When we open our eyes to actually see this world of ours what do we find? We find endless injustice, endless crimes against humanity, against animals, plants and the earth itself or omnicide. And when we search for solutions, we find in nearly every place, benevolent people who have pondered deeply one particular problem and have come up with solutions that are worthy of being tested. However these solutions are never implemented nor do their proponents know how to implement them in our current pathological society. And when we search for change in our society we find people both in the past and in the present with the moral courage to directly fight against exploitation. However when we look at history, we find again and again that when these heroes come into power they become tyrannical and hence any hope of meaningful change – that we so desperately need – becomes merely wishful thinking. It is this realization that creates the craving in the human heart for a genuine leader. This yearning is innate and has unfortunately been exploited by various dictators throughout history. However this burning issue of leadership cannot be merely ignored.

Crisis and the Craving

Every single crisis that we find in our society has at its root, a crisis in leadership. And when we become more introspective we find that every crisis in our own lives is because we fail to take up the responsibility of leading our minds and consciousness and then using the wisdom gained by this in leading our families and society.

“This new collective spirit and newly found dignity will give people the opportunity and the courage to start to liberate their local area from corporate control.”

This internal and external leadership crisis was most powerfully felt at the turn of the 20th century. In response to this yearning of humanity, philosophers like Neitzsche, D’Annunzio, Nikolay Chernyshevsky as well as propagandists for capitalist leadership like Dale Carnegie emerged. In addition attempts were made to revive ancient theories of leadership such as those of Confucius, Plato, Machiavelli and Chanakya. However we have seen the practical failure of each and every single one of these theories. To be straightforward we must clearly say that these philosophers took a bad situation and made it into a horrifying world in which we saw the crimes of communism, fascism and western colonialism. And it was into this dark age that the founder of the PROUT paradigm of leadership, Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, was born.

With the end of the 2nd world war and the restoration of affluence to the west, the craze for true leadership abated. However, throughout the so-called Third World, thinkers and revolutionaries struggle to create new visions of leadership. While the technical details of their philosophies, programs and actions may vary widely, what is common to them all is a certain crude, self-centred level of consciousness. Since the rising of the New Age movements in the 1960’s we have seen many more elevated theories of leadership that have brought a change in the way people think and a change in organizational practices. However, we find today the loftiest words about how to lead, coupled with the most heinous crimes against humanity and our planet. This duality of the human personality created due to a lack of inner and outer leadership is what Shrii Sarkar called the greatest disease of the 20th century. Today as we see religious fascism spreading in so many countries; as we see the destruction of so many animal and plant species; as we see the destruction of the climate endangering the very survival of huge parts of this planet; as we see a few rich countries robbing and bombing other countries; as we see so many struggle just to put food in their mouths while world leaders give false, flowery speeches about world poverty – to discover a new form of leadership is not a choice – it is the only path for survival.

Defining Sadvipra

The English word Leader comes from from the Old English word laedan which means to cause people to move, to go with people and to sprout or bring forth something. We are waiting for that leader who will cause our human family to start moving faster and faster towards genuine freedom in each and every sphere of life starting with economic freedom from state or capitalist exploitation. We are waiting for that leader who will move with the people as their servant and not as an egocentric prophet, rishi or imam. We are waiting for that leader who will bring forth new forms of Consciousness, new intuitions, new ideas and sentiments and above all new ways of serving, working and loving. Above all, we are waiting for that leader who will make us as noble, as courageous and as revolutionary as they themselves are. For a genuine revolutionary is not someone who has the minds of the people in the palm of his hand, but rather someone whom empowers the suffering and exploited people to become even greater than themselves.

Hearkening to this call from the heart of humanity, Shrii Sarkar revealed the next stage in the evolution of human consciousness and righteousness – that of the Sadvipra. Sadvipras are defined as those who remain in the very nucleus of the social cycle and who guides, restrains, governs and controls the social cycle. (Cakrakendre sadvipráh cakraniyantrakáh.)

What is the social cycle? The social cycle is the social expression of the cycle of 4 primary psychologies in the collective mind of a community. These four psychologies are worker, warrior (craftsmen and technicians), intellectual or priest and the capitalist (including wealthy farmers and engineers). In his epic treatise Human Society Part 2, Shrii Sarkar has revealed the criminal pathology of each of these psychologies. Human history unfolds as the movement of this cycle until the exploitation of the capitalists leads to worker revolution and a new warrior or militaristic era. This is a vast topic, however we can note in passing that the worker revolution in this paradigm is always short-lived and followed by a military dictatorship. We see how the noble peasants of the Russian, Spanish and Chinese revolutions were brutally crushed by the militaristic communist regimes.

What is the nucleus of the social cycle? The nucleus of the social cycle lies in the collective mind of humanity. What we mean by the collective mind? When a group of people develop a strong psychic (mental, intellectual, emotional, sentimental, intuitional, etc) cohesiveness or “stick-togetherness” this is what the great historian Ibn Khaldun called asabiya. This power of cohesion or what Shrii Sarkar terms as “the equilibriation of psychic waves” enables such a group to dominate a society. We all know how in a school for example, a group of close friends can dominate the way in which the entire student body thinks. Shrii Sarkar went deeper into the nature of mind and consciousness and said that just as from biological and social life, there develops unit mind, so from the life of a community or any group of people there emerges a collective mind which is born and dies just like our individual minds. This also is a vast topic that requires greater research.

What then is the nucleus of this collective mind? For Shrii Sarkar, the collective mind of a community like that of the individual mind is composed of various levels known as kosas. The five levels are the Conscious Mind, subconscious Mind, supramental mind and the subtle causal mind. The reason for the progress we find in individual life is that individuals can develop by meditation more and more higher levels of mind. The reason for the darkness we find in collective life is that we have not learned the collective meditation to unveil higher forms of collective consciousness. This is rational and even wise people can behave in a crude manner when they are immersed in a crowd. Shrii Sarkar has said that the real yogi is not one who just controls, sublimates and elevates her or his mind.

A real yogi is someone who purifies, sublimates and elevates the collective mind. This meditation or sadhana is what Shrii Sarkar called Neohumanism as an Essence. The key to this meditation lies in the revelation by Shrii Sarkar that the Unconscious Mind or what Shrii Sarkar calls the Superconscious Mind (comprising the last 3 levels of mind mentioned above) of both the individual mind and the Cosmic Mind are in fact one and one only. Hence the nucleus of the individual or social mind is the nucleus of the Cosmic Mind (Macrocosm) or the Supreme Subjectivity. So when one by the process of spiritual meditation merges one’s unit consciousness with the Supreme Consciousness within one’s own “I” feeling, one attains the stance or station of being in the nucleus of the Macrocosm and hence the nucleus of all collective minds of various societies on this planet and other planets. This is the spiritual stance of the sadvipra. When we meditate, this stance will no longer seem like an impossible dream but rather, we will feel in the core of our hearts that it is our very own destiny. When we meditate in our daily lives through ideation that every object is Supreme Consciousness, then we will feel empowered to carry out the holistic, sadvipra revolution.

What does it mean to restrain the social cycle? It means that when each of the 4 social regimes becomes exploitative in either the social, economic, political, or cultural realms, the sadvipra will directly confront it, risking life and limb in an open fight. A sadvipra is someone who also has the power to arouse the noblest sentiments of a society, to evoke moral outrage and to infuse the exploited and the degraded people with the spiritual energy to make them into spiritual warriors.

What does it mean to control the social cycle? It means that no longer will we watch each regime blossom and then degenerate and become debased by exploiting humanity. Rather once a particular regime has reached the culmination of its development, the sadvipra will prepare the society intellectually, psychologically and sentimentally for a new era. Then as soon as that regime just begins to become exploitative, in each and every aspect of social, economic and political life sadvipras will begin and lead movements for social revolution. This will cause a transformation in human history. Just as the advent of modern medicine has dramatically transformed the lives of rich people in rich countries enabling them to retain their youthful health and vitality for longer and longer, so the sadvipra era will enable societies to progress more and more, despite moving from one regime to another, because the sadvipra will not allow any disease or degeneration in the collective life of a community to fester and become a cause of social death

What does it mean to govern the social cycle? It means that the sadvipras will inspire humanity to create a Global Bill of Rights, to create a Global Constitution and then a Global democracy rooted in local economic democracy. This new government will be based on such cardinal values such as guaranteeing the purchasing power of every human being, of guaranteeing the life and welfare of animals, plants and the Earth, of guaranteeing the life, development and welfare of every language, every culture on this planet. The PROUT paradigm of socio-economic liberation has given in detail the principles by which these values can be realized. To expand and develop these principles out of one’s revolutionary, cooperative economic and service activities is the dharma (nature) of a sadvipra.

What does it mean to guide the social cycle? It means the sadvipras will not just allow society to merely be free from exploitation. Rather they will continually strive for newer and newer revolutions in socio-economic, cultural and spiritual life. The goal will be to elevate the entire human race into more and more subtle and sublime forms of Consciousness until humanity as a whole moves beyond the physical realm, beyond the psychic realm and into the real of pure Spirituality that is nothing but limitless, omnipotent Love. This final stance of humanity is what Shrii Sarkar calls Cosmic Humanity. Every single fight against exploitation, every single revolution against an oppressive regime, every single revolution in the realm of ideas, intuition and love is goaded towards this Desideratum of Cosmic Humanity. This is the integral, holistic revolution of the sadvipra that Shrii Sarkar calls Nuclear Revolution.

Nuclear Revolution Today

We have now this lofty vision of the sadvipra, but we cannot rest with just that. The crises churning our heart as we witness the suffering of countless innocent human beings, animals and plants make us bound to ask, to demand action now. We want to know, we must know what is this path of nuclear revolution in our society today?

First, and foremost we need a moral revolution. Morality is not just individual but collective as well. We are responsible not just for the actions of our own bodies but for the actions of the collective body or our society. The failure to control or to refrain from harming others; the failure to nurture or to serve is a crime both at the individual and collective level. Every injustice in our society today exists because of our failure to perform our moral duty of fighting it. Every suffering on this planet exists and continues because of our moral failure to put an end to it. The moment we decide to end this criminal silence and criminal inaction, the moment we start to fight in our daily lives against internal and external immorality, the moment we organize to liberate our society from the immoralists, we begin to become sadvipras.

Secondly, we need a spiritual revolution. Shrii Sarkar has stated that behind all problems in the world is misguided or malevolent intellect. Hence a meditation revolution, a revolution in the level of consciousness of our society and of humanity as a whole is imperative for any genuine progress. Shrii Sarkar has stated that there can be no progress until we take the entire universe into our minds and make it wholeheartedly our very own. This process of intense love comes from fusion with the endless flow of Blissful Love that is in the heart of our “I” feeling.

Thirdly, we need a sentimental revolution. Currently humanity is plagued narrow, selfish sentiments such as 1) national or geo-sentiment 2) racial, ethnic and religious or socio-sentiment 3) speciesism (the feeling that our human species is superior and other species can be exploited or killed as we like) or pseudo-humanist sentiment. It is the power of the blissful love attained by meditation and service that enables one to not just rise above these sentiments but to launch a revolution against these sentiments in the society and in the heart of humanity. Above all we need to arouse sentiments against exploitation so as to ignite a revolution in our society.

Fourthly, we need a cultural revolution. Corporate pseudo-culture is destroying nearly every culture on this planet. As Shrii Sarkar states, culture is the backbone of a society and if that backbone is crushed then those exploited people will never be able to stand up and fight for their right. Shrii Sarkar Himself spent the maximum portion of His writings laying the foundations for spiritual and cultural revolution. He envisioned a similar cultural revolution in every culture based on and new aesthetics and spirituality. The dimensions of Shrii Sarkar’s revolution in this arena, is too vast to be comprehended in this article. However, the very fate of humanity rests on an understanding of this form of revolution. Even in a progressive society like Venezuela, the leaders profess themselves helpless in facing the onslaught of pseudo-culture. So revolution in the cultural realm is the demand of the day. This is the core of Shrii Sarkar’s program for regional socio-economic liberation known as samaja.

Fifthly, we need a social revolution. Since the dawn of humanity, we have been plagued with divisions and discriminations. By far the oldest and most heinous forms of discrimination are racial, caste and religious discriminations. Social equality (sama-samaja) as per Shrii Sarkar, is rooted in the spiritual realization of every created being as a manifestation of Supreme Consciousness. Without this practical realization any movement for social equality is bound to fail. This is because equality is a transcendental, cardinal human value and not something we see in the material world. For everywhere we find endless inequality both in the natural and human worlds. We should never tolerate any form of discrimination. For example many of us had thought that the days of religious extremism and religious violence were ancient history and hence we allowed this virus to remain in our society. This is one of the cardinal mistakes of the modern era. This is why Shrii Sarkar called again and again in His writings on PROUT, for a revolution against religious dogma. Shrii Sarkar gave equal importance to both a revolution against religious dogma and a revolution against economic exploitation.

Finally and most importantly, we need an economic revolution. Since the start of the present Great Depression, the anger and frustration around the world has been growing with the rampant fraud and greed that caused this man-made Depression. This climate of global economic crisis, food price inflation and the increasing suffering of more and more people is building into a storm of revolution. We have seen in recent times, food price inflation causing temporary revolutions in Arab countries. However, PROUT envisions a more deeper form of economic revolution. Firstly PROUT advocates the development of networks of cooperatives and eco-villages so as to create a new economic base for the exploited people to have a new base on which to build their future without becoming slaves of the capitalist order.

Cooperatives can form the base for a new economy and cooperative networks can enable their members to become free from the capitalist market. Secondly this new collective spirit and newly found dignity will give people the opportunity and the courage to start to liberate their local area from corporate control. There have been many stories of communities who have fought and won some measure of economic sovereignty. These freedom struggles failed because the people were isolated. This is why networks of resistance to economic tyranny are essential. This culminates in participatory block-level planning where the local people plan and decide the economic and ecological future of their own community rather than being slaves to government bureaucrats or to carnivorous corporations. Thirdly as this struggle moves forward, people will dare to do their duty as a sadvipra and this to establish law and order in the economy.

When the government allows corporations to flout the laws and when the laws fail to control the crimes of the corporations, then as per Shrii Sarkar it is the duty of the Proutists to establish law and order by physical confrontation such as surrounding the houses and storage buildings of those capitalists who are artificially causing prices to rise. This includes shutting down stock markets as has been attempted in New York. Finally there comes the general struggle all over the world to fight for economic freedom and to give every human being economic rights for survival. In the past we had aristocrats who monopolized all the political rights and after centuries of fighting the common people received their own political rights. Today those political rights are being taken away and the economic violence against the poor is accelerating. This is why the 21st Century has been defined as the struggle to seize economic rights and power from the tyrannical economic aristocrats and establish economic democracy in every region of this planet.

There are many more dimensions to this nuclear revolution, and it is out of the process of this nuclear revolution that future sadvipras will emerge. No one, no group, no newspapers can decide who is a sadvipra. It is those people who are being exploited, terrorized and killed in the name of development, progress, democracy who will decide who are the real sadvipras who fight along side them and risk their lives for them. As per Shrii Sarkar it is the people who will decide who is a genuine sadvipra. Above all, the foremost quality of a genuine sadvipra is that they can make others as great a revolutionary as themselves. For humanity does not desire just to worship a few sadvipras, humanity yearns in its heart to be a sadvipra. This is why Shrii Sarkar called upon us all to become a sadvipra and make everyone else a sadvipra as well. This clarion call is throbbing in our hearts when we grieve over the starvation of the exploited. This clarion call is pounding in our brains when we mourn those lost in religious violence due to the manipulation by the capitalists. This clarion call trembles in our bones when we burn with anger at the endless corruption that causes all this suffering. The time has come now, for us, one and all to accept our destiny and become a sadvipra.