Western Mind v. Eastern Mind

[M.D. Holloway]

I have always been interested in the difference in regional 'minds' - the perception of reality has a dramatic influence on the society and religion of a region and even a continent. Here is a smattering of an investigation of this:

Eastern vs. the Western Consciousness
(top)


The Role of Nature and Soul in Progress in the World
Nature does not work for progress in all fronts at all places simultaneously. Nature herself is a partial force. Soul and Nature together make for the whole. Nature is a part. A partial force cannot work for total progress. Hence Nature has decided to develop emotion in Asia and Mind in Europe. India was chosen by Nature to develop the Spirit. (MSS)

East and West Have What the Other Lacks
The East has ignored the organization and materialism that the West embodies; the West, the spirituality that the East embodies. In the new age we are entering, this is overcome.

East and West
The East needs to return to its spiritual roots even as it embraces western materialism. It needs to experience spirit in life, not apart from life. The West needs to move away from the sprit-only view to embrace the spirit that the East knows.

Overcoming Western Limits of Mind & Its Evil by Embracing the Consciousness the East Knows
In 1830 China and India had 50% of the world's GDP. What happened thereafter? They failed to improve like the West. In Europe science developed, and then technology. She also shed much of her religious ignorance. The continent (and the US) boomed. Science and technology brought great prosperity to the West.

But then her science brought evil, in the form of Atomic weapons, and in other ways. The mind that had shed the dogma of religion and opted for the rationality of science, had fallen into a limited field of materialism based on science and technology. The consciousness of the new mind of the West was not broad enough to avoid these consequences.

China and especially India had the ancient knowledge of the broader nature of mind, of higher consciousness. The West avoided that knowledge and created destruction to match its vast positive construction. It did not respect and hence follow the wisdom of the East. Now India and China are using the technology of the West, and as a results the West may begin to respect the East, and delve deeper into the knowledge of consciousness the East knows. It will give the West a deeper understanding of the nature of mind, so it can go beyond its current limited Mind, which is separative and non-inclusive, preventing knowledge of the whole truth, which in turns creates evil for every good it creates. This Broader Mind -- i.e. Spiritual Mind -- would embrace all truths of an object, not just the material truth -- including the subtle, the psychological, and the spiritual.


Western and Eastern Genius
Western genius is not in its philosophy or understanding of life's deepest secrets, but that it has brought out the infinite capacities of matter in all facets of life, from material well-being to the energy found in the atom to the cataloguing of the genetic code. Perhaps, we can then say that the West has released the "sprit" in the material. The genius of the East is the knowledge and experience of the spirit. It needs to embrace the spirit in an active material life.

Each side has the secret the other is seeking. The ultimate complements of the world may be the contradiction of these two complementary approaches to life.

East Meets West to Know Infinite in All
The West is evolving material reality to infinity, even as it fails to see the Infinite behind. Now as the movement of technology moves from the US and enjoins India and the East, it can learn to recognize the Infinite behind the material. It can also know not only the material, but every aspect, dimension, current, and force of creation.

Seeing Brahman at All Planes for Easterner and Westerner
The flexibility of life permits any growth at any level to reach its acme in Brahman. Thus the Westerner has discovered Brahman in Matter. The rigidity of life permits progress to freeze at the first step. The priests of the East have taken the rituals of the Veda as ultimate and are stuck with it for the past several thousand years.

If Spirit has developed in Asia and Mind has developed in Europe, each remains a partial achievement. The Spirit has not revealed itself as an integral whole. Mind that has discovered Brahman in Matter is still a stranger to the Spirit in its original integrality.

The Indian should discover the Brahman in Matter, as the Westerner, and the American should discover the Spirit which India knows long ago.

The methods are:
--(especially for the East) The light they are born with in their bodies should rise to the Mind as values organised in life.
--(especially for the West) The values of life and work should penetrate the fabric of existence to discover there a particle of light. Millions of such particles can come together as the Original Light. (MSS, slight modification)

[M.D. Holloway]

East and West
We speak of East "meeting" West. However, it is East in its place, and the West in its place will complete the whole of the world. (Paraphrase of MSS)

Ancient & Modern Spiritual Wisdom Emerging in the World
India and China have cultural and spiritual values that are deep, penetrating, and profound, and yet the West caught up in its semi-rational modernity can hardly perceive it. The Upanishads, the Vedas, the Gita, the Tao te Ching, et al, plus all of the spiritual evolutionary Eastern teachings of the modern era can allow the world to fulfill the individuality that the West championed for humanity.

Asia will outgrow its current superstitions -- religious and material -- and discover the profound basis of culture that is at its roots. She will also take the evolutionary Science and perceptions of the West and integrate it into their subtle, spiritual view, opening open up a new era of consciousness and awareness for humanity.

The Indian sage and seer Sri Aurobindo presaged this all 50+ years ago, and the world is now taking its first small major steps in that direction. Cultural, social, and spiritual integration will follow the current economic basis of unity rising in the world. When the spirit is applied to the details of life, then the ancient wisdom and modern evolutionary spirituality will begin to take hold, ushering in the next stage of human evolution.

Unifying Work and Spirit in Nations (i.e. their Integral Wholeness)
The West, as in America, and the East, as in India, are at the extremes of work and Spirit. It may be asking too much for each to directly influence the other to enable each sides greatness in full. Each however individually can bring themselves to solve their problems and utilise their opportunities in the integral way.

Sri Aurobindo's integral view is a perfect model for each to follow. He said that the hour has approached where the world can integrate Material Prosperity and Spiritual Realization to enable the evolution of the world. How to begin to do this? The best solution is for a few individuals from each side to try to live His integral ideas.

The West is prosperous. Western prosperity is there because they have discovered Brahman in Matter. Their science is lifeless and produces negative side effects and strengthens the Forces of violence of all descriptions.

Releasing the Spiritual Values of Life in India and the West
The ancient Indian rishis/ascetics discovered the true Spirit in life. That truth has become the foundation of Indian culture, known nowhere else in the world to such a degree. It has been said that the very fiber of the Indian body is fundamentally filled with light, whereas the material Westerner, is empty and dark, since he doesn't know and experience the Spirit within, even taking pleasure in debunking its very existence.

And yet on the surface of life, in the material realm, the Westerner has discovered the Spirit in Matter. Why is this so? It has because it has uncovered the true values of life. Values are the way that the Spirit express effectively and powerfully in daily life. Spiritual power in life is that power of truth, orderliness, regularity, etc. that brings about far greater results than we are used to. The West has these in great abundance. E.g. no science would have come into existence if scientists had been speaking falsehood, were clumsy, dirty, dishonest, or secretive, which are the values of darkness. The Indian life on the other hand is externally poor, dark, and filled with false values of life. Should the Indian develop the values of Truth in life, as the Westerner has, he will find that the inner Spirit he knows will emerge at some time to express through his life, not outside and beyond his life. The Green Revolution in India is an example of this success. The joining together of India and the West will then unleash a power the world has not known so far. (Paraphrase of MSS)

Upgrading the Values for the Westerner and the Indian/Easterner
The values of the Westerner are work values. They should be upgraded into life values, mental values, spiritual values and finally values of the evolving soul, the Psychic Being. The Indian should go back to the ORIGINAL spiritual values of work, life and mind and upgrade them into psychic values.

One is free to go directly to the spiritual values of the evolving soul. Capacity to surrender dispenses with all these intermediary methods and ushers him into the goal. Examples: The printer in the West whose book is without printing error has a vision of physical perfection from which he never deflects. It is perfection for perfection's sake. It can be perfection for the sake of the customer, which is one step higher, or for the sake of the Divine. To discover the inner divine is the first endeavour and to refer to HIM each part of the printing work will raise his work from printing perfection to divine perfection. The Indian who raises the level of his life, instead of doing it for his own sake, can refer to the inner divine who is established earlier. (MSS, slightly modified)

The Indian's Mind's Abilities and the Western Mind's Limitations to Fully Know
Sri Aurobindo has said that when the Indian Mind takes up a subject it goes to the very end. Philosophers call this analysis understanding an issue from the "first principles"...

The Indian can do this in potential because he has an association with the highest consciousness, which is the Overmental consciousness, which their representative avatar Krishna had risen to. [The Overmental consciousness takes the potentialities of the Supermind and follows them to their uttermost possibility, where each becomes Unique.] However, the Indian Mind because of his poverty and other factors has thus far not yet achieved this potential.

Winston Churchill, in his History of the English Speaking People said that the enunciation of the first principles has always been an anathema to the English mind.

The material success of the West, particularly the English, is largely due to this practical bent of mind focusing on the practical use of things. It prevents them from inquiring into the fundamental nature of things. Hence the limitation of Science. (MSS, somewhat paraphrased)

How Indian & Westerner Embody Spirit
The Indian has the spiritual light in his body. The Westerner knows the Spirit in his work. [MSS]

Europe vs. Asia
Europe is industrious, Asia is emotional and indolent. (MSS)

[M.D. Holloway]

I read recently the Many Facets of Our Minds by Dr. Jayapaul Azariah

His concepts are very interesting:

Mind the Soul & Mind, the Soul

Another interesting aspect is that of the relationship between mind and the soul. If intellect is mind than Plato considered intellect as the extension of the soul, which has a rational and irrational aspects (vide Goodin 4.1.04). On the principles of a systems approach, these two aspects, through a systemic merge, produce the powerful third characteristic of the soul, namely a "tripartite matrix" with its powers of desire and physical growth (appetitive), the mind (intellect) and the emotional powers (incensive) of the soul. Before we harp upon other ideas, it is better that we elaborate what we mean by the word "soul"? Which doctrine is true: I have a soul or I am a soul? Manoj introduced a third position: "It is my soul", which is a variant of position "I have a soul". Meaning body contains the soul - soul is the prisoner of the body - and it can be liberated. When one says "I am a soul" then he/she accepts that physical body is an integral part of the soul. According to Manoj both the positions are 'right'. For one issue, can there be two moral positions? Can both be right? Do all such categories, where both are right, are all right? A half filled cup is half empty and half full. The statements "Fools seldom differ in their thinking" and "Great men think alike "are also right. In many instances, only one position is always right!

Sheriff, on the other hand, took a more comprehensive position. He wrote, " Soul is the core of a personality. It is a part and parcel of every human character...The soul is the essence of human personality, love, compassion, hatred, green and other human qualities add up to make a person" The picture that emerges is that soul is "I am" or "what I am".

Nesy distinguishes the mind from the soul. "In the Indian context mind is only a product or a function of the higher entity called soul or atman. Mind is significant only from the cognitive or epistemological point of view whereas soul is significant from the metaphysical point of view. The original nature of "man is that he is a soul having no difference as eastern or western. But from the mental point of view all differences are applicable to man" Is 'mind' a part and parcel of the soul or lower in its status?

If intellect is equated with mind and if mind is found all over the body, then mind should overcome the bodily basic instincts, using its rational aspects. Alas, many times it is the irrational aspect that reigns supreme! Like the ancient Indian Sadhus we should learn to bring under subjection. Have we ever tried to speak to the excited and wandering mind, which does not permit sleep to set in, by saying, Oh my mind, why are you so excited, don't you know it is time for you to sleep. Come on! Sleep? Have you ever spoken to yourself?


Global mind

Many in our discussion group have stressed the universality of the mind and the cultural and sociobiological impact resulting in a similarity of minds between the two hemispheres. In this context, Goodin proposed the development of a Global Mind, which is " a mind that is acculturated to respect other cultures and other beings, whether they are human or non human". In this sense it is a local mind with an open mind that has developed deference (respect) to global cultures and other non-human and human beings. A Global mind need not be due to a process similar to "globalization". However, is it possible to enter into the phenomenon of "globalization of mind", by removing all reservations, restrictions, fundamentalism, on the one hand and on the other encouraging tolerance,/ live and let live principle, biocentric altruism, finding common grounds and fixing common aim. If we can have a common global aim then the formation of a Global Mind is not only possible but also probable and ultimately it is the only preferable option for humankind. Manoj agrees that a global mind already exits. Others think not. Development of a global mind is in other words is the development of "thought collective". It is not a move towards 'uniformity" but it progress towards 'unity'. If you think that is 'possible but difficult' then we will not be able to reach it. But if you think that is difficult but possible, then we can reach this aim. We need a base to achieve this aim. So far the base was religion, which has been annulled due to the advancement of Science and Technology. Now there is a need to find a new base or trace back our steps to retain religion.

[RWebb]

I use a thing called a corpus callosum to connect mine.

[Bill Douglas]

Originally Posted by RWebb

I use a thing called a corpus callosum to connect mine.

I use bacon.

[jluetjen]

The grass is always greener...