Bagwat Prasad’s reply to Stephen Hawking’s question

ANSWERING STEPHEN HAWKING: BY BAGWAT PRASAD

I thank the eminent scientist for putting the most important question of recorded history. The question is “In a World that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years”? People who tried to build better societies dreamed utopias and revaluations. Every utopia turned into a nightmare, every revaluation led to a bloodbath and the loss of human freedom.

Anthropology is having the best answer that human brain can devise. Was there an ancient society left uncharted, which may guide us in the proper path? Einstein found a happy, non-jealous, non-competitive egalitarian society among the Puenblo Indians. Harry Magdoff of Monthly Review fame, drew solace, by focus-sing the torch on the life of the happy egalitarian society that existed in America at the time of Columbus’s invasion. Can we imitate them? Obviously not, because our global intelligentsia has left those superstition, myth, magic and ritual loving-days, far behind.

Probably 12,000 years back, humanity got divided into war-loving societies and war-shunning societies. Along with agriculture, domestication of animals mad them sure of satisfying their basic wants. Some section of humans unleashed wars to make slaves of other human beings. All the ills of the World had their birth in these activities.

There were two roads open to our ancestors. The societies which reveled in wars nourished a culture which encouraged values such as, the competitive spirit, intelligence, courage, defiance of death, selfishness, the submission altitude and distrust and enmity towards people belonging to other collectivities. (Who were the enemies, to the eliminated or subdued). Some of these values helped civilizations to scale new heights. Warriors and priests ruled these societies till the ideas of popular rule caught the imagination of big sections of people, guided by the new elite consisting of businessmen and professionals, who also drew nourishment from the prevailing warrior-priest culture.

In this 21st century, many of these life-endangering values are avidly preached by our elite day-in and day out ideologues who are disgusted with the present picture, dream of ways that are not outside the parameters of the prevailing violence-promoting industrial culture. Science has made us powerful without making us wiser. Both science and religion flourish within the accepted culture and bedevil the future of humanity. Speculating what might have happened if powerful societies had chosen a different road of violence-free culture in those days of it historical infancy, is a luxury in which we need not indulge. Anthropology introduces us to the different real worlds that humanity brought into being for it progress and happiness. The other life nourishing road, stares from it pages.

In the past, both the war-loving and peace-loving (where violence was limited or absent as in the case of Polynesians, Eskimos, Innuits, Arapesh, semai, the Mubuti, the Australian aborigines and a few others) societies existed. (for details read the chapter ‘Non-violence and aggression’ in the book ‘Exploring Gandhi’ written by man Mohan Choudhury and Anthropology of peace chapter-2 by D.S. Mann).

It is needless to say that the love of violence is a cultural product. Both archeological and literary evidence reveal that the war-shunning society that existed in ancient India occupied a long area and was existent for at least 700 years (2500 BC to 1800 BC).

This society as discovered by the archeologists had no weapons of war (D.D. Kosambi) There was no sign of any temple or palace. “The pattern of Harappa civilization seems to have precluded great monuments, such as palaces, temples or tombs……”

Archeologist Piggott (CASTE by M. KLASS P. 55)

The atheism prevalent in this society influenced the birth of the two atheistic non-violent religions Buddhism and Jainism. In later days two global personalities, the Buddha and Gandhi ultimately owed their enlightenment to the values of this Pre-Vedic society. The Buddha in these messages made clear his debt to ancient India. The Buddha said to his disciples” “I have seen an ancient way an ancient way, followed by the wholly awakened ones……”

Sanyautta Nikaya (‘The Buddha and his Message’ by N. Ganguli P.144).

Gandhi’s whole life was centered on the four values: Truth, Non-violence, Asteya and Aparigraha. All these four values were the Yogic values of the pre-Vedic era. They are also the basic values of the Jaina religion

(Non-violence and atheism were not the creeds of the Vedic-Aryans). Unfortunately neither the historians nor the anthropologists have drawn a convincing picture of this great society, through evidence that can stand scholarly scrutiny in not lacking.

Indirect archeological evidence is not lacking regarding the observance of the values of Asteya and Aparigraha in Pre-Vedic India. “ the majority of the products are Unimaginative in nature and unadventurous, suggesting that the people of Harappa had their eyes on things not of this world.”

Allchin (Caste M. Klass P.56).

D.D Kosambi probably guessed correctly, “ the lack of change on the Indus was not due to mere sloth or conservation but to much deeper causes” (CASTE-M. KLASS P-57).

The pre-Vedic society of India and the ancient Greek society traveled two different roads. The pre-Vedic society chose ‘MAITRI’ (love or fraternity combined with compassion) as its Dharma (religion), the supreme principle that guided society in all its activities.

All the sacred emotions and energy that gets focused on God in different religions and nurture a number of blind martyrs, amongst whom many become the enemies of human rights, were direct at ‘MAITRI’. The sacred and the secular concentrated on this value alone.
“JABALE know that DHARMA means fraternity in word, body and mind. This value ‘Fraternity’ or ‘MAITRI’ embraces all beings. (MAHABHARATA-SANTHIPARVA-262 canto sloka-9).

The greatest philosopher of Greece, Socrates, made search for truth his life’s ambition. Indian thinkers debated whether truth should be given a higher place than MAITRI. In the words of the Mahabharata “Truth is the highest aim but that truth, which benefits all livings beings to the maximum extent is the only truth. (Maha-SP. 328-13, 287-20).

In Greece, search for truth (Knowledge) used rationality as it’s a chief weapon. Ancient Indian thinkers used rationality to further love or non-violence-directed truth. European thinkers manipulated rationality to support the unequal society. Plato and Aristotle justified slavery. This trend still continues Hegel glorified the Prussian state. Marx challenged the unjust class oppression existing in industrialized societies, unrealistically predicting the demise of the stat in future. He failed to diagnose that ‘violence’ like greed is a great polluter of the human mind.

Today corporations are ruling the world. Leading states like the U.S, are indulging in terrorism to bulldoze resource- containing countries like Iraq to submission to increase the profits of corporations. The US has directly or indirectly participated in a number of gruesome genocides. The intellectuals who support these measures are manipulating rationality, like Aristotle justifying slavery.

Not only Europe, later or Post-Vedic India, too, propagated the concepts of gender inequality, rebirth and ‘MOKSHA’, and also the theory of the different natural dispositions of big sections of people (GITA), in support of the unjust Verna system. Manipulation of rationality reached its climax in Chanakya’s Arthasastra, where he approved every sort of deception by the state. Both in the East and the west, deception accompanies violence like a shadow.
Post-modernism, though emancipatory in many fields, often lost its way in the blind alley of nihilistic intellectual jugglery. (Baudrillard asserted that there was no Iraq war). Post-modernism remains callous to the plight of the suffering majority of the world. Manipulated and instrumental rationality led to the justification of racism and exploitation by the civilized warrior nations. The famous philosopher Heidegger and the great scientist Heisenberg supported the Nazis. The US spends 7500 core rupees on the killer machine while 80 core people go to bed hungry every day. Warrior societies welcome state-centric culture. Western thinkers beginning from Plato to Lenin (Mao-Ise-Jung too belonged the same state centric school to which Confucius belonged) manipulated rationality to establish state hegemony. Today Latin American people, disillusioned with state-centric polities are experimenting with societies free from state control. In late Pre-Vedic India, the rulers of the states were in a subordinate position to the sages (Yogis), the leaders of societies. The sages or Yogis were atheists and the society did not have a high opinion of all categories of priests including temple priests and astrologers. Their status was considered as equal to the status of the people at the bottom-level, the Chandalas. (MAHA- SP 76-06).

What kind of society existed in early Pre-Vedic days ? “ there was no state, no king, no punishment or punishing agency; every one followed Dharma meant only the pursuance of nonviolence and truth. (Maha SP 59-19). SP 109-10, 11, 12).

Besides the Mahabharata, a famous Tamil Book of verse written by the sage TIRUVELUVAR puts non-violence above truth because this is the only way to the welfare of all created beings.

There is a myth in the Mahabharata where a sage is punished because he broke the value of Non-violence for the sake of ‘Truth’.

As God- based religions put faith at a higher place than rationality, Western thinkers were forced to put science and religion in two different compartments. De-linking rationality based knowledge from the religions emotions, which became necessary under the special circumstances of Europe, took the West further away from the sectional fraternity-promoting powerful sacred emotions. ‘Secularism’ became the guiding principle of every modern state in the World. A society reeling under fanatic emotions took the step of banishing all emotions. One type of morbidity got replaced by another type of morbidity. Both forsook the only remedy, the nurturing of the position emotion ‘love for all’. So the first one justified Black and Red-Indian slavery and genocides, the second, seeded the European holocaust. No wonder emotion-evading scientists became ardent supporter of war-monger societies. Mean while a profit-crazy inhuman system led to a merciless exploitation of nature and weaker individual and societies. The legal, economic political and religious systems of the West structured on the foundation of manipulated rationality. ‘Every one for him self’ was the creed that was expected to lead to a better world according to leading thinkers. They expected the principle of competition to cancel all the evils that emanated from pursuing selfish ends. A political leader rationalizing people destroying policies, a lawyer arguing the innocence of a murderer or a rapist, a businessman using cutthroat methods to crush his rival, a man of religion using scientific jargon to mystify his listeners are all products of this culture. Science, which accepted objective critical standards alone reached great heights. But many discoveries and inventions of scientists served to make the killer machines more and more perfect day by day. To day 60% of the world’s scientists are engaged in military activities and another sizeable number of scientists and economists is engaged in enhancing the exploiting potential of the corporations the world over.
The present world consists of mainly two types of sick individuals. The group that attracts the biggest chunk of humanity is having, as Fromm says ‘the commercial orientation of character’. The other group that includes a large number of the power elite of the world is the robotic military orientation of character. The Buddha identified greed, hatred (violence) and an illusive obsession with self (identities) as the three great evils of humanity. Today, the world elite are crazily embracing these evils.

In the field of science and other branches of knowledge, the West’s contribution is stupendous. Yet there are genocides and holocausts. Had the west heeded Spinoza, the crisis of civilization would not have occurred. As Spinoza says.

“……..he who endeavors to drive away hatred by means of love. Those whom he conquers yield joyfully.’ Spinoza echoes Christ whose greatest follower was Gandhi. The same ideas are in the Mahabharata (SP-229-9) and the Buddha’s Dhammapada (1-4,5). Aristotle instead of saying ‘Man is a rational animal’ could have said ‘Man is a loving animal’. Similarly Descartes could have said’ I love, so I exist’, instead of saying,” I think, therefore I am”.

Both the Semitic and Aryan civilizations placed God’s grace above the human values. Even emancipating movements guided by the lofty vision of ‘Equality’ made violence their central creed. The inevitable happened. New tyrants brought new types of repression. Today much of the wealth of the world and human creativity serves the cause of destruction only.

People who place their hopes in violence are not aware of the recent discoveries in the field of Neuro-science. The brains of these good-intentioned militarized people, particularly their leaders, became prey to undesirable neural paths, which make them unfit for the acceptance of democratic values. When state power changes, one group of greedy elite gets replaced by another group of violent elite. In either case democracy suffers, bringing misery to the commoner. The military industrial complex dominates both the old and new world (the rebel child of the old).
Pre-Vedic Indian opted for an egalitarian society by making two other values ‘ASTEYA’ (developing the motherly attitude towards the whole of creation) and APARIGRAHA (To limit your wants to the greatest extent possible), the main part of Dharma (religion).

This society, following the precepts of nature, in establishing the institution of ‘family’ amongst all sentient beings, made the strong and the competent to world on the motherly principle. In the last century, both Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Gandhi wanted to develop motherly personalities.

A Yogi reaches perfection when motherly love for the whole of creation becomes a part his nature. A mother sacrifices her all, for her children and husband and gets joy out of this great sacrifice. What nature made possible for the preservation of the family, was avidly adopted as the supreme goal of life by the Yogis who developed motherly love for the whole of creation.

The society had no chiefs but only role-models (Yogis) who were expected to shun not only wealth and power, but honor and status. They passed the test of Dharma, only when they risked the wrath of the communities by embracing unpopular causes for the sake of non-violence and truth. Dissent and nonconforming views were the ideals accepted y the Yogis. (Manusmruti canto 2 sloka 162 Maha. SP.229-21). This life of a Yogi was voluntary and open to all human beings. People of all tribes who had Dharmic inclinations joined these role models who did not form any order. They chose their spouses form any tribe. Ancient Indian civilization cannot be under stood, unless we understand the unique institution of these role-models (Yogis). Though they had different opinion in many matters, the Yogic values (Non-violence, Truth, Asteya or the motherly altitude towards all created beings, Aparigraha or limiting wants to the maximum extent) were common to all of them. ‘ MAITRI ( love and compassion) guided their actions Maha-SP-60-2, Manu. S.2-87. these role models (Sages) occupied the aped position in society. According to Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador in the Mauryan court, they were philosophers. Arrian, quoting Megasthenes wrote,’ these sages go naked.

They live upon the fruits which each season produces and on the barks of trees.’ The Mahabharata, through it myths (the tale of the golden mongoose), and sayings glorifies them (SP canto.363). Ministers, king’s priests and ambassadors were considered inferior to the sages. (Yogis) MAHA-SP 76-6 in the post Christian era, the priests, ministers and the king’s councilors and ambassadors usurped the highest positions in society and this unique institution gradually faded into insignificance.

Sexual jealousy was absent in that society. Celibacy was not considered a virtue. Women had a higher place than men in one variety of Yoga, Known as Tantra (Prof. D.P. chattopadyya-Lokayata-1st chapter).

There was neither puritanical restraint nor promiscuity. Some house holders wanted to improve their breed, by requesting a Yogi to impregnate their wives. Even kings did the same. The Yogis, who had their senses under control generally obliged. When the patriarchal Vedic-Indians started stressing women’s faithfulness, the system was under strain. It came to an end when Mahavira and the Buddha accepted celibacy as an important value in the 6th Century (B.C).

Pre-Vedic society was a mosaic of many societies. Phallus worship and the worship of female deities were widely prevalent. Every group followed its lifestyle. Identity consciousness was absent in the pre-Vedic society. Even the individual self was considered a network of social relations (the Buddha denied the existence of self or soul.) Fraternal relations guided the activities of every group. The Buddha’s denial of self is confirmed by to day’s neurologists like V.S. Ramachandran.

The role model of pre-Vedic society had to totally free their minds form the destructive emotions like greed and hatred (anger) and also the obsession for identity. Through meditation, the Yogis controlled not only the conscious, but the unconscious. Michael J. Baime (a, Tibetan Buddhist saint) was subjected to brain examination when he was deep in meditation. In the Pennsylvania Neurological Laboratory. The neurologist Newberg utilized the latest Single Photon Emission computerized tomography method.

What surprised them was the total inertness of the Parietal Lobe. This man lost all sense of personal identity and tides of cosmic love (Love for all sentient beings) were produced in his brain. His pre-frontal lobe was unusually active thus making him a very creative personality. (Amitabh chakrabarthy, a Bengali research scientist in France, writes in JIJNASA, a Bengali magazine in the issue22-4). There are different types of mediations. The Buddhists, prefer the mediation of compassion. A Yogi who has perfected yogic physical and mental exercises but has not internalized the YAMA values: Non-violence, Truth Asteya and Aparigraha may be a fraud.

None of the evils that brought ignominy to Hinduism the Varna system, the slaughter of animals in Yagnas or sacrifices, the system of untouchability, the theory of rebirth plagued the pre-Vedic culture of India. Leading historians like Irfan Habit assign them to the later Vedic period. In the pre-Vedic period, there were no priests, only Yogis or philosophers. Priests who advocated miracles and mysticism came to India along with the war-efficient Aryans under the aggressive God INDRA. The Yogis of the Pre-Vedic period had a poor opinion of miracles and mysticism. The Buddha warned his disciples to be wary of miracles. He never advocated my stoicism. My stoicism is the guiding spirit of the Upanishads, the last portion of the Vedas. Vedic MANTRAS (Charms) are claimed to be having miraculous powers.

Miracles and mysticism are the mainstay of the God-based religions in the East as well the West.

When the Vedic-Aryans came to India, these role-models (YATIS or YOGIS) were killed in large numbers. The Vedas and the Mahabharata tell us that fierce dogs known as Shalabrook were unleashed in jungles by the great God Indra to hunt and tear. ‘The Yatis’ to pieces( Mahabharata –SP-33-29) and (The Vedas R.N. Dandekar Felicitation volume P.70).

Vedic society cleverly yoked the religious emotions of the populace to the knowledge of soul and Brahma or the ritual that forced the Gods to fulfill their wishes. Magic, intellectual jugglery and mysticism pervaded the intellectual sphere. Gone was the search for mental exercises that mad ‘love for all’ the sole aim of Dharma (religion). Yagnavalkya, the most important Vedic figure of those days, sold his knowledge and debating skill for a high price. After the domination of the Indian society by war-loving Aryans, colossal efforts were made to subvert the ancient culture, through it could not be effaced completely. By additions and alterations they changed the contours of the Mahabharata and Manusmruti drastically. Still we get glimpses of a different civilization if we make a careful reading of these seminal books. Due to the great pressure of the Vedic warrior society, the role models (the sage) gradually faded away into oblivion, and a power money honor greedy priestly class usurped their position through intimidation and cultural subterfuges. The rulers, co-conspirators of the priestly class, succeeded in establishing the Vedas as the greatest of the sacred books, and proclaimed that the Varna system and untouchability are divinely ordained. (the yogis, through an insignificant group in post Christ India, did not accept these measures.) Still, there remains no doubt that the Vedic Aryans consciously or unconsciously, absorbed many feature of their predecessor’s superior’ culture.

Today’s Indian elite are Indians in color only. They have absorbed European culture with the Zeal of new disciples. While Hindutwavadis have embraced the worst of European culture (Nazis), the progressives have internalized the best of the west. They are votaries of Marxism, secularism and representative democracy. Neither group is inclined to internalize the Yogic values. Gandhi’s generous lies in intuitively internalizing the ancient Yogic values and living the life of the pre Vedic role-models (sages). The next and the more important step of his genius was in accepting politics as his life breath and combining the ennobling Western value of courageous fighting with the principle of non-violence. (The first phase of MAITRI). His ecological, political, economic, and cultural ideas are village-centric. Some thinkers believe that he is ahead of even the 21st century in many fields.

In the past, when warrior societies invaded the countries inhabited by non-violent societies, the latter, fearing massacre, fled to other regions. Gandhi changed this mindset. He led non-violent battles which were welcomed by the Indian psyche, influenced by the ancient world values.

That Gandhi’s success was because of the biological make up of the human mind becomes clear from the following experiment. A Tibetan was invited to the E.M. K. laboratory on the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin. Davidson, a leading scientist in the field of effective Neuroscience, invited the lama for the purpose of experimenting. Prof. Paul Ekman, director of the human interaction laboratory at the University of California, a world level expert in the field of facial signs of emotion, was present during the experiment.

The Tibetan Lama was asked to argue with an obstinate, aggressive professor whose views differed from his own. The professor showed high emotional arousal at the beginning but gradually quietened.

After the experiment the professor said’ ‘I felt some thing like a shadow or an aura, couldn’t be aggressive” Paul Ekman commented, “ when interacting with some one who doesn’t returns aggression, or returns aggressive with loving kindness, then it’s beneficial to you.” (Destructive Emotions 1st chapter-the Lama in the Lab by Daniel goleman).

Are we heading towards a prison-military complex ? the tools provided by Neurology and Genetics may be wielded by the scientist (Expert) and the judge to imprison the future rebel whose brain, they claim, is an open book for them. The wrong use of Nano-technology is another field, where humanity may perish. Either “Maitri” or ‘Extinction’ is the writing on the wall.

Gandhi’s successful satyagraha were probably because of his approach of loving kindness. (Neurologists have written about the presence of mirror neurons in the human mind. A man like Gandhi probably rouses these neurons and converts even a diehard into an admirer as it happened in the case of General Smuts).

Mega-size is a destroyer of human sympathy. A general pushing a button that may destroy big cities, a pilot dropping cluster bombs on an innocent populace, a shareholder enjoying enormous profits, a consumer admiring alluring items made in factories where famished children labor for a pittance unduly long hours, a bureaucrat like Eichman, obeying murderous commands a liberty-loving scholar-like J. S. Mill, insensitive to the agony of the colonized, a scientist perfecting more and more dangerous weapons: all are engaged in unworthy activities. (the Buddha called them ASAT JIBIKA or the wrong ways of earning Livelihood). Only a war-free society can do away with the fiction of big states, so that smaller viable societies come into existence. Such small societies can federate to form bigger units till the process ends in a global organization.

In today’s World, generally, morality plays no role in the successful careers of the celebrities who are the role-models for the youth. It is not unusual for a film or sports star to advertise for a notorious tobacco company. The present need is the universal acceptance of that global level morality that checks the devastation of the environment and closes the gap between the haves and have-nots.

Recently neurologists have discovered that cognition and emotion cannot be separated because the same neurons are involved in both the activities.

The pursuit of emotion- free rationality by the scientists, bureaucrats, businessman, technologist, and many others probably has driven the emotions to the unconscious and the emotions are finding their outlets in negative or destructive activities. Greed gets satisfied as consumerism rides high, hatred vents its energy in wars and individual or group terrorisms. Racial or civilization pride, sometimes, leads to the exploitation and massacre of other races or civilizations, If it is not so, how can we explain that all categories of scientists, who, life long pursuers of rationality, became staunch supporters of irrational ideologies like Nazism, Stalinism, aggressive nationalism and the predator corporations’ global reign.

Unless a culture that values the positive emotion of love for all the created beings, finds universal acceptance, humanity is bound to head to wards disaster. Gandhi taught us that injustice should be fought without dehumanizing or demonizing the oppressors. (History teaches us that today’s victims may become tomorrow’s oppressors.) We have to free ourselves from greed, hatred and violence.

I stop here. I leave the work of visualizing a proper society, in the light of anthropological knowledge available in this essay, to better heads. I am hopeful of a better future as more and more people (Particularly in the West) are becoming conscious of human rights.

I am grateful to Prof. Hawking for his stimulating question.
(Originally published in the Janata magazine)