Why did the world pause?
Musings on the significance of the Covid
Crisis for the future humanity
-
With the covid lockdown we, the
people of the world, are facing an unprecedented situation. As a good fraction
of the humanity is under confinement, in a forced state of global inaction, the
engines of the world are grinding to halt. The modern life and world is all
about action - ceaseless, indefatigable
and dizzying action. Introverted tendencies are discouraged, quietist
traditions are becoming obsolete. The world is in the grips of a scientific-economic
view of life. Man is a biochemical engine. Money is the sole token of value and meaning in life. There is hardly any space left for alternative views.
Seen through the lens of that view, things seemed to be going well with the
world in the recent times. The internet
brought in the knowledge explosion. The wealth of the nations is growing steadily.
The world was racing along like a giant train with a gas pedal and no brakes.
That’s when Covid struck. This is an
odd time to press the reset button of the world. Why did it happen?
In life, there are times when we lose
ourselves in immense action, in pursuit of some named or nameless goal our mind
conceives. Then there are times, when the energies flag, when the vision is
clouded. Then we retire for a little while into solitude to take stock of
things and figure if we need a course
correction. But in the present global context, just when everything going so
perfectly what course correction can we contemplate?
Perhaps all is really not well with
the world. Perhaps the perfection is only imagined or misplaced or, to use a
clichéd modern term “overrated”. Perhaps the scientific-economic paradise after
which we are trying to fashion our world – a paradise that verily defines the
modern world, a paradise that we celebrate every day in every part of the world,
in the West as much in the East, is probably a paradise that may turn out
ultimately a living hell since it is a paradise that will progressively drag us
deeper into a state of confinement – like our current covid-induced state of
petrifaction – and not grant to us some ultimate promised salvation on Earth.
There was a time, not too long ago,
when different nations and cultures of the world thought about life differently.
They felt differently, emoted differently, believed differently. The original
diversity of world cultures was a confirmation that there can be many
approaches to life, many directions and dimensions to life. But with all the
intensive commingling and communication among cultures for over a century now,
differences are being erased. The scientific-economic view of life,
predominantly driven from the West, is being accepted worldwide as the one
singular way of living. There are no two thoughts about it. In a world that had
a cultural diversity, some could be right and some wrong, or some could be more
right and some could be more wrong. Then only the errant groups would need a
course correction – like the Nazis of WWII. But in a perfectly homogeneous
world, either everyone is right, as it will be in a perfect situation, or,
worse, everybody is wrong. That’s when
there will be a worldwide course correction. The great Reset Button will have
to be pressed.
Let us consider what those Goals were
that different word cultures pursued through history, and where things probably
went amiss. Let us adopt a simple binary view and speak of the West and the
East.
After languishing for more than a
millennium in the dark ages, the West emerged about half a millennium ago. Europe began a massive effort to restructure
its life around the Light of Reason. It invented Science and began to enjoy the
new powers bequeathed by Science. It set out initially on an exploration of a strange
and unmapped world, which culminated in a successful and nearly complete world
conquest. Armed with Science, the West
explored every nook and cranny of the physical world. From the bowels of an
atom to the edge of the visible cosmos, Science seemed to understand
everything. The same rigorous understanding
of Matter was directed to life and people. The billions of little I’s that
populate the Earth – that’s “us” – too are atoms and cells of this huge biological
machine. What about “me”, my feelings and fears, dreams and dreadful desires?
one may ask. “All that is an emergent effect,” Science
answered, “of electric shocks storming your grey matter.” Consciousness and all
things akin were scooped out of the Matter and discarded, like the seed-filled
goo inside a pumpkin. People were cheered on as they learnt to enjoy the
scientific-economic paradise from which the Self was permanently exorcised.
“A
purely rational society could not come into being, if it could be born, either
could not live or would sterilize and petrify human existence.” - Sri Aurobindo
(in The Human Cycle).
The
Orient, particularly India, - if we are permitted to take India as a key
representative of the Orient – has approached life from the other end of
things. For nearly one and a half millennia we obsessed over Mayavada and
Sannyasa. The world is an illusion, a mirage, we were told. The real thing –
Atman, Brahman, whatever, - is behind, beyond, elsewhere. It is not this,
definitely not this, neti, neti. Give
up this false world and run away to the real one. A terrible tradition of
abandoning the world and life to its fate began to lace all activities of Indian
life. At some point people found it impossible to live with a philosophy of
life that is so anti-life. So they discovered an antidote – God. A God that is,
- thankfully, - loving, lovable and lovely. But after a few centuries, the new
solution also turned out to be not in any sense a cure, but only a palliative,
a heady anesthetic that taught us how to live with the pain and ignore the
fester. Our disparaging outlook on the
world of Matter and an attitude of deep disconnection and escape from life
continued to extract from us a heavy price. Because we rejected it, life took
its revenge. Our life energies were drained out; our material circumstances
were a rubble. Aliens trampled upon a fallen race.
So
here we are. The West pursued Matter single-mindedly and lost all sense of the
Spirit. It hit a blank wall, a dead end, or is in the process of fast getting
there. The East, particularly India, walked away from Matter, trying to find
its final liberation in the Spirit. But disappointed, wounded and spurned she
began to search for alternative salvations. (The West seemed to now provide
them, - easy and enticing. In her early enthusiasm, eager to make up for lost
time, she began to take rapid steps on the path of the West … only perhaps to hit
the same wall at a later epoch?)
At
the end of a long, traumatic human journey we traversed two paths and arrived
at two dead ends.
Is
there a different path that the world can tread, a path that is discovered and
laid out based on the wisdom gathered by the previous half successes, a path
that has no dead ends and is blessed by a constant widening and interminable
progression?
What
happens when all the instruments and opportunities for outward action are
removed and one is locked up in a cell – a situation experienced by a big part
of the world at this moment? His mind slowly emptied of thoughts, overcome by
depression, a person might slowly descend into insanity. But there are stories
of individuals who responded to the incarceration in a miraculous fashion and
actually grew from the experience.
James
Nesbeth was a major in American army when he was captured in the Vietnam war.
His enemies held him captive for more than five years in a tiny dingy cell.
When he saw that all the outward paths are blocked, he decided to walk along a
new inward path. An avid golfer, he began to get back to his favorite sport
- in the fertile, verdant fields of his
mind! Every day he would mentally kiss his wife goodbye, relish the breakfast
she prepared, drive to a luxuriant and expansive and imaginary golf court, and
play a full 18-hole game. There were singing birds, there was dew on the blades
of grass, there were tiny ponds with mirrors of water, there were cool zephyrs
blowing on his face, there was an other-worldly fragrance in the air. After
living as a denizen in his exotic inner world for over five years he was
released. One of the first things he did to get back his strength was to get
back to his golf. To his surprise and that of those around him, he demonstrated
that he has not lost touch with the game. Because the practice never stopped!
The
technological advances of the modern world amplify human power a million times.
By pressing a mere button it is now possible to destroy the whole world over
and over again. But without the technological crutches man is as impotent as
ever – a miserable ape that can swing no more from the branches, but now
acquired language and some cunning. The crutches dehumanize us. The crutches as
growing in power and scope every passing day. Writers painted dystopian futures
when the robots rebel and enslave their masters. The way forward therefore is
to deemphasize the crutches, and increase our natural and innate capacity, and
reconfirm our stature as masters.
Increasing
the native capacity of people seems to be the essence of the self-help
revolution that began in the West more than a century ago. In the recent
decades it began to spread like forest fire in India – one more examples of
India’s hunger to learn what she can from the West right now. Follow your
heart, find your calling, pursue your life’s mission and discover your life’s
meaning, increase your will power, increase your memory, overcome your fears, expand
your capacity for empathy and love, learn and learn all the time, turn your
life into honey and do the same for those around you, and at long last leave
the world a little more divine. Such is the essence of the self-help spirit.
Society after society had responded to that spirit and tried to contextualize
it in accordance to its own culture and history. The gospel of realizing the
man’s inner potential is a great counter to the rise of the machine. It may not
be adequate, but it is a robust first step.
India
too had its own brand of “self-help” culture. But since our “self-help”
tradition did not adequately readjust to the modern world, and seemed to be
ineffectual, we chose to quietly drop it. In ancient Indian traditions of
education, contrary to that of the West, knowledge is not something you gather
through the senses, organize by reason, and apply for practical use. Knowledge
is always there latent in the depths of your consciousness. By purifying the
human instrument, you awaken that knowledge which flashes forth in your
consciousness when your being is ripe. The Gurukul presented just the setting
for that multifaceted purification. Unquestioned obedience and devoted service
to the Guru dissolved the ego. A life of abstinence and self-control – known as
Brahmacharya – allowed the individual to rein in his/her own unregenerate
elements. Learning large volumes of text by rote expanded memory. This trajectory of growth, however, is quite
alien to the manner of growth in a world that is carved by Science. But is it
still possible to incorporate some elements of our ancient educational
tradition and integrate it with its modern counterpart, and extend it far
beyond anything that was conceived in the antiquity?
There
is one aspect of human consciousness that fascinated thinkers for a long time.
You may use words like creativity, genius or intuition. These terms refer to
the edge of human capacity that apparently does not depend on technological
wizardry. It flies on its wings and strangely chooses to manifest in some
people. It brings into the world beauty where there was ugliness, harmony where
there was chaos, sparkling clarity where there was dullness and unknowing. It
magically brings forward answers where there was unyielding and longstanding
ignorance. Is it possible to reorient traditional Indian spiritual methods of
preparation of consciousness, turn it away from its native domain of religion
for the moment, and use to rebuild life and world?
It
is obvious how development of such a capacity can revolutionize many domains of
life. A doctor can arrive at diagnosis with minimal measurement without
resorting to brute force and expensive testing. A mathematician can witness in
his/her mental landscape a torrential outpouring of theorems and corollaries
and laws, the proofs of which can be worked out by lesser minds, applying
standard tardy analytical methods over the centuries. Legendary Indian
mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan is a prime example of such a capacity. In
domains of modern science, like biology for example, where a theoretician has
to sift through mountains of data to formulate an effective theory, strong
intuitive capabilities can be a boon. By the power of intuition, the slow,
trudging progression of science can be accelerated. The rare and epoch-making
Kuhnian paradigm shifts can be induced to occur more frequently. Medicine will
undergo profound changes since there will be paradigmatic shifts in our
understanding of health, of human body, of human psyche. There will a more
targeted search for the roots of our ailments in our consciousness rather than
in our body. The above trends, which will perhaps evolve over a century or two
from now, will be a demonstration of a deliberate application of the powers of
consciousness in terms of life and world.
The
above trends, seemingly revolutionary since they signify a departure from the
strong materialist position that hardened over the last half a millennium, is
still not half as radical as what would happen when we bring about a further
change in our relationship with consciousness. In all the aforementioned
potential developments, we will be regarding consciousness either as a product
of our brain, an inexplicable “emergent effect,” or in the best case as a power
channeled by the human brain. We may not be willing to give to consciousness a
greater independent existence.
This
is where ancient Indian tradition departs radically from modern approaches to
consciousness. In ancient India, consciousness is taught to be the substratum
of all reality. In its more condensed forms it appears as Matter, and in rarer,
ethereal forms as Spirit. Matter and Mind and Spirit are all different modes of
the continuum of Consciousness, just as violet and green and red are different
colors of the spectrum of the visible light. It must follow then that just as
there is the physical universe, - or universes as per the recent notions of the
multiverse, - there must then be entire worlds of consciousness. These
universes of consciousness are possibly greater and vaster than our physical
universe. There is perhaps a hierarchy of such universes, each subsumed by and
embedded within the one immediately higher. The realization that there are
entire universes of consciousness immeasurably vaster than the known physical
universe marks the most momentous epoch in the history of humanity.
Five
hundred years ago, the belief in the existence of a vast unknown world out
there spurred European adventurers to set out on daring voyages. Thus began the
Age of Exploration, the first one. This age lead to discovery of new continents
on our home planet – Earth. The second Age of Exploration, that of space
exploration, began more recently when we journeyed beyond the von Karman line
or when we set foot on the Moon. The
sense of existence of vast realms consciousness may trigger a Third Age of
Exploration, incredibly more profound, more radical and riskier than the
previous two exploratory ages.
Our
earliest voyages into the fields of consciousness might be brief, tentative and
cautious. Our earliest efforts will be like those of the voyagers of medieval
Europe who travelled close to the coast, fearing a dreadful fall in the abyss
at the edge of the world, should they strayed too far. However, emboldened by
the initial familiarity and a minimal understanding of the new realms, a daring
band of pioneers will set out on most unimaginable inward adventures that
humanity had ever known. Like Sri Aurobindo, they might discover “illumined
continents of violet peace.”
“Wide rapturous landscapes fleeting from
the sight,
The figures of the perfect kingdom pass
And behind them leave a shining memory’s
trail.
Imagined scenes or great eternal worlds,
Dream-caught or sensed, they touch our
hearts with their depths;
Unreal-seeming, yet more real than life,
Happier than happiness, truer than things
true,
If dreams these were or captured images,
Dream’s truth made false earth’s vain
realities.
In a swift eternal moment fixed there live
Or ever recalled come back to longing eyes
Calm heavens of imperishable Light,
Illumined continents of violet peace,
Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God
And griefless countries under PURPLE SUNS.”
-
Sri Aurobindo in Savitri.
(pg 120)
The
pioneers will leave behind them difficult yet robust trails that others can
follow. There will be martyrs, however; there will be sacrifices. Wave after
wave of individuals will follow these paths to hitherto unknown, unimagined
destinations. They will be the first settlers of the New World or rather an
innumerable array of the New Worlds. The vision of our future generations
leaving the cradle of humanity – the Earth – to proceed to populate the entire
Milky Way, pales in contrast to a future diaspora into the innumerable, unbounded,
inexhaustible Realms of Consciousness.
“If mankind could but see though in a
glimpse of fleeting experience what infinite
enjoyments, what perfect forces, what luminous reaches of spontaneous
knowledge, what wide calms of our being lie waiting for us in the tracts which
our animal evolution has not yet conquered, they would leave all & never
rest till they had gained these treasures. But the way is narrow, the doors are
hard to force, and fear, distrust & scepticism are there, sentinels of
Nature, to forbid the turning away of our feet from her ordinary pastures.” –
Sri Aurobindo (Thoughts and Aphorisms).
In moments of captivity our thoughts
always turn to dreams of great journeys, our minds are filled with a longing to
break out into something vaster. Perhaps this covid-related domestic
incarceration is only intended by the Intelligence that governs life to point
out to us the greatest of journeys that awaits us sometime this millennium, a
journey, - or journeys, - that might
mark a great turning point in human evolution.
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