July 8, 2003
The Attitudes
that Make the Potentials for Organisation Effective
v In India and the West, we
see two phenomena of extensive spiritual potentials and exhaustive raw
materials of information.
v Academic organisation as
known in the West is alien to the Indian genius.
v In India, the collective
pursuit of a subject was unknown until western type universities were founded.
v These universities have not
struck roots in the Indian mental soil with the result real good work is
scanty.
v 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.
v 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.
v None of his findings are
recorded, but remembered.
v Such a process eliminates
the average intellect entering the field.
v 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.
v 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.
v Memory of understanding is
unfailing as its facts are all integrated.
v 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.
v 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.
v 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.
v In the Indian tradition, the
disciple who learns at the feet of the Guru, the teacher, is less then a slave
of the Guru's ego. It is physical obedience socially extracted.
v 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.
v Obedience of the physical,
admiration of the vital, understanding of the mental, humility of the spiritual
is the natural gradation of growth.
v The Spiritual humility of
the Soul matures into a comprehension of compassion of the Psychic when the
mental psychic emerges.
v Obedience, admiration,
understanding, humility and compassion are the strategies through which the
student avails of the ORGANISATION of knowledge outside.
v We may say instead of
strategies, it is his own organisation with which he approaches knowledge.
v Indian soil has this
enormous spiritual potential in the shape of light, tradition, organisation,
etc.
v 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.
v 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.
v As Truth is essential in the
organisation of knowledge, humility is indispensable in the acquiring of it.
v The Indian is able to offer
obedience which may serve well if he is to memorise many facts, not acquire
true knowledge.
v 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.
v 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.
v 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.
v Any of these high traits do
not admit any of the social deficiencies of any description.
v Should a scholar in this
field be benefitted, 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.
v One who is endowed with such
requisites will abridge the time of his labour and vastly raise the quality of
his attainments.
v Of the many such endowments, the one I used to insist on is error-free
writing.