Giving of oneself up to an ideal is a manifestation of faith. Otherwise one can wander forever.
In the absence of an ideal, you assimilate society’s ideals. You carry within you all of society’s contradictions.
The loss of an ideal leads to a life of empty compromise. And sometimes pious compromise. That is worse.
In the absence of an ideal, one retains one’s integrity when one is able to say “I am not compromised, but searching”.
What is the creation of a sane society?
How to get every human being to move to
greater and greater sanity,
greater and greater peace
greater and greater joy?
If some men manifest so much peace, so much joy, so much strength, why cant more and more people also manifest the same?
The view that life is too complex and “unknown” for us to understand it, is a valid “frame of reference”. However, this frame of reference is adopted by two kinds of people
- Those who have thought deeply about the subject and discovered the “limits of human thought”, and thereby surrendered to the flow of existence.
- Those who are so locked up and immersed in their day to day actions that they have not stopped to ponder about the larger meaning or significance of their mechanical existence.
Most individuals lie in category 2, or somewhere in between 1 and 2. For them, a meaning-making frame of reference is necessary.
Who will provide such a meaning making frame of reference? Those, like us, who are themselves seeking to understand; or those who, through deep and profound journeys have reached a state where these frames reveal themselves to them (not as a theory but as “darsana”)
The Knowledge for Enablement Philosophy, is based on such a “darsana” – embodied in numerous talks by a realized soul. (see Eternal Values of a Changing Society and other books of talks by Swami Ranganathananda.)
This “darsana” has been adopted because it integrates work life and personal fulfillment in a way that other “darsanas” don’t. It is then left to the individual to accept or reject this “framework of living” – keeping in mind a word of caution that a “darsana” is best understood through experimenting by one’s own life and not by dogma, reason, suspicion or a-priori rejection.
If one looks at the two great models of living that have impacted western civilization, one has been the ‘Roman Empire’ and the other has been the ‘Greek civilization’.
In the Greek civilization, the notion of Citizenship was invented because they had citizen states. In the citizen states, everybody had a view, and they were dedicated to “human excellence”.
The Roman world was built on a model in which Rome was central and all powerful. From the centre they controlled all of Europe. The Roman civilization was powerful because it expanded, conquered, strengthened itself and was able to feed on the resources of those whom it conquered.
In the Roman Empire only a few people needed to be smart, and the rest could be ‘dumb’ (outside-in). On the other hand, the Greek civilization stressed the living of the ‘inside-out’ ideal of human excellence. The Western civilization was shaped at a cultural/knowledge level, by Greek thought; but, it was shaped at a physical level by Roman thought.
If we look at ourselves as employees of our national institutions, we realize that we are living in both the worlds. On one side, if we do not operate like a Roman Empire, we will not be able to compete on economies of scale. We need to be able to drive down costs, to have huge buying and borrowing power. We need to have access. If we want to contribute and make a difference to our people we need to be in every small place touching them. We need to have speed, ruthlessness and efficiency. All these are Roman qualities.
Yet, as individuals we need the Greek qualities of personal excellence. We want to flower, be individualized, and have personal freedom. The Greek model is very fundamental to us as employees of large national institutions because unless we are free, what purpose do we have to go to work? We want ourselves to have intrinsic joy in work, find intrinsic meaning in being a national enabler.
Hence, we want a driving purpose as individuals, and yet, the benefits of scale, reach and functional excellence are mandatory for our success as an institution. How do we achieve these two together?
This is the challenge in front of every national institution of our country today.
Resolving the challenge – making the ‘and’ choice
To resolve this dichotomy we have to give up being reactive and resorting to acts of choicelessness. Rather, we have to jump one level and make the higher positive choice of wanting a synthesis of both Greek and Roman models.
When we start demanding both – human freedom with economies of scale, we have to talk a new language. This is the language of Enlightened Citizenship.
So, Enlightened Citizenship is not a ‘nice to have’ thing, it is not about telling people to ‘improve their attitudes’ a little. It is about seeing a future in which it seems foolish not to be a citizen.
The choice to become a citizen should be obvious to one and all.
In a classroom, some students are active and alive.
When you ask the question why these differences exist, you come naturally to the concept of design thinking. Those who are ‘active‘ have a design thinking mode
So a transformed human being is one who is capable of becoming one with the knowledge. Passive knowledge is not capable of becoming one with the student.
While active knowledge comes from within, passive knowledge has to be ‘given’ to students and remains as undigested chunks.
Active knowledge is the digestion.
When you are asked to resolve some issue in the world, when you are given a design problem and told to find a solution, you are forced to create active knowledge instead of passive knowledge. Because you have to now find solutions. So you pull out passive knowledge from various places and make it active in the way you live.
Therefore, there is a distinction between passive knowledge and active knowledge – sterile knowledge and active knowledge.
Active knowledge is that which is living in you as a human being. And sterile knowledge is outside.
Active knowledge cuts through the consciousness.
You have to respect your quintessential capacity to be creative. The ineffable core of your being is creative. It is the light at the core – the illumination
Creativity is to be free of culture and to see a problem afresh, as its never been seen before. Anything short of that is not a goal worth living for. Otherwise, you have no business to encounter that for of light.
The reason there is such contempt for the ego is that it prevents this light from coming forth. Intelligence is the capacity to remain unattached, and to engage. Intellect is the only the outer crust of intelligence.
It is the ego that is inexperienced. Inexperience is not lack of experience, but the inability to digest experience. Inexperience manifests as large voluminous ego which is weak and incapable to achieve anything. If anyone even as much as touches something there, it falls off.
Tyranny of the intellect is that it seeks to understand and therefore tears even a flower into its components leaving us with the material remnants of infinity.
Solution Design on the other hand, celebrates wholeness, and demonstrates the power of value, even if it begins with a set of material starting points.
As long as the mind is turned towards matter, it will remain an inquiring mind. When the mind is yoked to the sacred it will become a solution design mind.
An enquiring mind asks questions. A Solution Design mind perceives answers.
Self Transformation represents man’s capacity to “evolve” through experiences, reflection, feedback and guidance.
To evolve means to change one’s mind set, deep rooted habits, deeply held opinion/belief, style of engagement, identity description in a positive and conscious manner.
First and foremost, we seek to create a society where each man is respected “intrinsically” for his/her extraordinary status as “man”
Second, a society where the guiding principle is “collective inter-being” – the framework for mutual depedence born not from “survival of the fittest” or “colony economics” but from the frame of “fulfilment for the most”.
Third, a society where life itself is designed as a framework for “yoga-kshema” – the unfolding of both the evolutionary and the manifestational dimensions of man.
Fourth, a society where the purpose of every action is the framework of “enlightened self-interest” – born from a higher and deeper insight into the dynamcis of inter-human life.
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