TURNING INWARD FOR PROGRESS
CYCLES OF CIVILIZATION
If you study history, you will find that at specific periods, India was at the forefront, and then its civilization and culture waned, and it moved on further to the West as the sunset. Then, Greece emerged, and Egypt experienced a resurgence of its culture. It moved to England and America, and now, today, Japan is the most significant focal point on Earth (considered in the 1980s).
There are many factors that contribute to a specific country reaching a certain level of development. It is a process of ages, and yet the certain focal point of development does not come from within itself. There are many contributing factors of surrounding countries. For example, during the time 2000 years ago, when the Middle East was at its height, it never reached that height on its own. However, being at the crossroads of world trade, many cultures were brought together.
There are only three cultures in the world that have contributed to the so-called progress of the world: India, China, and Greece. Those are the only three cultures, and what the West has received are its philosophies and various theologies, metaphysics, and so on, which originated in Greece and were transmitted to the West. It is said that all this stemmed from India, where certain cultures went to Greece and others to the East, including China and Japan.
This is, of course, what the Indians would like to claim. But the question is, can cultures arise simultaneously at various places, or do they have to follow a linear pattern? Cultures could rise simultaneously. If we study the Inca civilization, it was a highly advanced civilization that existed at that time. The world as we know it today was not the structure of the world some thousands of years ago.
For example, India was located right alongside South Africa. When the incredible explosion occurred, the force of Atlantis’ destruction pushed that portion of land or broke it off and forced it northward. The impact was so significant that it pushed up the Himalayas, and it is believed by many today that part of Atlantis is under the Himalayas.
But when it comes to the rise and fall of a particular civilization, what could be the cause of it? When a civilization rises, it rises because, as I said, contributory factors of other civilizations that preceded it and that are alongside it, and the people in that particular sphere would gather. Civilizations are not composed of a large number of people. There are very few people whose driving force propels them to put forward such advanced ideas that they automatically find a following, which in turn uplifts people in a certain way, what we call civilization. To be honest, there is no such thing as civilization. It is all barbarism in a more refined form.
HOW DO WE MEASURE CIVILIZATION?
A civilized person is a person who would have within him all the great virtues of kindness and compassion and sympathy and love, that is a civilized person. But how many are there? Therefore, I say they are rather barbaric, and what we regard to be civilization is just the surface value or technological development that we see, and we call them civilized. You find people who eat with their hands while others eat with knives and forks. Can we say that people who sit on the ground and eat with their hands are less civilized than those who sit at a table with a knife and fork? They are not. So, the upsurgence of civilization is a fallacy. This world has been as it has been for thousands of years, and we measure civilization only by a different way of living; yet, fundamentally, it is the same form of life that has been lived all along.
Customs change, and we call it civilization. We call that civilization, and then again, civilization is measured by technological processes, by technology. A person flies in an airplane, so he is civilized, more civilized than a person who travels with a donkey cart, and yet that person traveling with a donkey cart could be more civilized. He is more human.
Civilization should be measured by how human you are. We do not want to make people into gods; it is not necessary. However, we need to transform people into human beings who understand the value of humanity, and that is the ultimate test of a civilized person.
WHEN CIVILIZATION FORGETS HUMANITY
When technological progress is made in certain countries at a specific period due to factors that have contributed from outside sources, such as other countries, it will lead these people to a different standard of living. Not a higher standard of living, but a different standard of living which could make things easier for the five senses or where less labor is involved in achieving or doing something, then we say it is a civilized country. In my opinion, all the various highly technological countries, such as America, England, Germany, and France, are they truly civilized? No. I find them more barbaric than very, very backward countries. Traveling around the villages of India, for example, or perhaps in some of the backwoods here in America itself, where people are filled with love, you are made to feel you are loved. But in so-called modern civilized countries, what you find is: what can I get out of it? Is that a human being? It is an animal because that is what animals want. I am feeling hungry, so I have to go and get some food. That is the basis of it all.
Civilized countries today do not base their civilizations on eternal truths like love, charity, compassion, sympathy, and similar values. No. All these countries are based on economics: everything done in the so-called societies, nations, and communities is entirely based on economics, and economics has become the norm. The stronger, the more powerful a country is economically, the more civilized it is regarded to be. Yet, this very observation of civilization is the real downfall of the country because the emphasis is wrongly placed. So, you invented the nuclear bomb, so are you more civilized? Instead, in olden times where, if there should be a war, it would be a man-to-man battle. Of course, we do not advocate wars, but there was fairness: it was man to man while today, there could be thousands of people down here, and an airplane flies overhead and drops a bomb and kills thousands of people, and we call it civilization. It is a total misnomer. That is not civilization.
COLLECTIVE KARMA AND THE RISE OF CIVILIZATIONS
The question is essentially why certain countries rise to prominence at a particular time while others do not. There are specific karmic values involved, and by this, I mean collective karma. There is individual karma, and there is collective karma. Individual karma refers to the concept that people strive for betterment, as Americans are doing now, with higher and higher ideals. All these thought forces accumulate in the atmosphere surrounding a particular country, and when they collect, we call it collective karma.
Every nation has collective karma. When this collective karma reaches a higher peak or a subtler advanced peak, you will find that nation progressing, depending on which direction the collective karma is directed. It could be directed toward philosophy and religion, and this has happened in China, India, and Tibet, where it was directed toward higher ideals, towards approaching and trying to reach the truth, so to speak. Then that becomes a higher ideal of karma, and the country benefits, for it requires thousands and thousands of people with higher ideals to bring into that country one person who embodies all those ideals. That is why Gandhi was born.
Some people are militant and empire-grasping, so they create a collective karma that would lead to empire-building. That is why Churchill, or Queen Victoria, was born, embodying the totality of that collective karma that led to the building of an empire.
Then, people would become increasingly focused on greater and greater material values and how they could be attained more easily as technology makes it possible. Here in America, you will find people wanting to gain. The most fantastic rat race in the world is in the United States. We have to face facts. They want to achieve things as soon as possible, and all these instant coffees and instant puddings were invented in the United States. They brought out various technological tools that could help one accumulate. Here, as in many other Western countries, you will find people trying to maximize their gains with the least amount of effort.
Philosophically, this is true, but when it comes to the bones and beans, it is a different story altogether. How can I accumulate this or that without doing anything? The whole idea of man today, even generally speaking, is how to have a gorgeous home, how to have a few cars standing in the driveway, and how to have a nice big bank balance. To achieve this quickly, the mind became more inventive. You create the necessity for yourself. You develop certain ideals for yourself which, although they are not intrinsically genuinely necessary, with your mind, you have formed an idea that this is necessary for me. As we know, the mother of all invention is necessity.
COLLECTIVE KARMA IS NOTHING ELSE BUT COLLECTIVE THOUGHT FORCES
Like that, individual minds are bent upon those so-called necessities of life, and then, of course, the story of the Jones’ comes in. I know that in Cape Town, within the tiny Indian community, one person opens a dry-cleaning business, and within a year, seven or eight other people open dry-cleaning factories. One opens a cinema, and within a year or two, a dozen people will become cinema owners. I talk of experience. So, people try to emulate: if he can do it, why cannot I? If he can achieve that, why cannot I? If he can build himself a mansion, why cannot I? These thoughts are going round and round, and as a result, a collective karma is built up. The whole atmosphere is geared for a particular kind of progress, which man thinks is real progress.
A highly spiritual person can walk down the road broke, but they will not be looked upon; they will not even be noticed. But the world’s worst thief who is very wealthy, if he walks down the road, it is a “Yes, Sir. Morning, Sir. Good afternoon, Sir.” You see how the minds get geared, and over a long period, all this combines. When they combine, it adds greater momentum to the individual. When greater momentum is added to the individual, greater momentum is collectively achieved. This is how, regardless of the mind’s direction, greater progress will be made. That is why the collection of thought forces is so geared that greater and greater inventions will come about. Although America is the leader in the field as far as technology goes, it will still become more and more so, and you will still find greater and greater technological inventions coming about. That is because of collective thought forces, which are, in fact, collective karma.
THE TURNING POINT OF CIVILIZATION
So, whichever way the mind is geared, in that way progress will be made. If the mind is geared towards spirituality, greater progress will be made in spirituality. If the mind is geared towards technology, greater progress will be made there. Because of all these collective thought forces gathered together, it gives the individual greater momentum, as you can draw upon all these thoughts that cover the entire atmosphere, for nothing is destructible. Every thought that is thought is eternally there. It cannot be destroyed because thought itself is a thing.
Thought is a substance, and no substance, no matter, can ever be destroyed. For example, America has reached a technological height, and what has it produced? It has caused so much unhappiness in the world, and people are looking around, turning back, but we have gone so far in the outer things of life, and we have just knocked our heads against the wall. So, they are turning to look inside.
I have been told that in San Francisco alone, there are about five hundred so-called spiritual movements. What gives rise to this? This occurs because people experience inner dissatisfaction. So, a country reaches a certain level, a certain height, and then it must change its direction. When it shifts its focus to other things in life, we think it has fallen short. It has not fallen at all; only the energies have been directed differently, or the energies are going in a different direction.
Let us take the civilization of Rome. They were a conquering nation. Like England, they were empire builders, but finding things so easy at that time, they became negligent of the actual values that life consists of. We are fortunate today to be seeking actual values. They sought for pleasure. The more we can gain, the greater pleasure we can have: hedonism. The highest goal was pleasure. Because of taking that pleasure principle to the extreme, it has to find its opposite. Pleasure will always find its opposite in pain, and that is how, with the excessive seeking of pleasure, which landed in all kinds of debauchery, the empire started declining. When anything is taken to an extreme, it will eventually fall. You can only reach a certain height: like elastic, you can only stretch it to a certain point, and if you stretch it beyond that point, it will break. So, when civilization falls, it means one thing: that the elastic has been stretched so much that it has broken.
AMERICANS ARE STARTING TO BIND THEMSELVES BACK TO THEIR TRUE SELVES
America has one advantage. America has the potential to become one of the most spiritual countries in the world at the moment. It has the potential. Everyone is seeking. They have reached the height of their unhappiness. They have reached the totality of unhappiness because their minds were geared to outward search, to total materiality, to the whole idea of making good. Their very principle that everyone can become a president shows that.
However, they do not claim that everyone can become a saint. The whole thing was wrongly founded. However, there were historical factors that contributed to this, and people simply followed the established line. People just followed like sheep because a few people wanted the country to progress. In a period of two or three hundred years, no other country has progressed materially as much as America has. But the tide is now turning. The tide is turning, and having reached the acme of unhappiness, dissatisfaction, and discontentment, despite the labor-saving devices and all other kinds of material progress, people are unhappy.
So, there is only one way they can go: they can only go inward, and I tell you this for sure, traveling around all over the show, the Americans are keener to know the truth, to really find themselves, to get away from this discontent they are now searching for true happiness.
Yet their minds are so evolved that you would very seldom find someone without a degree or a qualification. I judge this from the forms I receive for initiation, and ninety-five percent are degreed individuals, while the others are professionals in high technology. So, the mind has had a chance, having been geared to it by atmospheric circumstances that, in turn, influence the inner need and the inner want, bringing America to this stage where everything has become a press button. But now they have to start pressing the inner buttons. This process began at the turn of the 20th century. It has started there already. The seeds were sown at the turn of the century, and they are now slowly beginning to sprout. So, America is now well-positioned to become one of the most spiritually inclined countries in the world. America will teach India. America will teach China. America will teach Japan and Tibet what religion is all about. The word religion itself means to “bind back,” and you are now really starting to bind yourselves back to your true self.
As these various cultures emerge, an awakening occurs in multiple civilizations and cultures, resulting in this phenomenon. It depends on how the energies are directed, and when one individual has a specific aim, their brother will follow suit and develop a similar objective. This process continues until the minds of that particular culture, community, or society are all geared towards one aim.
… Gururaj Ananda Yogi: Satsang US 1980 – 29
