SUSTAINABLE WORLD PEACE AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
(A paper presented in the World Peace Summit-2024 held at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India on the 11th February, 2024)
A new spiritual narrative in social transformation by creating unifying little model societies
Dr. K.R.S. Nair
Prologue
We are living in an interdependent world. For anything and everything, except perhaps for breathing, we depend on others — living and non-living. The moment we recognize and accept this dictum, and start to foster it, peace and harmony will start to reign in the world. It has to be understood that any dialogue on world peace, interfaith harmony, etc. can only serve as a precursor to tangible action plans that should realize the goals.
All the man-made things in the world is created twice. The first is a mental creation, and the second is a physical creation. Vision is the first creation, a picture of what you want to achieve in future; it can be called applied imagination. As distinct from vision, mission announces exactly where you are going. It is the roadmap to realize the vision; the purpose of what you do. If you don’t know where you want to go, you can’t decide which direction to move. In other words, knowing where you want to go is the vision, and the roadmap or direction to reach there is the mission.
Another aspect that is contextually relevant is values. If the mission announces exactly where you’re going, values describe the behaviors that will get you there. They are the ‘How’ of the mission, the means to the end. In other words, vision tells ‘what’ and ‘where’, mission says ‘why’ and the values, ‘how’.
It is this speaker’s earnest desire that the whole deliberations in the ongoing Summit here be clear about and dovetailed to cogent vision, mission, and values so that they become instrumental in achieving the objectives of this initiative.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle”
(Sun Tzu, ‘The Art of War’)
Two Conflicting Forces in Nature
According to Swami Vivekananda, two forces seem to be working throughout nature. One of them is constantly differentiating and the other is constantly unifying. The same holds as regards the social life of man. Since the society began, these two forces have been at work — differentiating and unifying. Their actions appear in various forms and are called by various names, in different places, and at different times. The whole universe, says Swami, seems to be the battleground of these two forces.
The actions of the scheming priesthood in propagating the caste system fall under the differentiating force, whereas the endeavors of the preachers and reformers come under the unifying force. We have in history the untiring efforts put in by the social reformers. Unfortunately, in the battleground of the aforesaid two conflicting forces, the differentiating forces have been on a consistently winning spree in the 21st century! All the sagacious sermons preached by the saintly reformers to unify seem to have fallen on deaf ears.
Ancient India was different
One of the major insights of the Vedic rishis was the interconnectedness of all that exists — both animate and inanimate. Rgveda proclaimed that reality is one, and it can be understood in various ways (Ekam sadh vipra, bahuda vadanti). Such a perception opens up a fair playing field of mutual understanding and tolerance, as there is no claim of one’s vision of reality being superior to that of another. It is further stressed in the famous RgVeda prayer wherein everyone is appealed to get together with one accord to talk, walk, and move in unison (“Sam gacchadwam, sam vadadwam, sam vo manamsi jaanathaam; devabhagom yetha poorve samjaanaana upasathe, samaaneeva aakootee, samaana hridayaaniva, samaanamasthu vo mano, yetha va susahaasati”).
What was noteworthy in the speculations and postulations of Vedic rishis was the absence of a dogmatic attitude in describing reality. It was the era of ‘Sanatana dharma’. Ancient India had a variety of ethnic groups and religious minorities that lived together peacefully over centuries. Such a spirit of tolerance and respect for others’ views was a legacy of the RgVeda culture.
The advent of ‘Varnasrama culture
How did we lose the RgVeda culture? With the emergence of the ‘varnasrama culture’ and its wrong interpretations, castes and sub-castes came up. From medieval times onwards, the clever priesthood with ulterior motives propagated the idea that the social evil called the caste system had the approval of God. According to Swami Chinmayananda, the priest class was the greatest ever anti-God, anti-social elements the Hindu religion hitherto had to bear with.
The temple tradition of Haindava culture created all sorts of superstitions, caste discrimination, untouchability, etc. An unequal social status among the four ‘varnas’, which accorded a privileged position to the Brahmins vis-a-vis the other three classes, paved the way for the stratification of society. Different castes, clans, and tribes owing allegiance to different gods and spirits emerged, and sectarian interests were fostered. This, in turn, upset the earlier Vedic principle of harmonious co-existence, which was the hallmark of Sanatana dharma. It needs to be remembered that the gradation of individuals as superior and inferior was never the idea of Rgveda. Such a changed notion and skewed vision created divisions in society. And we lost our character as an old and hallowed civilization with a rich spiritual heritage.
In 1897 Swami Vivekananda said: “The conviction is daily gaining in my mind that the idea of caste is the greatest dividing factor and the root of ‘Maya’; all castes, by birth or merit, is bondage. It is the outgrowth of the political institutions of India; it is a hereditary trade guild.” He pointed out that the fault of all the great reformers was that they thought caste was due only to religious representation, whereas the root cause was the curious social conditions. To abolish caste, one must change the social conditions completely, Swami asserted.
Create new societies
What should be changed is not social systems, but human consciousness, said Paramahansa Yogananda. If you want to create world peace, where people with different faiths live in harmony, and work together to develop the society, the best way to do that would be to create ‘little societies’ that can inspire others to make the recommended changes, individually, in themselves, rather than forcing everyone to march in lock-step togetherness toward some general “good” that often ends in disaster. If an example works, and its results are there for everybody to see, others may be inspired by it and may want to change. Without the desire to change, no one will ever do better at anything.
One moon, points out Yogananda, gives more light than all the stars. One transformed human being has a more beneficial impact on others than a thousand people campaigning for ‘improvements’ which, when the shouting is over, often leaves everything no more changed than when a deck of cards is reshuffled. Does that sound familiar? Real food for some serious thought, it is.
Jnana Marga
Navajyotisree Karunakara Guru, the founder guru of Santhigiri Ashram in Thiruvananthapuram, the southernmost state capital in India, has rolled out some trailblazing and revolutionary initiatives to combat the prevailing state of social disintegration and cultural degradation and the uninhibited orgies of violence and massacres in the name of mutually conflicting socio-political ideologies and religious fanaticism. According to the Guru, the reason for the all-pervading moral, cultural, and social decadence is the absence of a unifying spiritual wisdom that would be evolutionary and enlightening.
As we have seen, the ancient jnana marga or wisdom tradition propagated by the rishis of yore sought to achieve human upliftment. With this objective, Sanatana dharma, the eternal system of righteousness and duties, was shared and perpetuated in the bygone ages through a line of spiritual masters and their disciples. This came to be known as Guru-sishya parampara.
Everything related to the Indian culture and heritage was evolved from the ‘jnana margam’ or wisdom tradition handed down through the master-disciple lineage. The noble messages given out to the world by ancient India, like ‘Vasudaiva kudumbakom’, ‘Loka samasta sukhino bhavantu’, ‘Ekam sat vipra bhahuda vadanti’, ‘Bahujana hithaya, bahujana sukhaya and others are the antidote to the divisive forces that destroy peace, interfaith harmony, and social development.
The closing verse of the Bhagavad Gita says:
“Yetra yogeswara Krishno, yetra Partho dhanurdharah
Tatra sreervijayo bhutirdhruva neetirmatirmama” (18:78)
‘Where the Guru and the disciple, ready to do the master’s bidding, are united, there will be prosperity, victory, happiness, and firm (steady or sound) policy.’
Navajyotisree Karunakara Guru has established a Guru-sishya parampara, thereby reviving the wisdom tradition by reinstating sanatana dharma and the master-disciple lineage. Since over the last 55 years, Santhigiri has been adopting this ancient Indian culture. To quote Guru: “The religion I believe in is that of truthfulness, friendliness, and brotherhood”.
Belief in one God for all
Guru was highly critical of the practice of using gods to perpetuate caste and class differences. He has ridiculed the idea of ‘superior gods’ for the upper caste and ‘inferior gods’ for the lower castes. It is a spiritual scandal to degrade and abuse gods for legitimizing caste inequalities and attendant oppressions. God, Guru emphatically stated, does not belong to any particular caste, class, or creed.
The problem is not with the Almighty or lesser gods. It is one of human ego, which often gets expanded to group ego. The idea that many gods exercise their jurisdiction along caste lines is an aberration improvised by the human ego, especially the group ego. As long as this ego continues to direct and dominate the religious outlook, such distortions will remain rampant and endemic to the religious sphere. So, what is the remedy for this problem? Guru says we must transcend our ego and understand that all of us are part of the same Almighty power. Such a vision will exclude social discrimination of all nature and oppression in every form.
One can see that at the root of all the contemporary issues like intolerance, religious fanaticism, social unrest, extremism, and the like, what is in play is the individual and group ego, which Edges God Out of human conscience. When that happens, the basic animal instincts alone will be the driving force behind all actions and behaviors.
Recognizing the supremacy of Brahman as the ultimate divine power and light, in Santhigiri Ashram and its branches across India and abroad, ‘Om’ representing Brahman is the object of worship. Santhigiri prayer halls across the country and elsewhere are open to people from all religions, castes, creeds, etc. Disciples and hundreds of thousands of Guru’s devotees spread across various castes and religions pray to one God and dine and mingle freely everywhere in society.
Preaching vs. Practicing
At Santhigiri, the Guru has laid the foundation for establishing a wholesome spiritual culture and casteless social order through a series of socio-spiritual re-engineering mechanisms.
More than 70 percent of the marriages in the parampara are inter-caste marriages. The boys and girls are (spiritually) selected for the wed-lock based on the compatibility of their jivas; castes, creed, horoscope-matching, etc. are never taken into consideration.
Social harmony and the promise of oneness
Social harmony can be achieved only when there exists unity of human hearts and actions. Human unity cannot be built upon an unequal social system founded on mutually conflicting ideologies — religious or political. Oneness of humanity and faith in the oneness of God are the pre-requisites for the transformation to be effective.
How to achieve that? It calls for a unique spiritual intercession. The reason why the exhortations of the great seers, spiritual masters, and scholars to do away with the wrong practices and the debilitating caste system fell on deaf ears was the continuing karmic failures of mankind from time immemorial. The remedy calls for a spiritual cleansing process called ‘Gurupuja’. Also known as Rishipuja or pitrusuddhi, it is a major spiritual intervention to cleanse the ancestral souls of all their bad karmas. Highly evolved and fully competent spiritual masters only can undertake this unique exercise to remove the karmic power haunting one’s family (its details are beyond the limited scope of this paper).
In a nutshell, through establishing little societies that foster universal brotherhood, fraternity, and truthfulness — the new religion enunciated by Navajyotisree Karunakara Guru — Santhigiri is constantly and successfully contributing to world peace and holistic societal development.
(Dr. Nair, a behavioral science trainer and author of 13 international bestsellers, is Senior General Manager at Santhigiri Ashram)
