West.
• This is one of the many opportunities societies offer.