The Heritage of Indian Culture: 1.2 -Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday 29, January 2025, 20:45. 
Books
Bhagavadgita & Hinduism
The Heritage of Indian Culture - 2.  
1.The Vision of India - 2.
Swami Krishnananda.
Post-2

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India also had its own culture, and it has its culture even today. It has been a surprise to many students of history that how, under the vicissitudes of time and the onslaughts of inimical forces, India's culture should still be able to show its head above the surface of the Earth, and not be buried under the debris of the ground as other cultures met their fate. A great student of India's culture was Sri Aurobindo, and we had many other stalwarts of this type, who opined that if India is alive today in consonance with the basic requirements of its own ancient culture, it is because of the spirituality of its outlook. Here, we have to strike a very cautious note when we speak of the spiritual outlook of India—about which we may have time to think over more deeply later on—because we are likely to suddenly jump to the conclusion that spirituality means a God-seeking mentality of man, which consequently also implies, perhaps, a kind of indifference to the values of social and practical life. These are matters which require very deep consideration in our own personal, social, and political interests.

The Roman and Greek cultures were mighty, no doubt, but they no longer exist for a single reason—namely, their incapacity to accommodate themselves with the requirements of the passage of time. When the times required them to change their ideals and ideologies, they refused, and they were crushed by the iron hand of nature. Nature does not respect persons. Nature has no friends, even as nature has no enemies. Nature has a purpose; this is something very important to remember. Nature loves only its purpose and nothing else, and it also loves those people who are in a position to help in the fulfilment of its purpose. Those who adamantly cling to an ideal which was once in conformity with certain activities of nature in the interest of the fulfilment of its own purpose, but which are now not required, will be shunned.

Diet is a necessity for the human body, but it does not mean that the body should be given the same diet under every circumstance, at every time. The conditions of the body will tell what type of diet is necessary, or whether any diet is necessary at all under those conditions. So, while nature requires that everyone should exist, and does not desire that anyone should perish, the intention of nature is not the perpetuation of individual forms, but of ideals and ideologies. This is, again, a deep theme that is hidden behind the outer history of mankind's formations. Human history, when it is studied in a philosophical manner—not as we study it in high schools, but in a deeper sense—becomes a study of ideals and ideologies, rather than the activities of kings and queens or the dates of wars that took place, etc. History does not mean the story of kings and queens; it is something else from the point of view of nature or the universe as a whole. If kings and queens were the only important things, they would not have died. But they were not important. They were necessary as certain vehicles or instruments for the fulfilment of a purpose which was more impersonal than themselves.

But cultures such as the Roman, to give only one instance among many, stuck to the personalities and the ideals of certain persons and groups of individuals rather than having the flexibility that nature expected from them in the interest of the larger purpose, which was not merely Roman. Nature is not Roman or Greek; it has a wider eye. Therefore, anyone who cannot see through the eyes of nature will not be permitted to live. This is something very important to know. There is no use of our looking at things, and then insisting that those visions should persist always. We are saved only if we are in a position to collaborate with the ideals of nature.

These cultures which are not seen today have died out because nature does not want them. They clung to forms, and nature does not want merely forms, just as we are fond of motorcars because they are necessary for some purpose but if the purpose is not served by the possession of the motorcar, it has no value. The vehicle itself is not important; only the purpose it serves, or is expected to serve, is important. So, when an individual or a group of individuals—or a culture, as we may call it—cannot serve the purpose that is the great intention of nature as a whole, it is cast aside. It is given an exit order, as the director of a drama closes the curtain on an actor whose role has ended.

All great men have gone, and no one can remain. No one can remain because all these 'someones' or 'anyones' are forms projected by the intentions of nature for the fulfilment of its own super-personal purpose. We are unable to understand this philosophy of nature. We think that nature's affection is for the body itself, and we think that life is nothing but the possession of buildings, lands, currencies, etc. But life is not the possession of buildings, lands, and currencies; these are, again, like motorcars. Our buildings, lands, and monies are vehicles which we are permitted to have, provided that they fulfil a purpose—or rather, the purpose which is the intention of nature. Otherwise, we will be dispossessed of these ideals. Our money will go, our property will go, our land will go; everything goes, and even the body may go, because the world is a large visualisation in the Supreme Eye of God, and it is not a house built for any person. Hence, cultures which were rigid, adamant—egoistic, we may say—and were not prepared to understand the requirements of the movement of time, had to receive a blow or a kick due to nature's requirements, and they are no more. We can only read about them in books, but cannot see them today in their original form.

We are thinking of pinpointing our attention on certain cultures which are existing today, and have not died out like the Roman or the Greek. A great example before us is the culture of India, which has not died in spite of the tortures to which it was subjected through the histories of times. Students of Indian history know the troubles and the difficulties through which people in India had to pass. It is a wonder that they have not perished. One of the reasons behind this persistence of the culture of India is its accommodating capacity, which does not reject the ideals of the past and does not ignore the ideals that may advance in the future, and also does not turn a deaf ear to the calls of the other cultures of the world that are existing even today. The vision of India may be said to be an impersonal vision, which, by chance, or by the grace of God, or by a miracle, we may say, it has been able to entertain.

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