FAQ’s of Children-V-M.S. Srinivasan

(The principal of a large school in Bombay gave us a list of frequently asked questions by 13 year old children in her school and asked us whether we can prepare answers in the light of a spiritual perspective.  When we looked at the question we found that they are not mere “kid-stuff.”  Most of them are either fundamental and existential questions related to world and God or psychological problems faced by most of us.  This series is an attempt to answer these questions from the children’s perspective in the light of a spiritual vision of life.  We don’t know how far we have succeeded in communicating to the children.  Nevertheless, we hope these answer may be of some help to teachers and parents who have to deal with children.  There are around thirty questions with answers given in the light of a spiritual vision of life.  We will post these questions at regular intervals.)

Is our world non fictional or is it like a story in a book?

Is the world real, made of real people and real events or just a dream or a fiction,as in a story book? Is this your question? A very profound question debated by many great philosophers.  Chuang-Tzu makes an amusing observation: “Yesterday I saw a butterfly in my dream.  But I am wondering whether this butterfly is a character in my dream or I am a character in the butterfly’s dream.”  So are we and the world we live in a dream of a great sleeping god in some heavens, reclining like the God Vishnu in the milky ocean?  The world and we could possibly be a dream of God or a story or a drama written in His own mind, with world as the stage and we humans, and all other creatures in it, as characters in the story or drama.  Here, I am not talking about some God in heaven, but the God with capital “G”, the ultimate maker of the world and all other gods. And if God is the ultimate Reality or the only Real, then His dream or story or drama must be real, if not to Him, atleast to us who are the characters in His dream, story or drama.

So the world is not fictional but has a reality which comes from God.  But the world we humans see or experience may not be entirely real or true.  For example if you are a two-dimensional creature, which can see only two dimensions,crawling in the mud in a world created by a four-dimensional being, who can see and create in and from all the four-dimensions, your knowledge of the world cannot be entirely true or complete.  You can see only what is therein two dimensions and cannot see things in the third or fourth dimensions.  For instance if a six-foot creature stands before you, you can see only the tip of its fingers or at the most the nails on them but not the entire creature.  Thus we, humans, can see only three dimensions. But, God, the Creator can see and create in and from many dimensions, we don’t know how many, perhaps twelve.  So,when we take God’s creation as a whole our knowledge or vision of the world is like that of a three dimensional creature in a twelve-dimensional world.  We cannot see what is there or happening in the other nine dimensions.  So an object we see in this world with our three dimensional consciousness, is perhaps only a frontal appearance or a small part of a multi-dimensional reality, which is unknown and invisible to us.

Similarly with the events of the world.  The history of the world and the present events may be a story unrolling in the mind of God.  Here again we don’t know the whole story which only God knows. The present condition of the world does not give the entire story.  We are part of an unfinished world.  The world in which we live has a long past and perhaps an equally long future.  We are perhaps in the middle of the world-story or God’s story.  Our human history, as human beings, is only a very brief episode in the world-story. For example, if you enter into a movie theatre when the film was running in the middle, and after sitting there for a few minutes, you are asked to leave the theatre or thrown out of it, what you can know about the story of film?  The present condition of the world,and we in it, are somewhat like this brief episode in a long movie.  God’s story which unrolls in the form of history of the world runs through billions of years. But we as human being, the first man,appeared only a few lakhs years ago.  And when we appeared, the world has passed through many millions of years of evolution or in other words many million pages of God’s story has passed.  At present, we human beings are only a few pages in the story.  And we don’t know how many more thousands or million pages are still there in God’s story and what He has written there.  So we are still babies in God’s story and do not yet know fully what the story is all about and what is our role in it.

However God has given us a power or faculty which the animal doesn’t have.  We have the thinking mind, which can think,guess, and imagine what could be the God’s plan or story.  Much of our science and philosophy and written history are the attempt of the human mind to think-out or guess God’s world-story.  Some of the most advanced among us have risen beyond the human mind and acquired the ability to identify with God’s mind and perceive or read the God’s story more or less accurately.  They are the seers and sages of humanity.  One of the great and truer guesses are the concept of evolution which we have discussed in some detail in one of our earlier article.  When we put together the insights, perceptions and discoveries of some of the greatest and best minds of humanity on this concept of evolution, we may get some glimpse of God’s story for the world.

The story is somewhat like this: first there was only Matter and then came Life in the plant, followed by the sensational mind of the animal and the thinking Mind of man.  The story will proceed further beyond Man and his mind towards the next species with a consciousness above and greater than the human mind.  This new species or future humanity will have the faculties to understand correctly the entire truth of the God’s story.  As a result, this new humanity will know how to steer the earthly creation exactly according the divine Law and God’s plan and bring the highest fulfillment to human life and our planet earth.  This is perhaps the God’s story for us and our planet. If we want to progress or evolve further, individually and collectively, we have to participate consciously in this God’s story with full understanding of its course and the goal and follow the right methods to proceed safely in this higher evolution.

 

Chemistry of Teamwork : A Psycho-social Perspective – M.S. Srinivasan

(A modern organization is an interdependent network of individuals pooling their knowledge, talents and action for achieving common goals.  In such a human network teamwork is a crucial factor, which will determine the success and effectiveness of an organization.  Teamwork is becoming all the more important in the new and emerging management culture with its emphasis on minimum hierarchy, project-orientation and customer-focus and interdisciplinary work.  However most of the corporate focus and academic studies on teamwork is performance-oriented with an emphasis on how to harness the knowledge, talent and skill of the team for achieving bottomline goals.  This focus on performance is extremely important for business.  But for a total self-actualisation of the human potential in a team there must be a greater attention to the social, psychological and spiritual dimensions of a human group.  This article presents such a holistic approach to teamwork with an emphasis on these deeper and higher dimensions of working together in a group.)

The Key-Perspectives: Forging Fraternity; The High-performance Team;  The Winning Team: Insights from sports; Collective Intelligence and Gender Diversity; Towards Collective Resonance.

Forging Fraternity

Individual empowerment and collective teamwork: these are the two factors, which need to be reconciled for the full realization of the human potential in an organization.  The guiding principle for empowerment is Liberty and for teamwork it is Fraternity.  Thus we have here a social and political problem to be solved through practical synthesis in the modern work environment.

The key to the full realization of the individual potential is professional liberty which empowers the individual to express his talent and capacities in a free and unfettered manner and contribute to the realization of organizational goal.  The key to the realization of the collective potential lies in forging fraternity, which leads to inner and outer solidarity and harmony among people.  In terms of performance this task of forging fraternity has two aspects or facets: first is to create a harmonious and complementing mutuality of knowledge, skill and competencies which leads to a resonance of collective energies of people; second is to create a dynamic whole of collective action which is more than the sum of individual action or contribution.  And from a psychosocial perspective, creating fraternity means forging an inner and outer bonding among people, which is not dependent on professional relations in work or common corporate goals.  The fraternity of high performance requires an understanding of the professional interdependence of people in their work-life and makes it more and more efficient, productive and effective.  The other and deeper psychological fraternity requires an understanding of collective or communal psychology and applies it to create an inner unity in the mind, heart and soul of people or in other words unity of consciousness.

The High Performance Team

In a predominantly performance-oriented approach to team building the primary emphasis on target-oriented performance and the main query is what are the factors, which lead to a high performance team.  There is at present a growing and voluminous literature on this subject, not only from management scholars but also from sports personalities.  We present here a brief summary of the conclusions from some of the seminal studies on the subject.

A team is a small number of people with complementary skill, a set of performance goals, and an approach for which they hold themselves responsible. (1) A high performance team is made of following features:

• commitment to a common purpose, vision or mission shared and believed by all members and translated into specific and well-defined performance targets.
• sufficient freedom and flexibility to team members to achieve the targeted goals
• a value-system that encourages listening and responding constructively to others views; providing helpful support to others; recognizing the interests and achievement of others; openness and transparency in communication; and mutual respect and trust.
• people who are interested in each others growth
• leadership which shares information, trusts in others abilities to make decision, shares power with other team members and has the ability to acquire, retain and nurture the needed talent and skill in the team.

However, in a predominantly performance oriented approach to team-building the central strategic aim is to channelise the knowledge, talents and skills of people in mutually complementing manner towards common goal.  This approach makes no conscious effort to create a social and psychological unity or solidarity among team members.  Whatever moral, psychological or social factors which emerge like trust or common goals are considered as secondary or necessary aids in serving the overriding goal of performance.

The factor of performance is undoubtedly important in business.  But what is not recognized clearly is that a predominantly performance oriented approach limits the moral and psychological potential of the team; it cannot create entirely that whole which is greater than the sum of its parts because the entire creative energy of the collectivity is not fully engaged.  To achieve this higher potential greater attention has to be bestowed in understanding, nurturing, deepening and strengthening the social, moral and psychological dimension of team building.

Collective Intelligence and Gender Diversity

The other important factor which belongs to the psycho-social dimensions of teamwork is the concept of collective intelligence and its relations to the nature of the group. Is there something like group intelligence? If yes, what is its relation to collective intelligence? Can gender diversity enhance collective intelligence?  Recently some researchers in management are asking such questions:

In a latest research on teamwork, Professors Woolley and Malone, along with Chris­topher Chabris, Sandy Pentland, and Nada Hashmi, gave subjects aged 18 to 60 standard intelligence tests and assigned them randomly to teams. Each team was asked to complete several tasks-including brainstorming, decision making, and visual puzzles-and to solve one complex problem. Teams were given intelligence scores based on their performance. Though the teams that had members with higher IQs didn’t earn much higher scores, those that had more women did.  In an interview in Harvard Business Review, Wolley and Malone, summarizing briefly the implications of their research on how to make a team smarter, make the following points:

1. Families, companies and cities all have collective intelligence.
2. There is no direct, positive correlation between individual intelligence and collective intelligence.  For example ten smartest people do not make the smartest groups and groups that had smart people dominating the conversation were not very intelligent groups.
3. Teams need an optimum level of cognitive diversity for effectiveness.  Extreme uniformity or extreme diversity does not make the team more intelligent.
4. Great teams are not necessarily made of supersmart people.  The main ingredient of a good team are members listen to each other, share criticism constructively; have open minds; and not autocratic or dominating.
5. Gender diversity enhances the intelligence of the group which means there must be men and woman, more woman better, but not all woman.
6. The advantage of woman lies in their greater social sensitivity than men.  So what is important to create a smart team is to have people who score high on social sensitivity whether they are men or woman.
7. It is possible to markedly change groups intelligence, like for example, by providing more incentives for collaboration.
8. As the group grows bigger and the face-to-face interactions becomes less and less the collective intelligence tends to come down.  However this negative trend can be neutralized or compensated by effective use of technology.  For example, Wikipedia’s high quality product without any centralized control shows some of the potentialities of collective intelligence which can be harnessed by technology. (2)

Let us now examine in some detail the implications of this research study and its conclusions for enhancing collective intelligence of teams.

Enhancing Collective Intelligence: A Holistic Perspective

In a holistic perspective when a group of people live or work together, there is a mingling of their minds and hearts which creates a collective consciousness or intelligence which is potentially more than the sum of their individual consciousness or intelligence.  However this possibility of a higher whole which is more than the sum of its part, called as “synergy” in systems theory, is only a potentiality and not an actuality.  In most cases, the consciousness or intelligence of a collectivity is at a much lower level than that of its best individual members or the average of the group.  If we want to achieve a synergic resonance, we must make a conscious effort to create a mutually supportive, complementing and harmonious link between the members of the team.  There are three principles which we have to keep in mind and incorporated in the group-dynamics of the team for enhancing the collective intelligence.  They are:

1. Cognitive diversity
2. Understanding Attitudes
3. Team Learning

Cognitive Diversity

There are many intelligences within us and IQ measures only one of them. This is now recognized in modern psychology.  The eminent psychologists, Daniel Goleman who has conceived the concept of emotional intelligence has now one more new intelligence, “Social Intelligence.”

We may broadly classify our cognitive faculties into four categories: conceptual intelligence which can generate ideas and also judge, understand, discriminate, analyse; pragmatic intelligence which can apply, organize or execute ideas; emotional and social intelligence which brings empathy, compassion, sensitivity to others needs or feelings and the ability to relate with others; intuitive intelligence which has a direct insight into the truth of things and which can synthesize ideas, comprehend the larger whole or perceive the big-picture.  Woman can augment collective intelligence because there is a natural predominance of the emotional and social intelligence in woman’s nature.  But emotional or social intelligence is not the only strength of woman; most of the highly successful woman executives have a well developed pragmatic intelligence.  However, many men also have strength and ability in the pragmatic, emotional or social intelligence.   For enhancing the collective intelligence of the team, it should have a balanced mix of people who are well-developed in all these four intelligences.

Understanding Attitudes

However, cognitive diversity alone is not sufficient for augmenting the collective intelligence of a group.  A smart and intelligent person has a strong mental ego which tends to think that its own opinions and ideas are the highest and the best and look down upon others ideas, which are different or contrary to its own, as wrong, false or inferior.  For example, Desecrates, a pioneer of modern science and arguably one the most brilliant minds of our age contemptuously dismissed all those who criticized his ides with the remark:  “Let the dogs bark.”  So when the mental egos of smart people in a group remain unchecked, then cognitive diversity becomes a source of unending conflict.  For enhancing the collective intelligence of a team the cognitive faculties of its individual members have to complement each others.  This requires a conscious cultivation of inner attitudes which minimizes ego-clashes and felicitates mutual understanding and collaboration.  These attitudes may be expressed as the willingness to:

• Listen to others
• Share criticism and opposing view points at the mental level without getting into emotional conflict in the heart.
• Accept the validity of a different and opposite opinion.
• Move from points of agreement to a consensus or a synthesis.

Team Learning

The third principle is to provide opportunities for the whole team to learn together.  A very good example of team-learning is the “Leadership, Innovation, Growth,” programmes at the GEC’s Management Development Centre, Crotonville, New York.

Most of the traditional training are oriented towards the individual.  Leaders and executives participate in the programme as individuals.  But the disadvantage of this approach is that when the executive goes back to her company and tries to implement what she has learned in the programme she may encounter resistance from the other members of her team because they have not learnt what she has learnt.  LIG programme in GEC neutralises this shortcoming of the traditional approach by inviting the entire executive team in a division to participate in the programme.  This helps immensely in arriving at a consensus of ideas and strategies among team members which in turn leads to a more effective implementation.  As Steven Prokesh, a senior editor of Harvard Business Review, sums up the team-centric approach of LIG:

“Management development programmes that focus on teaching and inspiring individuals to apply new approaches have a fundamental flaw.  If other members of the teams have not taken the course, they may resist efforts to change.  The antidote to this problem is training intact management teams.  When managers go through a program together they emerge with a consensus view of the opportunities and problems and how best to attack them.”

The LIG programme of GEC has two parts: first is a series of talk by inhouse role models from GEC as well as outside academics from other institutions on topics like strategy, culture, capabilities, and marketing.  Some of the talks may appear as elementary to a seasoned GEC professional working in that particular field.  But it may open new way of looking or thinking to those who are from a different background.  For example, a manufacturing executive who looks at everything interms of productivity, cost, efficiency may learn some new lessons from a talk by a marketing expert on the need to look at things from a customer’s perspective.

The other part is collective debate and discussions.  After the talk-session, executive teams retire into a separate room and have a “brutally frank and free-flowing” discussion, debate and conversation on the implications of what they have learnt for their businesses.  At the end of the programme, the teams arrive at a consensus on future growth potentialities and how to achieve.  And finally, each team presents an action plan to the top management with a letter of commitment to CEO.  (3)

Towards Collective Resonance

We are now in a better position to arrive at some form of a holistic synthesis of the ideas and insights which are presented so far.  The objective of this synthesis is to present a summary of factors and principle which can lead to a collective resonance, which inturn can bring about an integral self-actualization of the human potential in a team.

The first factor is the Unity of Purpose in the form of some shared vision, values, principles or goals.  Without this uniting factor the collective energies of people cannot be focused on a point.  However for achieving enduring unity or effectiveness the common or shared principle must evoke the moral or spiritual instinct in people which leads to self-dedication of the individual to a greater something which transcends the individual ego and its self-interest.  This is the second factor, which is variously called as selflessness or self-sacrifice.  Without this self-transcending factor, the team or group remains fragmented.

The third factor is Mutual Trust.  Much has been said and written about this factor of trust in management literature.  But the practical question is what are the factors which can build this trust or in other words what are the factors which have to be built-in or encouraged in the group-culture which can lead to this trust?  The first factor is integrity, which includes qualities like honesty, openness, transparency, and candour.  The second factor is competence.  We cannot give an assignment to someone who doesn’t have the competence to accomplish it.  An important part of competence is professional integrity, which means the ability to deliver to the internal or external customer according to mutually agreed upon specifications.  The third factor, which can build enduring trust, is empathy or goodwill, which means a sincere consideration for, or understanding of the needs, problems and difficulties of others, combined with a genuine concern for others’ well being.  We must note here that trust or empathy cannot be faked.  It is an inner condition and if it is sincere, silently communicates itself to the other person.

The fourth factor is Equality.  There must be a genuine respect in thought and feeling for the human essence and dignity of every individual irrespective of his functional or social status in the organization.  This inner sense of equality must translate itself in the outer life in terms of appropriate outer action, behaviour, policies, reward-system and organizational details or practices like for example a flexible, non-hierarchical and open organizational structure, sharing of information, profits or incentives.  Building equality requires more “walking” than “talking.”  Leaders must demonstrate equity by their personal example, like for example, Lance Armstrong, leader of the American cycling team, carrying the water bottles for his teammates.

The fifth factor is individual empowerment, which means freedom and opportunity for the individual to initiate, grow and express himself.  If the team has to remain creative and innovative, individual freedom, uniqueness and potentialities should not get submerged in “group-think” or in the social or cultural matrix.  The individual must be given sufficient freedom and opportunities to grow towards his highest potential and enrich the team by expressing his capacities in his individual and collective work-life.  Multiple viewpoints, expressive of individual uniqueness should be given full freedom of expression and must be encouraged to arrive at a creative synthesis.

 This brings us to another related factor, which we may call as complementing links.  It is now recognized that complementing skills is an important feature of effective team-work.  But for a greater effectiveness, a team should have not only complementing skills but also complementing temperaments.  An ideal team should contain individual types, which represent the conceptual, emotional, volitional, pragmatic, ethical, aesthetic and intuitive faculties of human consciousness.  The ancient Indian classification of human beings may perhaps provide a more practical framework.  According to this Indian view human being can be broadly classified into four types: Mentor, Marshal, Merchant and Worker.  Mentor-type is the one who lives predominantly in his conceptual, ethical, aesthetic and intuitive intelligence with its urge for knowledge, values, ideals and vision.  Marshal is the type which lives in the consciousness of his will and vital force with its urge for power, leadership, mastery, conquest, expansion.  The Merchant is the one who lives in his emotional and pragmatic faculties with its urge for mutuality, harmony, adaptation, relationship and organization.  And finally, Worker is the type who lives in the consciousness of his physical faculties of action and execution.  In a psychological perspective an effective team should have a balanced mix of all these four temperaments, which complement each other.

And finally the last factor is the Unity of Consciousness.  Most of the modern strategies on teamwork and other social and organizational strategies aim at arriving some form of unity of the outer life.  But for a stable and sustainable outer unity, it must be based on an inner unity of consciousness felt concretely in the deeper levels of the mind and heart of people, which is not dependent on outer factors of unity like common goal or shared values.  This deeper unity is the foundation of true love beyond the transient and fickle vagaries of human emotions and sentiments and its likes and dislikes.  When someone mentioned to Sri Aurobindo that love must be the basis of an ideal community, Sri Aurobindo said with a touch of humour:

“Love is not enough.  Something more than love is needed.  Unity of consciousness is more important than love—Love also leads to quarrel.  Nobody quarrels more than lovers.  You know the Latin proverb that each quarrel is a renewal of love.  Love is a fine flower but unity of consciousness is the root.” (4)

This inner unity can be achieved only by a psychological discipline, which has two aspects.  The positive side of the discipline is to consciously cultivate in our thought, feelings speech and action all that unites like kindness, charity, generosity, humility, harmony, trust, understanding non-judgemental attitude, forgiveness.  The negative side is to reject all that divides people and create conflict and friction like jealousy, suspicion, animosity, intolerance, vengefulness, pride, arrogance, sarcasm, sense of superiority, self-righteousness, and harsh judgements.  This inner discipline of purification has to be pursued along with a process of internalization of consciousness, which means learning to enter into the depth of our consciousness where unity exists as a concrete fact, experience and realization.

 References:

1. Kazeebeth J.K, Smith K.D, ‘The Discipline of Teams,’ March-April 1993, p.26-40.
2. Anita Wooley and Thomas Malone, ‘What Makes a Team Smarter? More Woman,’ Harvard Business Review, June 2011, p. 26-27.
3. Steven Prokesh, ‘How GE Teaches Teams to Lead Change,’ Harvard Business Review, January 2009, p. 87-101.
4. Sri Aurobindo, (1983) Evening Talks, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry, pp.584.

FAQ’s of Children-IV-M.S. Srinivasan

(The principal of a large school in Bombay gave us a list of frequently asked questions by 13 year old children in her school and asked us whether we can prepare answers in the light of a spiritual perspective.  When we looked at the question we found that they are not mere “kid-stuff.”  Most of them are either fundamental and existential questions related to world and God or psychological problems faced by most of us.  This series is an attempt to answer these questions from the children’s perspective in the light of a spiritual vision of life.  We don’t know how far we have succeeded in communicating to the children.  Nevertheless, we hope these answer may be of some help to teachers and parents who have to deal with children.  There are around thirty questions with answers given in the light of a spiritual vision of life.  We will post these questions at regular intervals.)

What is hell, and is it really under the earth? Is there such a place which is a heaven

Is that what you heard about Hell and Heaven? What else you have heard or read? Hell is under earth and Heaven is above in the Sky? Hell is where people are endlessly tortured for their sins and Heaven is where people enjoy all sorts of pleasures for their virtues?  These are some of the popular ideas of hell and heaven which are mostly distorted conceptions of a truth beyond them.

The first thing we have to understand is that Hell and Heaven are not part of earth’s geography.  They do not exist anywhere in our material world.  In a deeper and truer perspective Hell and Heaven are inner, psychological states of consciousness.  For example when you feel very angry, jealous, vengeful, depressed, unhappy, how do you feel inwardly? It is more or less a state of hell.  Similarly how do you feel when you are loving, kind, benevolent, affectionate, forgiving, and cheerful?  It is more or less the state of heaven.  The following Zen story illustrates this deeper view of hell and heaven:

There lived in a small kingdom a great Zen master. One day the military chief of the kingdom came to see the Zen master. The General, a big man with a long sword hanging in his hips, haughtily asked the Zen master:

“Where is Hell and Heaven?’

The Master looked at the General with his small eyes and with a mischievous smile in his lips, said: “First tell me big man who are you”. The big man said proudly, “I am the military general of this kingdom”. The Master laughed loudly and said, “God save our kingdom! You look like a bloated pig and a butcher.  Who made you the general?” The general, red with anger, took his sword and shouted at the Master, “How dare you insult me”. The Master again laughed, “Oh, you have a sword! It seems to me that your sword cannot even kill a rat, how can it save this kingdom”. The General, furious with rage, placed the sword at the Master’s neck and glowed.” If you insult me further, I will kill cut you to pieces”.  The Master looked at the general calmly and said slowly and deliberately, stressing each word:

“Understand, my dear big man, you are now in Hell.”

The Master’s words penetrated the mind and heart of the general with a sudden illumination. The general dropped his sword on the ground. Bowing his head low before the Master, the general said, “I understand holy man. Please forgive me for my foolish behaviour”. The Master said smiling:

“Understand, my dear big man, you are now in heaven.”

However even this beautiful and illuminating Zen story does not give the entire truth of heaven and hell.  There is another more universal aspect to it which requires an understanding of the Indian concept of Law of Karma.  In simple words, Law of Karma means the consequences of our action bounces back on us.  When you throw a ball on the wall it bounces back on to you.  When you shout something in the midst of a mountaineer terrain you can hear the echo of it bouncing back to your ears.  Here is an interesting and illustrative story which may give you a glimpse of how Law of Karma works:

“A little boy got angry with his mother and shouted at her, ‘I hate you, 1 hate you.’  For fear of being reprimanded, he ran out of the house. He went up to the mountains and shouted, ‘I hate you, I hate you,’ and back came the echo ‘1 hate you, 1 hate you.’ This was the first time that he had heard an echo. He got scared, went to his mother for protection, and said there was a bad boy in the valley who shouted ‘I hate you, I hate you.’  The mother understood the problem and asked her son to go back to the mountain and shout ‘1 love you, 1 love you,’ and back came the echo: ‘I love you, I love you.’  That taught the little boy a lesson that our life is like an echo; we get back what we give.”

In human life, Law of Karma works something like this: If you throw upon others thoughts or feelings of hate, anger or jealousy or vengefulness, it returns upon you with a more or less the same face from others.  If you throw thoughts or feelings of hate or dislike on others, you will also be hated and disliked by other, bringing unhappiness and misery to your life.  In terms of actions, if you do something which brings pain to others or if you do something which goes against universal laws of Nature, life or Divine, then also it will have its consequences in the form of pain, which means, it will also return upon you in the form of pain.   And conversely if your thoughts and feeling are full of love, kindness generosity and goodwill to others, you will also feel a similar response from others bringing harmony and happiness and love in your relationship.  Similarly, if what you do brings happiness and well being to others, then the law of karma will return that happiness to you or, if your actions are in harmony with the universal laws, it leads to joy.  So the Law of Karma teaches us the biblical dictum, “Do unto others what you want others do unto you.”  Moreover this is something logical.  It is illogical to expect the other person to be good to you when you don’t have any goodwill for him or he will like or love you, when you harbor a dislike for him.

We are now moving towards a more universal and scientific understanding of Hell and Heaven.  They are states of consciousness where we experience the consequences of our actions interms of Misery and Happiness.   When our actions or the motives behind them are full of negativities or brought pain to others or deviates form the laws of life, the consequences are pain, which is the state of hell.    Similarly when our actions brought joy to others or in harmony with the laws of life, it leads to happy consequences which are the state of heaven.  However you must keep in mind, the consequences are not immediate.  The consequences of the law of karma take some time to have their effect.  Secondly the consequences may be inward, in the mind and heart of the person, and not necessarily in the outer life.  For example, someone who is outwardly rich and prosperous, or appears to be happy may not be inwardly happy if his thoughts, feelings and actions are full of negativities.  He is inwardly in a state of pain but outwardly may not appear to be so.  Similarly, someone who is outwardly poor or living in  a difficult or miserable environment may be inwardly happy, if his thoughts, feelings and actions are positive and beneficent.

Another important factor we have to keep in mind is that the death of the body does not put an end to our mind and heart.  Our mind and heart are made of different kind of energies than the physical energies of the body.    So when our body dies our mind and heart remain alive in another subtler world which is invisible to our senses.  And therefore whatever inner condition we have achieved through our actions, misery or happiness, remain and continue after the death of our body.  This is perhaps the truth behind the popular religious conception that after the death of our body, we go to heaven and hell depending upon the nature of our life when we are alive in our body.  If our life is virtuous we go to heaven and enjoy godly pleasures and if it is sinful we go through terrible tortures in hell.  If we define Virtues as those actions which are in harmony with the laws of life or which bring happiness and wellbeing to other and sins as those actions which are against the laws of life and which brought pain to others, then we can see that the popular religious conceptions of heaven and hell have a truth in it, but expressed in a rather crude and distorted way.

However please don’t make a too rigid equation between Pain and Hell and Joy and Heaven and add a moral content to them like good and evil.   The equation pain=hell=sin=evil and a similar equation happiness=heaven=virtue=goodness are valid in a general way but not always entirely true.  Pain or suffering, though it may be like hell when we are experiencing it, is not always bad or evil.  Similarly happiness or joy, especially which comes from the pleasure of the senses, though it may be like heaven when we are enjoying it, is not always good in the long-term.  We have said that the Law of Karma brings pain when we deviate from the universal laws of life.  But this pain is not a punishment or something bad but a source of learning.  For example when a child touches fire it burns and the pain he feels is not a punishment for touching fire.  The child learns the nature of fire and will never touch it again.  Thus pain and suffering may have some positive evolutionary purpose and can be a source of learning, reflection and growth.   Similarly happiness which comes from pleasures of senses may lead to long-term pain.  So the laws of consequences are only one aspect of karma.  The other and higher aspect is learning and growth.  But to understand this aspect fully we have to make another leap of reason and intuition which is beyond the scope of our discussion.

Building a Woman Friendly Workplace-M.S. Srinivasan

(A mighty soft revolution is sweeping over the world; it is the relentless invasion of the workplace by woman.  Every year their advance continues remorselessly.  Now they account for half the labour force of most of the rich countries.  And they are rising higher and higher in the corporate ladder.  In the corporate world of the future it is not the hard and gross macho bravado but the soft and subtle feminine skills which are likely to be the driving factors of success and competitive advantage.  So those companies which are able to effectively harness the woman-power in their work-force will gain a distinctive advantage in the future.  However there are at present many hurdles which have to be overcome for building a woman-friendly workplace.  This article examines some of the major problems facing working woman and how to overcome them to create a work-place which can unleash the full creative potential of corporate woman.)

Key-perspectives: safe to woman; fair for woman; inner balance; sensitive to women; feminine advantage

Safe to Woman

The first requirement is safety.  The present corporate environment is not entirely safe to woman.  The menace of sexual harassment is threatening and crippling to corporate woman.   A US Judge Kozinski recognized: “It is a sobering revelation that every woman – every woman – who has spent time in the workforce in the last two decades can tell at least one story about being the object of sexual harassment.” Here are some sad and grim facts on sexual harassment in the work-place from the US corporate scene:

• One study of Fortune 500 companies found that almost two thirds of sexual harassment complaints were brought against a woman’s immediate supervisor or another person with greater power. Other studies have shown that half of all sexual harassers are the direct supervisors of their target, and that supervisors are more likely to engage in and get away with more severe forms of harassment.
• Because of the workplace hierarchy, the sexually harassed woman is unlikely to complain. Often, she is economically and emotionally dependent on her aggressor. Moreover, the abuse is humiliating, so the victim is motivated to keep it secret.
• A Cleveland State Law Review Article entitled “The Present State of Sexual Harassment Law: Perpetuating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Sexually Harassed Women” reported that 90% to 95% of sexually harassed women suffer from some debilitating stress reaction, including anxiety, depression, headaches, sleep disorders, weight loss or gain, nausea, lowered self-esteem and sexual dysfunction.
• One study found that fully 50% of women who filed a complaint in California were fired; another 25% resigned due to the stresses of the complaint process or the harassment itself. A study of federal employees reported that those who have been harassed lose $4.4 million in wages and 973,000 hours in unpaid leave each year. (hrguide.com)

This fact-file is on the US workplace.  We can assume the situation in India and other countries are more or less the same.  For sexual harassment is not a culture or nation-specific phenomenon but the outer expression of some common and universal fault-lines in human nature. What is the remedy?

Let us proceed step by step, moving from the external to the internal remedies.  The first step in the process is reporting the offense.  The organisation has to create the right environment and the right process which is safe for the victim to report, which means two things: confidentiality of the reporter and an assurance that there will be no reprisal from the offender.  The second step is to create a redressal mechanism or system which a fair and firm, swift and decisive.  Most of the progressive organisations which take sexual harassment seriously have a zero-tolerance policy; if the offender is found guilty he is dismissed.  In general, we can say this is the right approach.  However the process of justice should be not only firm and decisive but should also be fair, which means the following factors have to be given due consideration and not hastily dismissed in our over eagerness or feminist zeal for justice:

• Genuineness of the complaint
• Nature and circumstance of the offense
• Social and cultural background of the offender
• Proper training of the investigating officers in conducting the enquiry or the enquiry has to be done by people who have the right expertise or competence for it.
• Possibility of reformation of the offender through wise counseling.

Take for instance, the cultural background of the offender.  Here is an example narrated in a leading Indian business magazine which brings out the importance of this factor in conducting a fair enquiry.  A young man from a rural background, fresh from college, joined a software firm.  He was attracted to one of his female colleagues and e-mailed a love letter to her. She was offended and reported the incident immediately to her superiors.  When the offended was called to explain, he was shocked and surprised to know that his behaviours was not acceptable in the company.  Similarly, when engineering or management graduates are recruited on a large scale, they come with their campus habits like loose flirting, lewd language or eve teasing.  Many of them may not be aware that such habits and behaviour are unacceptable in a more matured and professional corporate environment.

One more example from a cultural-spiritual organization.  He is basically a decent and well-behaved young man who was very friendly with a female member of the organisation.  But certain unpleasant incidents created a sexually charged tension and conflict between them.  The female member felt harassed and threatened and complained to the authorities.  The psychiatric experts said that the offender was unbalanced and had to be temporarily suspended until he regains his balance with medical treatment.  The leaders of the organisation pondered over the situation; considering the circumstances, past history and nature of the person, he was treated with understanding and patience.  Slowly the young man regained his balance and again became a normal and useful member of the community without any further trouble.

The reporting process and the system of justice should be as fast as possible.   But it should not be too swift, which ignores the fine nuances of the problem and the need for fairness.  There should be no fixed or rigid rules like for instance the victim should report the offense within 24 hours.  The harassment may be subtle and the woman may be uncertain about the intention of the offender.  For example, Nira Anand, Head, Human Resources, World Bank, states, “In the early part of my career, while on travel a colleague wanted to finish a report late in my room and another commented on my lipstick.  What you will do.”  (Saumya and B. Puja M, 2010) So the person who experiences harassment, must be given sufficient time to see how the thing develops and decide or discuss the matter with a knowledgeable and understanding counselor.   If the process of justice has to be fair, taking into many causative factors, it needs an optimum time frame to deliver justice.

In a large organization which has sufficient resource, all these factors which he have discussed above can be properly documented, researched and analyzed.  This may lead to a deeper understanding of the problem, which can help the company in taking preventive measures in recruitment, training, induction programmes and other HRD policies and practices.

We have discussed so far some of the external remedies for sexual harassment.  They are very much necessary but not sufficient.  The lasting solution to the problem can be achieved only through an inner change and transformation brought about by education.  This education must be an integral part of the training and development programmes for employees.  Here again providing information on the various aspects of the problem, like for example, what constitutes sexual harassment, related laws, company policies and practices, is necessary but not enough.  There must be a deeper and broader awakening into the social and psychological causes which lead to the offence.

The trainee or the learner must be given a clear understanding of the causative factors in the social environment like for example media images of woman.  Along with this external education there must be an internal education through self-observation.  The trainee has to be taught how to observe his inner movements with scientific objectivity and detachment, which leads to a deep, insightful understanding of the inner sexual or sex-related impulses that cause violence against woman, like for example, compulsive infatuation or lust or the urge for power, domination, enjoyment, exploitation.  He must see and feel how much he is driven like a slave by these impulses and experience the inner freedom which comes from inwardly stepping back from them.

Another factor which can bring about deep inner change is aesthetics.  A comprehensive and holistic aesthetic education through cultivation of the sense of the beautiful and harmonious can bring about a deep refinement of the consciousness, especially in the sexual impulses.  When this psychological and aesthetic education, combined together, is pursued with sincerity and persistence it can lead to a more beautiful, harmonious and understanding relationship between man and woman and put an end to all forms of violence against woman.

Fair for Woman

To be fair for woman means there must be no discrimination based on gender and equal opportunities for growth and advancement.  More than half of human population is woman. In the working population, share of woman is progressing rapidly toward 50%.  In this demographic situation, if there is no discrimination against woman, then 50% of leaders and managers must be woman.  But this is not happening.  The performance of corporate world in this domain is not very satisfactory and that of corporate India is dismal.  For example only 15% of all senior management positions in corporate India are held by women – this puts India in the bottom five globally.

Here again, what is the solution?  Make a conscious effort to achieve the target of 50% woman in the total employee strength as well as in leadership positions─not in order to comply with legal requirements but for the sake of equality and diversity.  There are some progressive companies in India and abroad, which are making this effort toward gender equality and diversity.  IBM, India has placed an executive, Diversity Manger, to take care of gender and diversity issues.  Mahindra and Mahindra has set the target of 50% woman in its workforce and has a recruitment policy stating that if all factor other than gender are the same, it will prefer to hire woman.  At Infosys, Narayana Murthy, had set up IWIN, Infosys Woman Inclusive Network in 2003, with the following objectives:

• Create a gender sensitive and inclusive work-environment and thereby make Infosys the employer of choice for woman.
• Help woman in their career life-cycles through support groups and policies and thereby enhance retention
• Develop woman for managerial and leadership roles and thereby maintain gender ratios at all the levels of the organisation.  (Saumya and B. Puja M, 2010)

We need many such initiatives to make the work-place more fair to woman.

Towards Inner Balance

However 50-50 principle should not be confined to the external life of the organization; it has to extend itself deeper into the moral and psychological dimension, into the realm of values, qualities and faculties.  Since the dawn of human civilization, except perhaps in a few civilizations or in a some epochs of history, the Male psyche and its hard masculine values of power, aggression, authority, hierarchy, control, subjugation, rationalism, individualism, self-assertion, had more or less dominated the inner and outer life of the race.  The time has come to restore the balance through an increasing manifestation of the “soft” or feminine values like beauty, harmony, grace, balance, compassion, ecological and social sensitivity, equity and a more non-hierarchical, participative and inclusive leadership.

There are two types of inner change which are needed to create this inner balance.  First is an inner change in attitude and a sincere inner acceptance of the need for equality and balance.  Without this inner change, discrimination will persist in a subtle and less conscious form.  The well known Apparel firm, Levi Strauss discovered this obstacle to achieve diversity when a small group of woman and minority managers asked for a private meeting with the CEO Robert Hass and expressed their grievances.  The performance of Levi Strauss in diversity was excellent in terms of numbers.  But the managers who met Haas felt that there were invisible barriers keeping woman and minorities from advancing in the organisations.  After a long, heated and painful discussion and debate in a retreat, the top management of Levi Strauss came to the conclusion that equality and diversity is, “not a matter of numbers but of attitude and that considerable unconscious discrimination still existed at the company, something needed to be done.”  This example from Levi Strauss shows that to achieve genuine equality and diversity there must be a strong emphasis in the education and training programmes and policy directives on change in inner attitudes which translates itself in corresponding outer practices. (Haas, R, 1990)

The other inner change which has to be achieved is an increasing manifestation of feminine values, qualities and faculties through a positive encouragement to the growth of these inner factors.  For, every individual has a masculine and feminine side, though those who have a feminine or masculine body may have a natural and inborn affinity or inclination for the corresponding qualities or values.  .  However, the aim or ideal to be achieved is not a swing to the other extreme of domination by woman or feminine qualities but a psychological balance between feminine and masculine qualities and faculties in the work-force.  Emotional intelligence, social sensitivity, pragmatic intuition, executive competence, caring for people, nurturing community, collaborative leadership are some of feminine qualities and faculties natural to woman.  On the other hand conceptual intelligence, logical and analytical thinking, envisioning the long-term future, perceiving the big-picture, philosophical or metaphysical speculations are some of the masculine competencies natural to men.  There must be a balanced development of feminine and masculine competencies in the work-force.

Sensitive to Woman

To be sensitive to woman means to be responsive to her special needs and unique potentialities.  The working women have some special needs like maternity, caring for elders, ministering to the family and the home and as a result, a more pressing need for work-life balance.  For effective motivation and full engagement of woman, all these needs of woman have to be given careful and sympathetic consideration by corporate management, Sylvia Hewlett in her book “Off ramps and Onramps” discusses the critical question what could be done to retain talented woman in the workplace.  Sylvia stresses on the need to understand that woman have a different set of responsibilities in their personal lives, which percolate into their work lives.  This calls for a more flexible work situation for woman to accommodate their wide-ranging responsibilities like bearing child, caring for aging parents and many other household demands. (Sylvia, H, 2007)

Flexitime, telecommuting, daycare centres for children are some of the well known practices adopted by progressive organizations for creating woman friendly workplace.  However these practices are only external aids.  For a deeper  and a more holistic engagement of woman, work-life balance and responding to woman’s needs have to become part of the internal attitudes, values and culture of the organization as a whole and at all the levels of the corporate hierarchy.  If a corporate management says to its woman employees, “we have provided all the felicities you need like flexitime and daycare centres.  Don’t talk any more about work-life balance or bring your womanly problems to the work-place” then it is not sensitive to woman.  In a truly woman-friendly culture, work-life balance is not merely a matter of flexitime or daycare centres but a conscious, continuous and collective effort between the bosses, subordinates and peers, sustained through careful, considerate and sympathetic listening, dialogue, mentoring, counseling and mutual adjustment.  For example, when a woman employee has a work-life problem or any problem or issue related to her needs, then she, her boss, her helpful peers and subordinates, and if required an officer from HR department, sit together and arrive at a mutually satisfactory solution.  In otherwords, work-place becomes an extended family of the employee.  Interestingly, this is what Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi Co said about her company.  She said in one of her interviews that Pepsi Co was for her like an extended family.  (Indra Nooyi, 2002) If every employee of PepsiCo feels like Indra Nooyi then it is a great compliment to this Fortune 500 firm.

The other aspect of sensitivity is to be responsive to the unique potentialities of woman.  As we have discussed earlier the feminine nature has some unique competencies like emotional intelligence, pragmatic intuition, sense of the community, collaborative leadership, empathy or “social intelligence.”  The woman executive or the employee has to be given sufficient freedom, opportunities and encouragement to express her natural competencies in her work-life and should not be compelled or induced to imitate the male model of behaviour or attitudes.  This will lead to greater creativity in the work-place because it will complement the male values, attitudes and competencies which dominate the present corporate life.

The Feminine Advantage

This brings us to an important and promising factor or trend which has the potential to end discrimination against woman; it is the recognition of the feminine advantage.  There is a growing recognition among corporate executives that more woman in the workplace, apart from its moral and social significance, will ultimately have a beneficial impact on the performance of the organization as a whole.  Rajeev Dubey, President Group HR and Member of the Group Management Board of Mahindra and Mahindra, states, “We believe it is an advantage to have more women.  We have observed that innovation is better.  Often woman bring with them points of view not expressed by men.” (Saumya and B. Puja M, 2010)

There is empirical support for this perspective from recent studies and research.  For example, research done by leads University Business School concludes that having atleast one female director reduces a company’s chance of bankruptcy by 20 percent.  In another survey conducted worldwide by Aziz Corporation, a UK based executive leadership consultants, 80% of executives felt a dominant male culture was responsible for the global financial crisis.  Alyse Nelson, President and CEO, Vital Voices Global Partnership, states, “Recent research shows that companies with most woman on boards outperform those with the least with an 83 percent higher return on invested capital” and quotes Robert R. Zoelick President of World Bank as saying: “Gender equality is just smart economics.”  (Shalini.S.D, 2010) There are at present a growing number of studies and research on the nature of feminine competencies.  Here are some conclusions of these studies, which give an indication of what woman can bring to the work-place:

• Women add value to any task assigned to them with their own special, personal, emotional and functional attributes.
• Women are more goal-driven, more responsive to co-workers, customers and stakeholders and more capable of getting the best out of them than men who are self-centered and careerist.
• Women consistently score over men in trustworthiness, diligence, thoroughness, studiousness, loyalty, earnestness, honesty, human relations, better judgement helped by intuition, sharper reflexes in handling issues and events, superior skills in management. (Forte, J, 2007)
• Women are better than men in effective communication, community-building, collaborative leadership, connecting with others and arriving at a consensus. (Forte, J, 2007)

Conclusions:

The rapid conquest of the work-place by women is one of the important movements of our present age.  If the corporate world wants to harness fully the potentialities of its woman-force it has to create an environment which is safe from the menace of sexual harassment, free from the hurdle of sexual discrimination, sensitive to the special needs of woman and helps her to balance her work and life or in otherwords, it must be an environment which is safe, fair, sensitive and supportive to woman.

References:

Forte J, ‘Five Reasons Why Woman Should Lead at Work’ http://Ezinesarticle.com/expert=jayforte

Haas, Robert, ‘Values make the company’ An Interview with Robert Hass by Robert Howard, Harvard Business Review, 1^st Sep 1990, p. 6-20

Indra Nooyi, Interview with Pepsico, 23^rd Sep 2002

Saumya, Bhattacharjee and Pooja Mehra, ‘Corporate Apartheid’, Business Today, 17^th October 2012, p. 41-46

Saumya, Bhattacharjee and Pooja Mehra, ‘In Good Company’, Business Today, 17^th December 2010, p.52-54.

‘Sexual Harassment in the workplace,’ http://www.hrguide.com\data\A07202htm

Shalini S. Dagar, ‘Yin Power’, Business Today, 28^th Nov 2010, p. 106-08

Sylvia, Hewlett, ‘Off ramps and Onramps’, 2007, Harvard Business School Publishing, Harvard Way, Boston

FAQ’s of Children-III-M.S. Srinivasan

(The principal of a large school in Bombaygave us a list of frequently asked questions by 13 year old children in her school and asked us whether we can prepare answers in the light of a spiritual perspective.  When we looked at the question we found that they are not mere “kid-stuff.”  Most of them are either fundamental and existential questions related to world and God or psychological problems faced by most of us.  This series is an attempt to answer these questions from the children’s perspective in the light of a spiritual vision of life.  We don’t know how far we have succeeded in communicating to the children.  Nevertheless, we hope these answer may be of some help to teachers and parents who have to deal with children.  There are around thirty questions with answers given in the light of a spiritual vision of life.  We will post these questions at regular intervals.)

Why the World Exist and Why there Is Life on Earth?

These two are related questions, the second question more or less a subset or corollary of thefirst.  So let us examine them together.

These questions can be answered at various angles or levels: scientific,philosophical, spiritual and practical. According to modern science, in our solar system, life exists only onearth.  There may be life in other earthsand other planets in the universe, in other solar system.  But in our solar system life is there only onearth.  And scientists also tell us thatif the carbon atom, which is the basis of life in our planet, has one electronless in its orbit, there won’t be any life in our planet.  This means the entire earthly creation is sominutely planned to bear life.  This also indicates, there must be some great purpose behind the world we live.  You can now see how the two questions we are discussing, “why the world exist?” and “why there is life on earth” are closely related.

But what is this great purpose behind our planet and life in it? The key to the answer liesin another concept of Science: Evolution. Most of you might have studied the Darwin’s theory of evolution and howlife appeared in our planet.  We will notenter into the scientific details but will explore it through imagination. For,as the great scientist, Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more importantthan knowledge.”

So imagine you are some sort of an eternal Witness to the history of earth.  At the beginning there was only the world ofMatter, the sand and the stone and the volcano and the sea on the land belowand the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky above.  If you watch and observe patiently for many more thousands of years, you will see something new emerging from the bare stone, something green, more living than brute matter: leaves, grass, bush,meadows, plants, trees, flowers.  Whathas happened? The world has progressed and acquired a new potentiality calledlife? What is this Life? What is the main difference between Matter and Life? Unlike the stone which is closed upon itself, the life in plants is open andresponsive to the outer environment.  Youmight have studied photosynthesis in your science course, how the plant absorbs sunlight, take carbon from the atmosphere, emit oxygen and make the nutrientsneeded for its growth.  This is life or to be more precise, plant-life.

The next important question is from where this life, this new potentiality has come,like an impossible green living miracle from the bare “dump” stone?  Here there is a divergence of opinion between modern science and ancient Indian philosophy. According to Science, life is the result of a chance combination ofatoms and molecules.  When the atomic ormolecular structure of matter acquires a certain complexity, life emerges.  But from where? Science has no clear answersto this question where? But according to Indian philosophy, life already existsin Matter as an unmanifest potential.  Whenthe atomic structure of Matter acquires a certain complexity, it manifests andcreates the living matter of the plant. We must note here this Indian idea is not entirely unscientific.  An eminent Indian scientist, Jagdish ChandraBose has proved by rigorous experiment that the potentiality of life exists inMatter in a rudimentary form.

We are nowin a better position to understand the meaning of Evolution and a firstindication of an answer to the questions we are discussing.  The essence of evolution is growth,progress.  And the essence of thisevolutionary growth or progress is the emergence or manifestation of apotential which has remained hitherto dormant, involved or unmanifest.  Life which remained involved in the stone hasevolved and become the plant.

What was the next stage in this evolutionary progress of Matter? If you continue witnessingthe journey of evolution for some more thousands of years, you will seeappearing in this unseeing world of stone and plant, something moving withcurious eyes.  Our many-legged, or legless or winged brothers; reptiles, birds, animals, big and small, from thetiny insect to the huge dinosaurs; crawling, hopping, flying, running.  Thus after the plant came the animal with ahigher potentiality than the plant. While the plant can only respond to the environment, the animal can“sense” the world.  They have asensational mind which can see, touch, smell and hear and quite possibly feeland have similar emotions like us.

And again, if you still continue witnessing this aeonic spectacle of evolution one day youwill see an animal, perhaps a monkey or a gorilla, stands erect, looks up in tothe sky, and becomes, —Man.  According to historians, Neanderthal is one of the earliest and the most primitive typeof man.  And the  Neanderthal who is probably a hunter, has progressed fast to become the agriculturalist, trader, warrior, king,industrialist, engineer, doctor, thinker, writer, poet, artist, philosopher,sage; producing, building, creating, inventing, thinking and seeking for theinvisible realities beyond the senses. So after the animal came we, the humans, with a thinking self-consciousmind which cannot only sense things but can think and asks questions like theone we are discussing, “why the world exist” which the animal can never ask.

This brings us to another important difference between the scientific and spiritualconception of evolution.  According tothe scientific conception evolution is mainly evolution of outer form. But in the spiritual conception, evolution is mainly evolution of consciousness.  Consciousness in matter evolves and becomesthe plant; consciousness in plant evolves and becomes the animal; consciousnessin the animal evolves and becomes the man. And this progress in evolution is in essence a progressive increase in consciousness.  Plant is more consciousthan stone; animal is more conscious than plant; man is more conscious than the animal.

Thus we can see that the world is not something stagnant but something evolving, progressive; it has progressed from Matter to Life and from Life to Mind.  And from Mind to—where? Perhaps towards something which has a greater potentiality than the mind, some thing much moreperfect, beautiful, harmonious and divine than our human mind, another greatleap forward in consciousness towards a greater consciousness beyond the human mind? We can say the world exists because it is a grand divine experiment inevolution, progressing towards a great divine goal.  There is life on earth because it is a stage in evolution.   We human being, with our thinking mind, exist, because we and our mind are also a stage in evolution.  But our human mind and human life are still very imperfect.  This you can see when you study and observecarefully and attentively the world created by our human mind, which is aroundus and also the inner world of our thoughts and feelings.  When you read the newspaper or see the Newsin TV you will have some glimpse of the world made by our human mind; it isfull of war, conflict, poverty, violence, exploitation, environmentaldegeneration.  And the world outside is areflection of the world within us, because as a great modern seer has said, “Weare the world.”  The world around, not the world created by Nature which is beautiful, but the world created by us isso imperfect, full of jarring conflict and ugliness because our mind isimperfect, full of selfishness, and negative feelings like anger, jealousy andvengefulness.  We, human beings, individually and collectively, as a race, have to raise beyond our imperfect human mind to a greater and more perfect consciousness beyond mind, which isthe consciousness of the divinity within us, which is beautiful, harmonious,loving, and blissful.  When we are ableto reach this higher consciousness beyond mind, live, act and create from thisdivine consciousness, we will build a world which is free from war and conflictand poverty and which is true, beautiful, harmonious and perfect.  This is the next step in human and planetaryevolution.  This is the reason why the world exists and life appeared on earth.

Why the school exists? For you to study and learn. Why the playground exists? For you to play. Why the world exists? For us to grow and evolve towards the divine perfection within us and help the world to grow towards its own similar divine perfection.  The world around us is a larger school which provides us with the experiences needed for our growth andevolution towards the divine goal.  Thesmaller school where you study must help you to learn the art and science of evolution which means how to learn, grow and evolve in the larger world-school.

Inner Awakening of the Collectivity–M.S. Srinivasan

A collectivity, like a nation, community or an organisation is a living human organism with an inner and outer being.  So, as in the case of the individual, for the integral development of the human potential in a community, its outer life as well as the inner being has to be fully developed to their utmost capabilities.  However, in an approach which aims at integrating the individual and collective life of man around the inner essence of the human being, the predominant stress has to be on living, moulding and shaping the outer life from within outwards.  In this article we examine the basic principles and the process of this inner awakening of the collectivity with an emphasis on understanding the guiding values and ideals and the nature of education and discipline which will lead to this awakening.

The Process of Inner Awakening: Individual and Collective

Most of us, individually, live in our surface consciousness tethered to the body with a heavily externalised outlook on things.  The first major step in the inner development of the individual is to cease to be the physical man living mainly in his bodily consciousness and become the vital and mental man who lives predominantly either in his emotional, vital, pragmatic or thinking mind and will.  This happens in the course of natural evolution of the individual, but which can be accelerated by integral education. As he progresses further in his inner development by following a Yogic discipline, he enters into the deeper layers of his vital and mental consciousness which are called in integral psychology as the subliminal consciousness.  As he plunges further beyond the subliminal he enters into the spiritual realms of consciousness.  These deeper and higher levels of consciousness are in direct contact with the universal consciousness and energies of Nature with a higher range of faculties, beyond the ordinary mind. They can perceive the deeper and the inner realities which are invisible to the ordinary mind and the occult, psychological, cosmic and spiritual forces behind the outer phenomena.

As the individual progresses in these higher ranges of consciousness, he begins to live more and more from within outwards.  He is no longer a slave of his superficial surface mature which is mostly formed by the external and environmental influences.  The more he was able to live from within outwards, the more he becomes the master of his environment, no longer shaped by the environment but moulding it according to the deeper and higher knowledge and values of his inner being.

But the Individual is a manifesting instrument of Universal Nature for the progressive realisation of her evolutionary possibilities in the outer life of the collectivity or the world.  So whatever new change or potentiality which the individual realises in his consciousness becomes a potential possibility for the collectivity. It becomes a manifest actuality when more and more individuals have the same realisation and express it in the outer life.  However this may not happen immediately if the individual realisation is far ahead of the collectivity and the collectivity is not yet ready, either inwardly or outwardly to understand, assimilate or live the new idea or realisation.  But still the individual realisation casts a seed in the collective consciousness, which sprouts and bears its fruits when the collective soil is ready for it.  So as more and more individuals grow inwardly and learn to live from within outwards the collectivity also follows a similar pattern of inner development which he have sketched earlier, from the physical, to the vital and the mental, and then deeper into the subliminal and finally into the spiritual.  Let us now examine briefly some of the possibilities of this higher evolution of the collectivity and how it can be consciously engineered.  We have already discussed in some details, the fundamental principles of this higher evolution.  We may now reexamine them in a different perspective in the light of our present theme, that is, within outwards.

The Path of Collective Self-realisation

The consciousness of the collectivity is always at a much lower level than its most advanced or even its average individuals.  The collectivity is mostly an obscure mass, which lives, in its subconscious physical and vital instincts.  But in our modern age, a considerable part of this collective mass is getting more and more mentalised, at the various levels of the mind.  For our human mind is not a homogenous entity, but exists at various levels.

At the lowest level is what we may call as the sensational and informational mind.  This part of the mind receives whatever sensations and informations which it can get from the external world in a chaotic mass and it is not capable of any coherent thinking.  The next higher layer of the mind surface is the emotional, dynamic and pragmatic intelligence and will which brings worldly success, power and wealth.  It is the mind of the successful businessman, entrepreneur, politician, industrialist, and professional.  The third layer is the rational, ethical and aesthetic intelligence which is capable of abstract and conceptual thinking, seeks for higher values like truth, beauty and goodness and tries to organise life according to these higher ideals.  These two higher layers of the mind are potentially capable of receiving the deeper and higher intuitions and inspirations of the subliminal and spiritual mind and when they are able to do it, they become intuitive intelligence.

At present majority of the mentalised human mass lives in the first layers of the mind.  However, since the days of industrial revolution more and more of the human mass is entering into the second layer.  The third layer is still a small minority of the ēlite of humanity.  We can say the collectivity has reached the first decisive stage in its inner evolution, when the majority of its members begins to live in the two higher layers of the mind, with its leaders of thought and action living in the deepest and highest point of their emotional, pragmatic and thinking intelligence, touched by the ethical and the aesthetic, receiving the intuitions and inspirations of the sublimal and spiritual, and shaping the outer life according to the greater knowledge and values of these deeper and higher realms of consciousness.

This higher evolution of the collectivity will open up many new possibilities.  When the thinking, pragmatic or scientific mind of our modern humanity begins to open itself to the subliminal consciousness it may lad to a new science with a more direct action of mind over life and matter and a more direct and conscious communion of Mind with Mind without the need for any intermediary physical instruments or in other words a new revival of occultism and parapsychology.  For subliminal is the realm of the occult and parapsychological phenomena like extrasensory perception, telepathy, telecognition and telekinesis.  This entry into the subliminal has advantages as well as dangers.

The advantage is that it will lead to a vast extension of the existing powers of the human mind and a greater mastery of the mind over life and matter.  But if this emergence of subliminal powers of the mind is not accompanied by an equally strong ethical, aesthetic and spiritual awakening, we will go on committing the same mistakes we are committing now like war and violence of all kinds, but on a larger scale with greater powers and more disastrous consequences.  But even spiritual awakening, if it is onesided, exclusive or self contained as it happened in a certain stage in the evolution of Indian civilisation tends to draw away from the world and therefore cannot lead to the integral fulfillment of humanity.  We need an integral spiritual vision and an approach to development which leads to integral flowering of the human potential in all the levels of the individual and collectivity, physical, vital, mental, subliminal and spiritual, and their harmonious self-expression in the economic, social, political and cultural life.

Each individual and collectivity has to be taken as they are in their present condition and awakened to their next higher evolutionary potentialities or possibilities.  Those individuals and communities who live predominantly in their physical consciousness have to be awakened to their vital and mental potentialities.  Those individuals who have attained a certain level of vital and mental development have to be awakened to their deeper, inner and nobler layers of their mind and heart and their spiritual self.  They have to be shown a path by which they can discover and live in this inner self and express its potentialities in their outer life.  This is the path of Yoga based on the following principles:

(1)   A preparatory inner purification of the mind and heart through a vital mental, moral and aesthetic discipline.  The main purpose of this discipline is to eliminate all forms of gross movements like inertia, laziness, violence, greed, lust, aggressive self-assertion from out nature and impose a calm and tranquil balance on our mind and heart.

(2)   In work and action progressive subordination of our ego and self-interests to a self-transcending mental, moral and spiritual ideal or cause with an emphasis on renunciation of the fruits of action or contribution to the common good of all and well-being of the whole.

(3)   A culture of increasing consciousness and self-awareness by which we can become more and more conscious of the various part and depths sand heights of our inner being and their laws and potentialities.

(4)   Developing the capacity for concentration, for focusing all the energies of our consciousness on an inner and outer object, idea, activity or a state of being or consciousness.

(5)   A discipline of introversion by which we can enter deep within ourself and come into some form direct contact or union with our inner most spiritual self or divinity within.

So, for the inner awakening of the individual and the collectivity we have to evolve an educational and human development strategy based on these five principles of Yoga.  And this human development strategy has to be integrated with an organisational strategy which links the individual awakening to the collectivity in such a way that whatever inner awakening which the individual realises in his consciousness is made manifest in the outer life and communicated to the collectivity.  If and when we able to do this then the collectivity will also begin to slowly and gradually progress inwardly from its subconscious state to become a more conscious organism.

The Vedic Philosophy–M.S. Srinivasan

Is there a philosophical element in the Vedas? The answer depends on the way we define philosophy.  If philosophy means intellectual enquiry or abstract conceptualising there is not much of this kind of philosophy in the Vedas except perhaps a few verses here and there.  But if philosophy means ideas, perceptions, intuitions and conceptions of ultimate and universal truths of God, man, world or aim of life, then we have in the Vedas a deep and profound philosophy which is the source and foundation of one of the greatest philosophical traditions of the world.  In the Vedas, Religion and Philosophy loose its distinction.  Philosophy is the direct expression of an inner religious, psychological or spiritual intuition, experience or realization in poetry.  And here again we see Vedas setting the trend and character of Indian philosophy as a whole.

We may now briefly examine the central perceptions of Vedic Philosophy.  We have already listed briefly the main discoveries of Vedic seers and discussed some of them in our earlier articles.  Let us make a brief summary of the philosophical intuitions of Vedic seers and thinkers.

The first and the most well-known statement of the Vedic seers is “The Reality is One, but the sages call it variously” Ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanthi.  Though this Vedic verse is quoted frequently, the deeper significance of the verse is not fully understood.  This verse negates the traditional western conception of the Veda as a polytheism.    However we can not also say, based on this verse, Veda’s central message is monotheism.

There are all shades of religious conceptions in the Vedas from polytheism, pantheism, monotheism to transcendental monism.  The first most direct and unmistakable message we get from the Ekam sad verse is that there is One Reality and the Gods are names and forms of that Oneness.  We must note here that Gods are not the partial expression or attributes of the One.  Each God is entirely that One.  The following verse from Yajur Veda makes it very clear:

 “Agni is That, Aditya is That, Vayu is That, Chandraman is That, the bright One is That Brahman is That, Apas are That, Prajapathi is That”.

This is the reason why in many of the Vedic hymns each God is extolled as if he is the Supreme Divine.  Each God is not only the Supreme but also contains all the other Gods within himself.  This means the Divinity can not be or rather should not be confined into a single or fixed religious formula.

Depending on the cosmic or terrestial needs of creation or evolution or the needs, temperament or the stage of evolution of the individual or community, the Supreme Divine can manifest or front Himself as nature-force, a cosmic power with a specific cosmic function, a God with a fixed attribute or a personal God with a limited name and form and qualities, keeping all other attributes and qualities behind, or a universal divine Person with infinite qualities but with no specific name and form or as an impersonal featureless and formless Reality  beyond all name and form and qualities.  All these are multiple spiritual poises or potentialities of the Divine Reality in which he dwells simultaneously, but he is also something inexpressible and absolute beyond all his “aspects”, poises, attributes or qualities.

All these ideas may not be explicitly stated in the Vedas but implied in the Vedic conception of the divinity, which was developed fully in later Indian religion which was given the name Hinduism.  A great Yogi of modern India, belonging to the Saiva Sidhantha school of Hinduism, conceived the Supreme Divine as the eternal Dancer who dances simultaneously in many postures.  Each posture, when reflected in the human mind, gives birth to a unique and distinct spiritual experience, philosophy or religion.  But the Supreme Dancer, while dwelling or present wholly in all His postures, is not exhausted by any or all of them.  He is eternal and unchanging beyond the whirls and postures of His dance.

The eternal dance itself may only be a poise in His unthinkable existence.  There is the other poise of eternal and immobile silence.  Or else the silence itself may be only a poise of His Dance, whirling so fast it appears as immobility.  This is one of the spiritual intuitions of Hinduism which is present as a suggestive seed in the Vedic intuition of the Divinity.

There are passages in the Vedas which seem to express “pantheism” identification of the divine or creator with all creation.  For example a Rig Vedic verse (10.221) says “In the beginning was the Golden Seed: once born he was the Lord of all that is”.  Then we are told that this Golden Seed, who is called the Prajapathi, Lord of all creatures identified Himself with the All.  He is or became the Universe and the life-force that pervades, he both became death and immortality.  He is also the creator of earth and heaven, king and lord of all that lives and breathes and the ruler of all thing according to the Law of Truth, Sathyadharma.  Zehner describes this verse as “the fusion of theism and pantheism which is so utterly characteristic of Hinduism”.  But a monistic pantheism is not the highest conception of the Vedas.  In the well-known Purushasuktha of the Rig Veda, we find a masterful synthesis of the transcendent and immanent aspect of the Godhead, expressed in a concrete, pregnant and revealing symbolism:

“Thousand headed is Purusha, thousand-eyed and thousand footed.  Enveloping the earth on every side he exceeds it by ten fingers breath.  Purusha is indeed this.  All what has been and is yet to come and he is the Lord of immortality and of what grows by eating food – - – One quarter of him is all contingent beings, three quarters of him is what is immortal in heaven.  With three-quarters of Purusha ascended one-quarter of him came into existence again down here.  Thence he did he stride forth on every side amongst all that eats and does not eat”.

The message and the symbolism is clear. The Purusha is at once immanent and transcendent. By “one quarter” of His being, he becomes the Universe and enters into the Universe, while the rest of the “three-quarters” of Him transcends the Universe.

There are some verses in the Vedas which are quoted quite often by scholars to show that Vedas are not mere poetry and myth but contains high philosophical speculations.  One such verse is the well-known creation hymn:

“Then neither Being or Non-being existed, neither atmosphere, nor the firmament, nor what is above it.  What did it encompass? Where? In whose protection? What was water, the deep, unfaithamable.

 Neither death nor immortality was there then, no sign of night or day.  The One breathed breathless by its own power not else but this existed then.

In the beginning was darkness; enveloped in darkness; all this was but unmanifested water, whatever was, that One, coming into being, hidden by the void generated by the power of heat(Tapas).

In the beginning desire (Kama) which was the first seed of mind covered it.  Wise seers, searching in their heart, found the source of Being in the Non-being.

Their cord was extended athwart.  Was there anything below? Givers of seed there were, and powers, beneath was energy and above impulse.

Who knows truly? Who can here declare whence it was been, whence is this emanation—who know whence it has arisen?    

Whether (God) created it or whether He did not, only He who is the overseer in higher heaven knows.  He only knows or perhaps He (also) knows not” (RV, 10,120)

This is undoubtedly exalted philosophy.  But is it the work of a speculative intellect or the spontaneous expression of an inner intuition, vision or experience? This creation hymn of the Rig Veda and many such verses in the Veda which express philosophical conceptions seem to proceed from an intuitive mind musing on a concrete inner perception of truth and not from the speculative intellect labouring over abstract conceptions.

However, there are some verses in the Veda which seem to be the expression of an enquiry or quest, like for example the following verse in the Atharva Veda.

“Tell me of the support of the Universe; who, the one among many is he in whom Adityas and Rudras and Vasus are united, in whom exists the past and future and all the worlds” (AV, X7.22)

But here also the quest seems to be more intuitive than intellectual.  There is an intuitive sense of the Unity and source of all Gods and all creation and a query who could be this unity and source.

But the most important part of Vedic philosophy are those verses which anticipate the philosophy of Upanishad and thereby highlight the continuity between the Vedic and Upanishadic thought.  The creation hymn, Purusha Saktha, and the verses which talk about Prajapathi as the creator of the Universe, already contain the seed of the Upanishadic idea of Brahman as the one without a second and the transendent and immanent source of creation. As we have mentioned earlier Vedic thinkers were already engaged in an intuitive quest for the unity and source of all existence, which is also the Upanishadic quest.  In the verse of a Yajur Vedic seer Vena, this quest culminates in a remarkable spiritual revelation, expressed in a thought, language and style which is similar to that of Upanishad:

“Vena beholds that being, hidden in mystery in whom all find one single home; in That all this Unites; from that all issues, for the omnipresent is the warp and woof of created things”(YV, 32,8)

Similarly, the other Upanishadic concept of the Atman, the divine Self in man emerges in the following verse of the Atharva Veda:

“In the lotus of nine doors (the human mind) enveloped in three strands dwells the spirit, Atman; this knower of Brahman knows.  Free from desire it is, wise, immortal, self-existent, delighting in its own sweetness, not lacking in anything.  Knowing this Atman, wise, ageless, young, one has no fear of death”(AV, 10.8)

And finally a beautiful verse in Isna Upanishad, expressing the identity of the individual Self with the Divine Reality, the Brahman is virtually reproduced from the following verse from the Yajur Veda:

“The face of the truth is covered with a golden lid.  The purusha who in the sun, I am He; OM, the Supreme Brahman” (YV, 40, 17)

Thus we can see that there is no radical change or discontinuity in the Upanishadic philosophy from that of the Vedic.  Most of the ideas of the Upanishad are already present in the Veda.  As Zehner, one of the more perceptive among western scholars states:

“It was once fashionable to contrast the inward-looking spirituality of the Upanishad with the crass sacrificial priest-craft of the Brahmans.  This however is a gross oversimplification, for there is no hard-and-fast dividing line between Samhithas and Brahmans and Brahmans and Upanishads, they merge imperceptibly into each other—”     (Hinduism, p.50)