Welcome to episode 8 of Prout Consciousness and a discussion on Prout’s concept of progress. Progress is one of those big words people use at times to promote particular individual or collective talents. A politician may say at the opening of a new bridge: “By uniting our strength and skills we overcome tremendous obstacles to celebrate progress in the form of this bridge!” Others may claim they achieved progress by more brainy explorations such has the scholarly, aesthetic, political and even business acumen, and so it goes. That is all fine and we may applaud such feats but then again, for what exactly did they apply so much engineering strength, subtle ingenuity, commercial resources, etc.; what was the actual goal? In response, the argumentation may turn from cruder objectives to the more restrained reflective and even abstract, such as “We did it for the good of the people, for development, in the pursuit of happiness,” and so on. Now these are vast abstracts: good, development, happiness; where do they begin and where do they end?
Our existence is three-dimensional: physical, psychic and spiritual, and everything in this three-fold existence of ours move—nothing ever stands still. All of this varied movement cannot be progress. Experience tells us that some of it will be digress, even regress and only some will be actual progress. So which is which; what in this ever-moving existence is progressive and what is not?
Can there be progress in the physical world? We should analyse the matter properly. Plants, animals and humans all move about living off the physical environment. In fact, that environment can be quiet a handful. No one knows how many great feats and marvels human beings have produced in their struggles to overcome physical difficulties. A strong urge to make everyday life more convenient and conducive to wellbeing is part of our human heritage. A little more than a century ago people depended wholly on animals for land transportation and efficient cultivation. The latest news is we will soon be riding in superfast family rockets. In this way we will continue to enjoy the benefits of technological advancement, the fruits of our ability to struggle relentlessly against obstacles in the physical world.
There is however a downside to material development. Remember plastic shopping bags? The introduction of modern plastic consumer goods in the 1950s was first looked upon as a great blessing. Soon, plastic was all over private homes, work places and public spaces but today most countries are rigorously restricting the use of polymer-based things because plastic is an indisputable environmental hazard, not least of marine concern. The present trend is to promote more ecologically sound alternatives, leaving the usage of plastic to areas where it is still required, such as in the medical care industry.
As noted, by extracting energy separately from nature we no longer require heavy animals to pull our vehicles and we are able to travel faster. At the same time, higher speed and congested traffic have resulted in many more severe car accidents every year. Take another example: shoes. The reason why humans took to footwear certainly has to do with health and a sense of comfort, but did you know that barefoot walking has been shown to help increase antioxidants, reduce inflammation and improve sleep, and that walking barefoot may strengthen the foot muscles, improve balance and reduce stress? Which means that neither walking with shoes nor without is perfect and neither method can be said to be the progressive way. Another example can be the way we write. To begin with humans wrote on bark, big leaves, various types of paper and today we write electronically. There is an interesting downside to this having to do with memory. Before the invention of script some 6000 years ago, knowledge was transmitted by word of mouth. Consequently, the memory power of those in the knowledge of those days was phenomenal. With script the memory power has gradually reduced. Today, in the age of AI-assisted word processors, drawing and calculating apps, the ability to write, draw and do math by hand is reducing rapidly as users increasingly become dependent on centrally located machines. If you ask an older person, he or she would probably be able to do mental calculation far beyond the capacity of the average young. Even, research has shown that handwriting plays a crucial role in cognitive development, especially in children but the ability to write by hand is starting to be marginalized by the increasing use and over-use of digital tools.
In all of life we see that development is balanced by reaction. For instance, if you want to move you will have to spend energy. If you run out of energy you will not be able to move further, so that if you leave to go somewhere you may be stranded in the middle. This is the rule in the physical world, which has led to the common psychological complex that most people rather stay with status quo than making progress, for why risk threading an unknown path?
A cool appraisal of physical development proves that there is no exclusive progress in the physical stratum, there is only an inherent trend towards re-establishing balance and harmony. Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, the propounder of Prout, suggested the example of a government accepting the recommendations of a commission to increase the pay scale of the employees and to recover the increased expenditure through higher taxation. Can this be called economic progress? Shrii Sarkar rhetorically asked. Certainly not, the acceptance of such manoeuvring in the physical field as progress is only skewed mathematics, for it fails to increase people’s purchasing power, which is the first step of a truly forward-looking economic system.
So there you have it; because we always look for happiness in an environment studded with limitations we continue to experience unhappiness in due proportion. This is so because everything in existence vibrates; every atom vibrates, and in the vibrational field harmony is maintained by the balance of the two opposites, the positive and the negative. Traveling by airplane used to be seen as a great progress over traveling long distance by train, ship and car but today all the world keeps telling us it is not progressive to fly because it pollutes so heavily. Rather than cringe in horror at this reality, we should accept the fact that any upside has its downside, just as the seasons change, and every cloud has a silver lining. The pulsation of positives and negative are part of what is called dialectics, the pattern of thesis and antithesis evolving into synthesis. Beyond the never-ending play of positives and negatives of the physical world there are subtler and sublime realms of existence.
According to Prout, the pursuit of pleasure is the prime human propensity. Everything we do we do to achieve something good. This incessant search for pleasure results in either of the following five forms of existential feeling:
1. Relaxation (Anukulavedaniiyam in Sanskrit )
2. Tension (Pratikulavedaniiyam )
3. Rejection (Avedaniiyam)
4. Suppression (Nirapekśavedaniiyam)
5. The Beyond (Aplutavedaniiyam) These are five primal forms of experiential contact; they are at the base of how we experience the world. It follows that our sense of progress, too, is subject to these feelings. Wherever there is progress, one or more of these expressions or feelings are present.
The first, relaxation, is a congenial feeling, a state of relative balance and harmony. The experience of pleasure in the physical body means relaxation of nerves; relaxed nerves emanate that particular vibration called relaxation. Tension is the opposite, when conflict and clash strike at the nerves. When something strikes the nerves in unpleasant ways, vibrations perceived of as tension is created. These two, relaxation and tension, are the two main physico-psychic expressions or feelings of physical existence. Physico-psychic means that the physical plays up and is experienced by the mind.
Because we are pleasure-seeking beings, we tend to perceive of relaxation as positive and tension as negative. The interesting thing here is that what we perceive of as positive, relaxation, is not necessarily the one that aids us in generating fresh progress. For instance, a main lesson to be learnt from the present environmental chaos is that human action, intervention and encroachment on natural states of affairs cause more unintended serious consequences than intended useful outcomes. As a result, many have begun to evolve better systems based on newfound expanded ecological consciousness. In this way, the numerous environmental crises we are facing today are ushering in a new era of true ecological concern, of increased existential understanding. In other words, if we are able to learn from cruder dialectics we may evolve subtler and sublime ones, and perhaps one day go beyond dialectics all together.
Who thinks about getting up and doing something worthwhile when one’s entire being is soaked by the sweet pleasure of lying down comfortably on a soft bed? Rather, the adverse feeling of tension may be far more motivating in spurring us on to moving on in life and getting things done to transform negativity into positivity. This is why one should invite obstacles into one’s life, Shrii Sarkar opined. What is the benefit if obstacles come along the path? The metamorphosis of status quo into progress will be accelerated by one’s struggle against those obstacles. Obstacles will appear in personal life, in the collective life, in social life, in all spheres of human life; obstacles need to come and are desirable. If one struggles against obstacles, one will stand to gain and will never lose. That is why obstacles are to be considered as friends, Shrii Sarkar surmised.
Due to our pleasure-seeking nature, what we normally experience as progress in the physical world is physical relaxation, and we fail to acknowledge, or we purposely ignore, the corresponding tension until it is too late and we have a catastrophe on our hands. Today, many people wake up to the benefits of a healthy lifestyle because the present system of hyper-consumption has given them bad and not good physical and psychic health. Nature’s inherent vibrational bi-polarity—positive and negative—forces them to face the consequences of their primitive or hedonistic lifestyle and stand up to the imbalances of their lifestyle, and as a result they somehow wake up. Had we all been able or motivated to catch both the positive and negative sides of earlier physical developments in time, we would have seen that the balance is nil and would have adjusted our course of action accordingly. We would have sought a more sensible, balanced approach. If the world had acted on the warnings of the early ecologists of the 19th and 20th centuries much of today’s environmental chaos may have been brought under control by now.
The last three feelings—rejection, suppression and the beyond—are not found in the physical stratum. How about in the psychic world? In the psychic sphere there are four primal existential feelings or expressions: relaxation, tension, rejection and suppression. What’s more, in the psychic sphere, relaxation is not the primary cause of experience. The main feature of psychic movement is that the sense of the mental increases. The food, or nourishment, of the mind increases but not its existential dimensions, which goes to say that its significance, its content and implications, increase but its practical field, the physical world, remains the same. For instance, a person may go from thinking about a piece of wood as firewood to see further opportunities, such as crafting a flute from it and proceed to produce interesting sounds and beautiful flute music.
So, relaxation in the psychic sphere means to provide more food for thought, more nourishment for communication, creativity, imagination and intuition. Mental increase naturally results in corresponding increase of tension as well. With continuous efforts to explore and overcome all sorts of psychic challenges and complications, the balance of the pendulum may at times start to wing wildly to keep up and maintain balance in the mental vibrational sphere. Let us assume you have made considerable efforts towards becoming real smart and now you are lying awake at night pondering problems that nobody else seem to understand. At 3 in the morning everybody are resting comfortably except for you whose incessant thinking have rendered you an insomniac, and as a result you are developing bad health—not to speak of your daytime troubles because thinking about things others are unable to fathom certainly does not make for easy socialising and simple life. Research tells us that highly intelligent persons are prone to be misunderstood, left out and even ridiculed and therefore are given to loneliness, which is a key indicator of reduced quality of life and life expectancy.
There is a saying what goes up must come down. Most people who live to scale the upper limits of human inquiry, vision, temper and mood experience volatile swings when their mind take a deep dive in order for balance to be restored. Conversely, it is seen that people who habitually maintain equipoise and equilibrium in life face little depression and other forms of mental misery compared to those mental adventurers and psychic daredevils. It is an evolutionary concern as well. Shrii Sarkar commented that in ancient times, when human beings were intellectually backward, they were less emotionally disturbed; one who is intellectually deficient is less receptive to emotional disturbance. Highly intellectual people, on the other hand, are extra sensitive in the emotional sphere. They create unnecessary problems out of nothing and waste sleepless nights over them, as already indicated. To conclude, relaxation and tension balance each other in the intellectual sphere as they do in the physical world.
Yes, beyond the physical, all living beings move psychically as well. Didn’t you know, all life has mind? That is how life is perpetuated, moving from one mode of existence to another as the mind is reborn again and again in a new physical body. Mind is evolution’s main phenomenon, the quintessence of evolutionary change. At the present stage of evolution on planet Earth, the specialty of the human mind appears to be that it can move from one mental object to the other independently of its external environment. For instance, some kids can keep their calm even when subjected to intense teasing, and some parents can study efficiently even when the kids are abnormally noisy. Human independent psychic movement expresses itself in such forms as analysis, association, reflection, abstraction, metacognition, imagination, creativity, contemplation and pointed meditation. All these forms of independent psychic movement are known to human beings and we may call them aspects of free will. It is what allows us to continue to grow and become increasingly subtle and sublime beyond the limits of the physical environment.
Plants also move psychically but because they are overly bio-instinctive their psyche gets caught up within the limits of the physical. Most animals, too, are constrained by biological instincts and are able to act beyond those instincts only to a very limited degree. For instance, mammals, who lactate, are less given to leave their offspring unprotected whereas egg-laying animals normally has little or zero affection for their offspring to the point that they even eat them when they feel like it. In them the expression of relaxation is indeed very crude. On the whole, animal mentality is easily consumed by biological circumstances and only a few animals approach the level of being able to assimilate some aspects of human behaviour, such as discipline, routine and companionship. Only human beings can think everything and do anything. This special faculty of human beings is both for good and for bad. It is for good when it aids in all-round liberation and for bad when it sets out snares and traps in any area of life to keep others captive to serve the needs of their captors. In itself, the cleverness of humans, be it physical or psychic, is no guarantee for actual progress.
Real progress never comes cheap and this is as true in the psychic world as in the physical. When our independent will is choked, barred or checked by some internal or external hindrance, that barring entity emerges as an enemy of progress. The ideas and approaches that restrict the uninhibited growth of the human psyche is called dogma. Progress cannot be associated with dogma, and past and recent history is rife with examples of non-compromising human fights against dogma. Progress is representative of free psychic movement, otherwise the movement stagnates and reduces in all ways until it ceases to exist in its original form. In the psychic realm it is either dogma or progress, one without the other and never both together.
The third primal psychic feeling is rejection or non-acceptance, which in most cases is unnatural and abnormal. There are many examples of idealist philosophies stating that the physical world does not really exist, it is only an illusion or some sort of deceptive hallucination. Such philosophy can be likened to various forms of schizophrenia where one may experience visions and sounds that are not observed by others, or the other way around not experience what is readily available to others. Rejection is a form of self-deception, like mistaking a bush in the dark for being a ghost or not listening to what the teacher says because of daydreaming. Rejection promotes cynicism, the state of mind where even registered sensory experience does not mean anything, and nihilism, the feeling that nothing is of value. Here the function of nerve cells may have stopped or may have been forcibly stopped, such as when drugged or fainted, or one just refuses to admit the existence of the mundane world for some reason or the other—rejection by denial. Not only is rejection self-deceptive but it is totally unrealistic.
Likewise, psychic suppression or repression is an unnatural state of mind and whether it lasts minutes, days or even years when the control is removed it also bursts forth in the form of relaxation or tension. Our life is rife with examples of it, such as when we try to live healthy only to renounce some of its principles in a sudden rush caused by some craving or the other. The characteristic nature of life is not to deny itself but to confirm and approve of its existence. In reality, rejection is a negative, perverted form of congeniality, just like hate is a negative form of love, a negative form of attraction, as discussed in episode four of this series. Because we are pleasure-seeing beings, any accumulated rejected force in us finally bursts fort in the form of berserk relaxation and tension occasioned by some internal or external blow. For instance, in many a dysfunctional family the unexpected passing of a rejected next to kin has given way to protracted heart-wrenching grief. Clearly, suppression or repression does not lead to progress either but only to reaction.
Why does mental work appear to so many as difficult and even risky? Most people know from experience that it is harder to keep one’s mental balance than the physical. Actually, the more one delves into emotional and intellectual areas the more one may get lost to the hard and often unfeeling world out there. One is then lost to internal psychic dialectics, which may be even more forceful than anything one has experienced in physical life. The fact seems to be that human beings require a stable platform for their life journey to be safe and comfortable. In order to work out that platform one needs to know what it is for. What is the goal of our physico-psychic journey; what lies ahead and beyond?
The potential range of the human mind is indeed vast. Psychologists, parapsychologists, sociologists and other scientists have been able to map some of its functions. Neurologists say we only use a small part of our brain potential. Much mental potentiality obviously still remains to be realised. Human emotions and intellect are influenced by subtle and largely unexplored psycho-physical functions, the mind’s bio-psychological propensities, which are ultimately controlled by the mind’s psycho-spiritual and spiritual faculties. The mind remains a mystery to the academic community, and leading theories and hypotheses of the mind are still weak, as if the scientists are groping in the dark.
The further advances of progress beyond psychic movement take place in the psycho-spiritual domain. What is the psycho-spiritual? It is the silver lining between the psychic and the spiritual. Shrii Sarkar commented that human longings are as countless as they are diverse whereas human abilities, though considerable, have their limitations. Limited human abilities and countless human longings apparently do not tally. But if we, in the process of continuing psycho-spiritual pursuit, develop latent sublime qualities, we can attain parity with our longings and abilities as well as enormous spiritual power.
We certainly are pleasure-seeking beings. What we really long for is not to be comforted or entertained but to experience infinite happiness, permanent pleasure. Pure psychic pleasure comes from psychic progress produced by various types of external or internal psychic projections and approaches. For instance, we may be thrilled by watching sunlight play on white birds flying against dark clouds or by the fragrance of flowers, which would amount to physico-psychic pleasure. The subtler the object, the more blissful the psychic pleasure. Some objects are so subtle that crude minds cannot perceive of them properly. Take for instance dignity. Some people value it a lot, others not so much. This is why the ancients took up not only pure psychic practices, such as philosophical inquiry, but also psycho-spiritual practices, such as sublime contemplation and meditation, and this pattern has continued to this day. Subtle and sublime mental practices are the results of a particular inclination of human beings, of our independent mind, the fruits of our intellect expanding into the intuitional. Those who do not appreciate such subtle and sublime practices should make an effort to try and understand a bit better.
When the human psyche gets pointed as a result of continued psycho-spiritual effort, all the properly motivated human propensities direct themselves towards the ultimate state of Supreme Cognition and finally merge with It. Within the realm of eternal Cognition, as long as the sense of one’s own self remains manifest, the small continues to enjoy the Great in the multilateral state. The individual self moves around in its own Great Self in search for the Ultimate One. This is the truly mysterious, the small seeking out the final link with the Great within the Great. This is spiritual progress and a recognised factor of proutist socioeconomics. In Prout, there is a happy blending of progress in all four realms: the physical, psychic, psycho-spiritual and the spiritual.
Again, you may ask, why in the whole world should a socioeconomic theory have anything to do with personal growth and spiritual development? Because it is in the expansion of our being that we find all that is good and genuinely productive—creativity, conscience, responsibility, participation, morality, ethics, presence, compassion and everything else that makes humans great. For laws and regulations to work in favour of human progress each one of us need to contribute to the virtuous circle and progress on our own as well as together in common. Such progressive individual and collective movement makes for human society. On the contrary, regressive movement, crudification of individual and collective mind, makes for animal society—unprincipled, unethical chaos among humans, which is an aberration and contradiction in terms. That is why Prout is concerned with the subtle and sublime. From its starting point, morality, to its end point, spiritual fulfilment, Prout is directed towards establishing and evolving righteous society for the good and happiness of all, and not only for some or none. If higher consciousness is not allowed to grow, the resulting negative reactions from innumerable individual and collective physical and mental actions will seriously endanger human welfare.
What is the nature of Proutistic progress? There is simple progress and accelerated progress. In accelerated progress there is simple accelerated progress, progressive accelerated progress and compound accelerated progress. Proutistic progress is compound accelerated progress. Compound accelerated progress is not the same as compound interest, which is equivalent to progressive accelerated progress. Rather, it is a higher stage of acceleration.
We all have an innate urge that makes us strive for improvement and higher attainment, and we do not intentionally move towards littleness and smallness but greatness. This kind of noble thinking is characteristic of human beings and societies who have moved beyond the bio-instinctual only. Our ongoing search for something more defines the essence of who we are, and it continues to produce an expanded consciousness and a more caring outlook in us.
Spiritual qualities may be more developed in some and less in others. The need and potential for expansion and social awareness is found in all of us, however. This socio-spiritual urge is the one human potential we should focus on to safeguard continuous individual and social progress. As by coincident, this universal consciousness of Prout is the same consciousness as that of quantum physics, as that of spiritual seekers and as that of ordinary people who swear by universal love as the only meaning of life. We are one big family.
The word progress means forward step. The Latin word progradi is related to the older Sanskrit pragati, which means “well-directed movement”, a movement towards the state of all-round liberation. In the spiritual realm there is no relaxation, tension, rejection or suppression; because the spiritual goal is not finite limited and relative states do not exist in it. This state is never dual; it is non-lateral and multilateral but not bilateral. What does that mean? It means that one experiences it either as oneness with everything of creation, which is mulitlateral, or as oneness beyond manifestation, which is non-lateral as that state has no form. Where there is no vibration there is no bipolarity, no vibrational wave, only infinite unmanifest being in which all qualities are endless and therefore formless. Movement towards these multilateral and non-lateral states of universal being is true progress and all physical and psychic efforts and approaches towards them are termed as progressive. This state of universality functions through pointed psychic existence which is a non-subjective vibration, which may be likened to the feeling of “hungry” or “tired” where there is no sense of “I am hungry” or “I am tired” as I am so hungry and tired that hunger and tiredness is all I feel so that the sense of myself is temporarily suspended. The difference between such pitiful states of hunger and tiredness and the universal state of infinite consciousness is that the latter’s feeling is of endless fulfilment and therefore there is no individual feel to it, there is no space or gap for subjectivity to occur, only infinite existence itself.
The speciality of the universal multilateral state is that no negative movement is required to maintain its equilibrium. There is no comedown or reaction from experiencing the infinite spirituality of all of creation. Where does infinity begin and end? Even in the face of a limited object or an ordinary living creature infinite spirituality shines forth. In the absence of negative movement, every movement of it is progress. In conclusion, movement towards universal being is progressive and any other movements are not.
Then, should all physical and psychic efforts be stopped altogether? Should there be no effort to develop physical sciences? No, we certainly need to continue to make efforts in all areas of existence. We should only be cautious about the effects of such efforts on the life of other beings and on our physical and psychic environment. These days it does not take long to bring under control diseases recently considered fatal. The fatal diseases in modern times are mostly connected with the heart and nerves due to the negative impact of modern technological, social and other developments. People’s lives are severely impacted by heart-related and psychic illnesses, the results of so-called progress in the realms of physicality and intellectuality.
Is there such a thing as mundane progress then? Can for instance the economy be progressing? It can indeed. A progressive economic system is one that supports subtle and sublime individual and collective human development. As mentioned earlier, the first point on such an economic agenda is to guarantee everybody sufficient purchasing power to provide the minimum necessities of life so that they can proceed to live life fully and attain the highest human good. Here, human is the big abstract; what does humanity imply? First, what is economy? It is the production, distribution and trade of goods and services and their consumption. In all of these there is movement. How do their movements become progressive? By directing the movements of production, distribution and trade in such ways that consumption itself becomes progressive; so that we all are enabled to consume more and more subtle and sublime foods and nourishments, which will feed back to production, distribution and trade, and so on—a virtuous circle if there ever was one. In itself, an economic system cannot be progressive as it will continue to produce both constructive and destructive developments. However, continued refined and elevated economic dynamics will certainly add to the progress of individuals and society in that their subtler and sublime efforts and activities are enhanced by it, hence such an economy is progressive.
Shrii Sarkar advised that on the physical plane the most significant belligerent force is the inertia of the earth; and on the psychic plane, in the intellectual stratum, the main belligerent forces are the different projections of mind… the difference in reflection and refraction in different psychic foods and nourishments. These are all bilateral, swinging continuously between our positive and negative experiences of them. It follows that there cannot be any actual progress in the physical and psychic planes; there can only be progress in the stratum of spirituality. And this progress is perceived in the physical, psychic and spiritual worlds according to people’s psycho-spiritual standard.
When we work actively to realize our spiritual potential we experience rapid higher growth. The awareness of something infinite in one’s personal and collective life makes existence increasingly precious. The world becomes an elevated place of infinite beatitude and not a valley of tears and suffering only as suggested by some. Life becomes sweeter and more inspirational. Socially, spiritual practice in individual life makes a human being mentally strong and service-minded. One’s general understanding, intuition and awareness unfold spontaneously. Our psycho-spiritual process makes it clear that individual progress is the lifeblood of social progress, and the other way around.
Prout defines a constructive goal for collective life as well: The establishment of a world society on the basis of one universal sentiment for all. We are all one universal family; this ethos discriminates not between people of different race, colour, sex or creed. All have the same fundamental rights to physical, mental and spiritual progress, and all have the potentialities to realise them. Spirituality even does not discriminate between humans and other living beings; all have the same right to live and evolve, as discussed in the preceding episode.
Ultimate and final spiritual liberation is attainable for individuals only. It is not possible for a group of human beings to realise the final supreme state together at the same time. We are all different and will develop differently over time. Society will therefore remain an arena of dialectics, of clash and cohesion, analysis and synthesis. Rather, we shall always have to think in practical terms for both our own realization and the all-round welfare of everyone else, including those who will follow after us.
Prout asserts that the concerted efforts to bridge the gap between the initial expression of moral integrity on one side and the establishment of a well-integrated universal society one the other, is how we may define social progress. This socio-spiritual concept of universality emphasises the importance of collective movement in order to safeguard progressive development in any sphere.
And that is all for this episode, thank you and goodbye for now.