History of USA - Part 1

March 6, 2005

Histories have moved away from monarchs to people to events. I wish to take an evolutionary look at the course of US history. The opening of America, from the point of view of social evolution is because the individual wanted to achieve unrestricted by the stratified social structures of class or caste. That happened when Luther wanted no intermediary between MAN and God. The action of the awakened individual's aspiration was responded to by Nature with the opening of a vast virgin land rich with mineral, oil and formidably big rivers. It is freedom in the physical plane to tap its potentials. They did prove to be a physical abundance, an expression of the infinite. In tapping that potential infinite physical energy was released in the population. Man endowed with infinite energy acting in the vast expanse of unlimited land naturally goes in for Big things, big house, big dams, big bridges, and big cars. This is the explanation of His phrase that the Americans have the knack of getting into a larger rhythm. Coimbatore is the No.1 district in advanced agriculture as the monumental effort to dig wells 200' wide prior to starting cultivation renders actual cultivation a child's play. For every 1-acre reclaimed in USA three men died. That was the energy to acquire the land. Growing crops is then an easier affair than reclaiming the land. Land in USA produced 1/3 more than in Europe. At every step the immigrant was rewarded with more than usual success.

In the early centuries of the settlement the area of land allotted to the aspirant was one square mile or 640 acres, later it was reduced to a quarter of it. One who starts with such vast stretches of land, especially having come from countries where farmers own 10 or 20 acre plots, the hopes are raised and along with that energy. He came to USA as the urge of individuality pushed him. Having come here, he found himself severely alone in the midst of work which aggrandised his claim to individuality. Maybe the conditions in which he worked were conducive to help his individuality to degenerate into narrow selfishness. But it does not matter. He has a work cut out for him. He had to do it himself. No outside help is possible as each one had too much on hand - ideal conditions for one to become dynamic and energetic. The alternatives before him were abundant successful life or utter ruin. No greater incentive is necessary for man to work non-stop.

Added to this he had to protect himself against the attacks of the native population which raised his courage and led him to arm himself to teeth - a habit which the US citizen is unwilling to give up even today. He is set in a context of abundant potential, hazardous atmosphere, lonely habitation and the alternative of death and ruin. Of course, these are ideal conditions or maybe compulsions for one to discover his individuality and cherish it. No wonder USA produces 30% of the GDP of the world with 5% of the population. His work is six times more productive than the world average.

In periods of transitions talents rise to the top. It is also true that in such periods unless one's talents are brought to the surface and maintained by constant exercise, man perishes. Transitions demand talents and build them. Its direct result in America of limitless space was twofold. The American wages rose 10 times that of the European worker. Paupers entering America directly entered the middle class within a maximum period of a year and a half.

What Karl Marx aspired for the working class and Lenin endeavoured to achieve through dictatorship, Nature offered to the entire population of Europe in America if only they were willing to quit the class system and discover the infinity in the physical material plane. America was an occasion of work, a productive work, not a field of thought. The American borrowed the European science and converted it into scientific technology of the society which was at pains to be born at a higher level of prosperity. The abundance of opportunities around and the American's willingness to work endlessly needed one more factor, the practical organisation that forges results out of labour. Mother says the Americans have excelled in practical organisation. Andre siegfried writing about the characters of various population - Latins, Germans, French, British, Russian - speaks of the American dynamism. Nature gave them compelling circumstances that were opportunities to be creative. Hence their enormous productivity.

In the early centuries of settlement there was no government. They earned by hard work and kept their earnings to themselves. The shores on the East and the west protected them. There was no possibility of foreign invasion for them to create an army and spend on it, nor was there any police as every family in the wilderness defended themselves. They were a law unto themselves. Man was left with work and only work. What developed was economic might, not political organisation or political will. This led to their being isolationalists and insular.

The nourishing social climate of Europe was not there. The human mind was taken to its virginally creative moment of enterprise. The Americans believe that any problem must have a solution if only the Mind is exercised. So they exercised their minds in solving practical problems and gave up none as they raised 5 story buildings 5 feet above the earth in Chicago. This is an attitude that utter freedom that is physical infinity generates.

The world is stratified by caste in India, class in Europe. Its growth demands destroying these anachronisms. America did it. The various ethnic identities are another obstacle for world unity which is a goal of Nature in humanity. Immigrants from all nations converging on this sacred land of virginity have to live together. This is the greatest experiment of humanity in creating a basis for world unity. One direct result of it in the late 20th century is the powerful antagonism of Islam representing the older rigid civilisation.

Till 1860 America was a land of farmers, poachers, fishermen and peddlers but today America is a world of business. The American farmer buys, sells and administers his land as he handles his shares at the stock exchange. His important newspapers are business papers. He "sells" his ideas too. That is the American phraseology.

It is in this land of the first cause of humanity, Freedom, we saw slavery institutionalised and a war was waged in its defence. This is not an exception, but a rule of life that every truth has its opposite which is also true. The idea of Freedom is not complete until its opposite slavery too claims the right of existence. The civil war abolished slavery from the statute book, but not from the human hearts. Evolution does not abolish the opposite but transforms both to a higher status. The Blacks preferred the life of slaves in USA to freedom in their own homes back in Africa because of better living conditions - Prosperity. Prosperity and the prospects of prosperity is the solvent of ethnic attachment and the class conflict.

FDR replied the person who asked him what would be the one book he would like to present a Russian communist that he would offer him the catalogue of Sears Roebuck which offered more than socialism could achieve in USSR. Marx's call was for the state to organise Socialism and wither away ultimately. His call was great but state was not ready as an instrument in 1917 especially in USSR. Nature developed the social mechanism of entrepreneurship to achieve the goal of Marx in the context of capitalism as it did not rob man of his freedom. The Americans are realists not theorists. J.P. Morgan perceived this truth when he said market is the true regulator of public interest. In nascent conditions which prevailed in USA then market forces blunt the human greed by ruthless competition. It is natural that Morgan could not see the need of state regulation at a later date. The command economy and free market are two extremes. Social evolution proceeds unhindered when one expands and the other curbs within limits.

The desire to get on in the world was restrained by the passion for righteousness because of the presence of Quakers. America was fortunate to have this novel element even at its inception. The ethical direction of energies enables the Mind to preside over life - life gets readily organised. It is worth noting that in the measure Mind is organised one finds outside a corresponding natural organisation. When the Mind is erratic monsoon is erratic compelling him to organise his work which enables him to organise his mind. Once the mind is organised and in places where men have such organised minds, rains fall in regular intervals to take care of his cultivation needs. The American mind is now organised because Man had to create original organisation in his work starting from scratch. America has found out the truth in the Maxim 'Value the Man if you want to grow rich'.

In the early days the individuality of the American defied planning. One who has accomplished against adversity all by himself will naturally enjoy a formed individuality which would not easily submit to anyone or anything, even if it is a planning process. We know today that the entire western civilisation is an achievement of so formed individuality. In today's America we can very well say that the process of planning has reached its maximum possible perfection or even consummation. Here lies buried an apparent contradiction. The course of time has a way of reconciling the assertion of the one and the necessity of the other. Mind understands by experience. It is a solid, rich, knowledge that is flawless. Mind also has the ability to comprehend dispensing with the slow, arduous, cumbersome, laborious experience. It is given to Man to choose a compromise between them as it suits him. To know that measure in the American individual who plays the role of her citizen, in the following pages will be a rewarding exercise this project implies.

In these periods the lease value of the land was 4 cents for 50 acres i.e. less than 1/10^th of a cent. In England the same was 1 pound per acre. It is not a gap but a gulf. The value of money was so great, that of land and man was not so great. To understand how rich America is and how she came to be that, we must be clear in our conception of money. Money, over the years, has become a social force though it started as a medium of exchange. By virtue of being a medium between two ends, money has acquired a power over both in its social exercise. Thus, today money is such a social force with respect to all institutions that wield it which means the entire society. More than any other social power Money has come to occupy the very centre of all the social forces. Maybe, governmental power is close to it. Man, moving to that centre can wield the full power of money. To do so, he must be more valuable than money. In a society it turns out to be the value given to the individual by the society. In America man has acquired that importance and society too has willingly awarded that significance more than in any other country of the world. This is one important reason for the affluence of America.

Labour was short, farms needed to be worked, a great many settlers were in demand. There was no occasion to be selective of nationality or religion. Religious tolerance came to be practised thus. It was a historical circumstance that compelled them to be broad minded. Man has to move from the goodness enabled by outer circumstances to native inner goodness to be really called to be civilised. We see there two extremes in the life of USA, freedom and slavery; individuality and planning; broadmindedness and bigotry. But at present the right side exceeds the wrong side. In the measure USA consciously chooses the right side, enshrines it in the constitution, enacts it as law, extends it as a way of life that is culture she will retain her present role of an evolutionary leader. It is one thing the other nations accept the lead of USA but it is another thing they come forward to rise to their own revolutionary role. Every nation can play the role of a follower but each nation has in her the seminal consciousness of the SEED of evolution. India who has developed the spirit can now move to the final stage of evolving Spirit. France that has developed intellectuality is thus qualified for its transformation to INSIGHT which is subtle intelligence. Russia who is mystical and emotional can raise herself to Mind. As she has experimented with socialism unsuccessfully, she can now successfully try her hand at communism. China that has long enjoyed dictatorship can make herself bold to experiment in democracy at a level not known to the world. Japan that is immature can attempt at full maturity. Germany who espoused racial purity can now recognise that no race is pure. As every nation has so many other facets in her existence, Time is NOW to come forward to transform all of them. The US leadership is essentially economical, though her military might and political prowess are superior to that of all other nations. Whether the world is going to trail behind USA or each nation is going to contribute its might to the common pool or whether US is going to accept India's lead in Spirit are open questions to which the future must fashion answers. Should this project of an Encyclopedia of theoretical presentation of life succeed, we may stumble upon that answer at the close of our mission.

America was not only becoming prosperous and broadcasting freedom. The proclamation of individuality is a gain for the whole humanity. In 1692 one shade of other side is documented. As prosperity increased with no commensurate education, people were coming out of superstition as uneducated population did. The details of the case are not so important for us as the psychological stage the society was trying to cross over and the fashion in which they did. A special court trying sorcery hanged 19 people as they refused to confess. One man who refused to plead at all was pressed to death with heavy stones. It was the only time it was ever used in American history. Later people in jail were released, the special court dissolved as the outrage was too much even for those days.

It is education that enables a population to overcome such hysteria over things like sorcery. Among the uneducated population the officers fully share the view of the population. Prosperity helps people to overcome superstition to some extent not as much as education does. Their ways were peculiar and curious and warrants no examination. One point deserves our consideration. It is the sturdy of mind that refuses to confess or plead guilty or otherwise. One such man was found guilty of contempt of court and was cruelly killed. The measure of cruelty of a society is a measure of its civilisation. The US population outgrew that gruesome cruelty but not without once tasting it. It is a parting shot. In these affairs a comparison of all other societies at that time will help. Now we know nations are rated for GDP, corruption, human rights, standards of education, democratic status and many other things. Such ratings were not done in those days. It is my belief that had there been such scales and measurements in those days, the above cited outrage will still look less uncivilised than many other nations we respect highly.

The higher truths of life are always afloat in all societies. It comes to the surface at times of crisis such as the above outrage. Cotton Mather who at the climax of this hysteria published a book wherein he saw witchcraft as the negative confirmation of the existence of immortal souls. He was a Doctor of Divinity, a fellow of the Royal Society. He saw the scientific pursuits as the extension of religious beliefs. This witch- hunt had really become an occasion to bring to the fore the subtle truths of life. His own father, an equally learned man seemed to know how to avoid the temptations of Dark forces. He would not share his son's enthusiasm to expose the witches more fully so as to confirm the workings of God. The father knew the occult truth that any contact with the evil forces would easily make man their victim. America is a fortunate nation everyone says, to have documented history from its inception.

In such a society, the growth of organisations, the reversal of consciousness at every major transition, the subconscious truths changing into conscious one, and all the 32 principles of development and its 357 variations can find documented proofs.
Thus America becomes the delight of the scholar of social evolution. Should this study need historical proofs, here is the best occasion for us to cull it from.

In 1750 the statistics that came from America was largely phony and it continued to be so for long. Perhaps it was like India of the present day that does not appreciate the value of statistics. To appreciate the value of statistics one needs something more than education, an academic understanding of life. When Peter Drucker pains-takingly prepared his views based on demographic changes, only two institutions were benefited by it. Others ignored his findings. Statistical studies help one to project the present into the future. Today Goldman Sachs has predicted that India will be the third largest economy in 2050. They later advanced it to 2030. Such a study is not possible if the figures the government collects are false. Statistics helps us understand where we are, what our earlier failures were due to, on what strength we now rest and where we are tending and when we will reach there. Phony statistics cancel all these valuable findings. To have the statistics consciousness^* the society must have the value for statistics, have an organisation to collect it, it must have seen the useful results of such study early. One must have developed the conscience for right statistics. Obviously it has taken 250 years in American conditions to achieve it. One fundamental principle of this Theory is every facet of the society reflects every other facet, the more organised the better. That way a factual history can gradually yield place to historical theory. History can then become theoretical history, a statement of facts in terms of the Theory.

The Unknowable formulates itself to the human consciousness and then returns. Nature presents the exact circumstances one needs to develop or organise his mind and returns to its original status. Nature tries to create an evolutionary spearhead in America where the protectionism of caste, creed, guild etc will not stay Man's progress. To those who have heard Nature's call, she offers a vast continent where Man's physical infinity can expand horizontally, with rich natural resources in vast abundance so that his vertical growth of inquisitive mind can find its endless play. Nor does she want him to be limited by the new fangled organisations such as guild to put a break on his enormous speed of growth. American life is worth examining from each such point of view. The natural circumstances create a labour scarcity that does not permit employers to choose men of his country or religion. He invites anyone who is able to come to this God-forsaken land so that he may turn out to be the chosen vehicle. In the life of America of those days - C 1800 - work did not permit stratification, rather it created conditions to demolish such barriers. We also witness the phenomenon of the opposite to every desirable development. In the measure life became stable those rigidities, began to show up. We see it later in the South clinging to slavery, pockets of states sticking to the Bible literally against the massive influx of modern scientific knowledge and the parental authority cruelly exercised. As we saw the American society outgrew violence in public life faster than in other countries but not without a parting shot. The attempt to preserve the appearance of the institution of marriage that was falling apart in all its essential ingredients was carried on up to 1950 or even 1960 when the youth took to mass destruction of all the symbols of the establishment. It was the hippie movement. Later they were all absorbed into the society but now they are the leaders ready to burst forth in an upheaval. They have no real leadership. No longer the leadership can be personified in a single person. It has to be a leadership of Thought, a Thought that will inspire the whole world to immediate action.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*The whole theory of statistics can either be written here which will be apparently out of place or by a LINK it can be referred to the original article on consciousness of statistics. There we can explain the science of quantification, how it reflects every other facet of social progress indirectly, how the existence of statistics is a developed stage of social growth, how it indicates the educational level of the society. The presence of statistics indicates that the social mind measures its various activities and evaluates itself in terms of other areas of growth. Such a society develops in the individual conscience a loyalty to figures, a fidelity to facts as the citizen values personal truthfulness. It will be a full length article in itself.

We have heard in ancient India that when there was a dispute the parties approached the local Raja who decided. Perhaps this was true one or two thousand years ago. By that time there were Kingdoms, Kings, dispensation of law and maintenance of order. Those were days when education, arts, trade, urban life were considerably developed. They spoke of 56 Kingdoms in North India. Before such advent of civilised life, if a robber was caught in a village, he was hanged by the nearest tree. Social development went through such phases that the peak behaviour of high water marks of civilisation appeared very early in the growth of societies and the early barbaric habits emerged long after civilisation is well ripe and matured.

In America around the turn of the 19th century mob ruled as a rule. There was no police, but Militia was there whose members were readily in the mob. A famous English Writer condemning the London Times for its autocratic ways, named it Jupiter and said it was Tsar in Russia, the mob in America and Jupiter in England that held sway and ruled over the masses and shaped their opinions. It was not as if the settlers had not known the rule of law in the countries of their origin. But, in USA they had absolutely needed all their time and energy for survival. Being people from the lowest levels of society, they might not have had the mental capacity to conceive of a corporate life or the different branches of administration it needed. Living as they were all by themselves in the wilderness they all carried arms to protect them. It was a society 10 times more prosperous than their compeers back in Europe whose pride in self defence was comprehensive. Especially in the interior not many intellectuals or aristocrats were found to offer any leadership in civic affairs. They were muscular men who never thought until their existence was threatened. As a result they lived a life of mob rule which Europe overcame several centuries earlier. The enormous prosperity in the hands of such unthinking men gave a virulent personality to the wealth they possessed. That was the seed of America producing 34% of world's production a century later when the second on the list was 7% of Britain. The world of that day never paid heed to the money accumulated in the hands of men who could toil in a god-forsaken land. America was not mentioned in the civilised society of Europe even upto the second world war. Money by itself will not be respected by the world though its use was readily sought after as Antonio took help from Shylock. Money gains social value or respect in the society when it goes with power. Even then it would be a left handed compliment and a grudging approval. Educational achievements can secure such respect to a greater extent, what really gains the regard of the world is the cultural pre-eminence. America without ever possessing any of these endowments substantially except an accumulation of wealth has now emerged as the cultural leader of the entire world on the strength of her evolutionary role. It is unrealistic to expect the Americans to be respected in Europe even today.

Man is determined by his circumstances is the popular belief. Mother says it is the opposite. It is Man's response that determines the result of his circumstances. America is an example of how Man's way of responding to difficult circumstances changes the difficulties into opportunities. As he changes his attitudes to the environment in one aspect, all his other attitudes too gradually undergo a similar change. That is how new organisations are born. Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom is the traditional Christian belief. As long as fear is present neither love nor wisdom will be born. The role played by seminal religious movements at such times of transition plays an important role in the direction society takes. One such movement gained popularity. The old Puritan preachers based their message of God on fear. One promising young preacher who was setting records for accomplishment gave this movement a basic change of direction - he based his message essentially on joy. God has created the world for joy. The world has come to fully recognise the power of his wrath. In the unevolved state of his own Mind Man mistakes the cruel catastrophes of Nature as wrath of God, instead of knowing them as the unskilled handling of life or Nature. Man's moving from life to Mind is moving from fear to joy. This shift in America is significant as joy is affluence and prosperity. We can as well say a society that decides to move from its belief of God's anger to God's joy is well on its way to high levels of prosperity.

America was at that time the least taxed country in the world. It remained so for long. Apart from that evasion of customs duty was something particular. Even in England, otherwise a law abiding nation, it was a universal passion to evade customs. The civilised part of the world has largely overcome corruption in the administration. It is unheard of in many countries. In the same countries how willing people will be to voluntarily pay taxes, if there is no authority for collection. Humanity has not yet administered such tests to itself. Presently it is a non-existent issue. There is one issue even beyond that. Can a nation test its own population about their unwillingness to buy or use smuggled goods in a world where there are cities where there is a special market for this. Whether human conscience will ever rise to such levels of purity especially in the collective is not a question we need to occupy ourselves with now. Still, from a theoretical point of view, such measures are exact barometers of the public conscience. Voluntary payment of tax, refusal to countenance smuggled goods are high water marks for a civilised nation now non-existent. Still, to measure the manhood of a nation and conscious awareness of the public, they serve us as distant but distinct indices. America of this period, of course, had not qualified for such standards or measurements. Should nations or the world is to be rated on a scale of human values, of course, these two should prominently figure as scales of measurement. In India criminals are entering the government through elections and the enforcement of law is ineffective to prevent their entry. Auditors are officially the agents of corrupting the accounts while lawyers collude with judges so that both parties pay handsome bribes. Burma Bazzar is the official smugglers' market as long as one can remember. An Indian is ill qualified to evaluate any nation on any scale of ethical values. Should he do so, he must confine his efforts to his own country.

War boosted the British economy and ushered her into industrial Revolution.* Wars are great landmarks in the history of the physical man even as scientific discoveries are landmarks in the life of mental man. Socrates, broke new ground in the domain of the mind, even as the Buddha did in the territory of the Spirit. Each plane develops its full potentialities before it crosses that plane. That process necessarily develops rigidities, especially in the physical plane. The temples and cathedrals its inspiration built are to be transcended in concept and execution. But many of them excel in beauty as perfection in that plane is reached. They are to be preserved as museum pieces as well as for their exquisite perfection. The mind that executed such projects, has entered into a physical rigidity which it is incapable of

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Foot note:- A description of war or definition of war is given here as it is necessary to explain the course of events. In the final version this purpose will be served by a Link to war where it is fully explained in its original context as a theoretical concept.

surmounting. They can only be destroyed. Such destruction is possible only when the bodies that carry such minds are destroyed. Hence war becomes indispensable. This is the reason why every war is followed by enormous progress. For example Duel was developed during the hey days of the physical man. To us now, the very concept of the duel is at bottom irrational. How can the truth or falsehood of a charge be established by two men fighting? What has the physical prowess to do with the rightness of an act executed elsewhere.

These were the days when men acted not from thought, but from the thought of the body. We can as well say they thought with their bodies. The highest achievement of Man in those days were achievement of physical skills. Archery, duel were among them. These skills depended on the values one had. Those values were physical values. Honour was the highest value so developed. The implication is he who fights for his honour will have greater skill and higher inspiration. Hence success in the Duel is success of the Right. Honour was overlaid with and upgraded to patriotism in wars. Such a high concept of honour and exalted emotion of patriotism cannot act within the framework of a flexible form. They needed strong inflexible forms which means rigid. Even after Man has grown his vitality, the emotion of courage ennobled his being and it served to exalt the aim of war. It is a pity duel, honour, courage, war lingered even after Man's Mind came into its own. The two world wars fought in the 20th century rang the death knell to the exuberances of the physical man. But this character of war was recognised even during the days of Heraclitus. The war of the Pandavas with the Kauravas was typically of this description.

The British Empire held USA as its colony. In 1776 USA broke out of the control of the mother country. It is noteworthy that only in 1774 the famous battle of Plassey was fought and won in India. This opened up the avenue of laying the foundation of British Raj in India. The holding capacity of the Empire being fixed the moment India was gained, USA was lost.

The War of independence of USA, as every war does, boosted the British economy so much that Britain was ushered into Industrial Revolution. The freedom of USA that brought the Industrial Revolution to the world had a second innings when Ford made mass production the order of the day by standardisation and assembly line. USA which started as an evolutionary spearhead in the 16th century was not only responsible for the generation of Industrial Revolution but was the arena for further revolutions which their planet has witnessed. One of them was the revolution of mass production. The other was brought in by IT in the eighties as a tool of the Revolution of Rising Expectations, a phenomenon that raised Man from physicality to mentality.

The first rule of settlers is survival. Survival means self-defence. The best of defences is offence. Thus the Red Indians were almost annihilated. Today we are concerned about several animal species becoming extinct and we take all possible efforts to preserve them. The World's Wild Life Society is a prominent organisation presided over by the Queen consort of England. The Americans who hastened to wipe out the native Indians tried to preserve slavery in the South. The nation had to wage a war to abolish slavery. Domination over the weak is the natural instinct. What the early settlers could not restrain themselves from, the established government had the sense to follow. The tendency of the successful American was to assert his independence. It became a collective urge in the Southern States maturing in a demand for secession. Nature has created America to forge unity of ethnic groups demolishing the barriers of class or creed, but its direct off shoot was Southern States demanding to secede from the union and the preservation of slavery. If a rule is true, its opposite too is true. That is what we see here.

The French in India tried to impose their religion on the Indians whereas the English chose not to interfere with the local customs or religion. The result was the English ruled India for nearly 3 centuries while the French possessed 4 little pockets. As a strategy non-interference works, instead of following it as a strategy Man can have that knowledge as a guide for action. No one can expect the settlers to have had that far-sighted wisdom. The American who destroyed the Indian civilisation next destroyed the natural environment causing a polluted atmosphere promising no future for our future generation. He woke up, changed his attitude. Had he learned to live with the Indians, a peaceful people of pleasant habits, the Americans could have learnt a good deal of subtle knowledge. The Britisher in India which they conquered grew curious about the Hindu culture. The philosophy of Vedanta found an entry into the western mind. Even physicists are trying to discover the common ground between Physics and Mysticism. The spiritual awakening of the west though crude is a direct result of the westerner not trying to destroy the Indian culture. It is true the slaves in USA lived twice longer there than in their native Africa. But it does not validate slavery. Man is not to treat another man a slave whatever the other man is. It is a hard lesson USA learnt the hard way. Every nation has several such lessons on several fronts to learn but America being the evolutionary leader has a greater duty in that regard. Britain dominated the world politically. Now America dominates the world in all respects - politically, culturally, militarily and financially. Domination can be a phase, can never become a way of life for humanity. Sooner or later it should give place to equality whether the other deserves it or not.

Religion has led to fanatical beliefs. America was created to fashion human unity, unity of different ethnic groups and from different religions. Religions are born in self-contained societies. No one from outside try to come into them. If they do come, they will be forced either by natural circumstances or by the coercion of the local people to adopt the local religion. Pakistan is 100% Muslims not by the choice of the population but by overt coercion. America was not created for that purpose. She was created to break down such social tendencies. Where the survival is at stake religion is not thought of. Religion and religious worship comes into significance only when living conditions are secure. In such circumstances, religion has a way of becoming an insistent force or even a virulent force. It is known to be overcome only by an economic incentive. Economic opportunities have a way of making the population overcome religions fanaticism. The energies needed by successful economic pursuits are enormous or total. It leaves no remainder of human energies for any other frivolous pursuits, not essential for living. Religious worship is one such. A clear evidence of this is seen in the American way life. As a rule when any society becomes prosperous, piety becomes less. Of course, the opposite too is true. Increasing prosperity diverts man to better living forgetting his God. God comes back into his life at a later stage not through the door of religion but through society.

Good living enabled by greater income directly seeks social status. In a society that is not mentally developed or had had no academic training worship becomes a way of respectable life. Temple worship increases. Church attendance goes up. Development of Mind is detrimental to worship is an inexorable rule. How many social versions it will acquire is not our concern. The English are considered wretchedly irreligious. They are also conservatives. Their Parliament starts with a prayer in which they have little belief. The American Constitution is not religious. It does not permit compelling the population to conform to one religion. In that sense it is secular. How the constitution came to be written in such a secular fashion takes us to the findings of such a study. As far as our purposes are concerned America is not meant to be a country where conditions will permit the domination of religious fanaticism. It is for this same reason, it is there in USA where we can find rabid communalists or fundamentalists who literally believe in the words of the Bible.

In fighting the evil tendency life does not develop perfect conditions for the GOOD. It keeps conditions where the good will always have the upper hand. This is true of negative factors that lose their hold on the population or perverse tendencies. Even for the existence of hostile forces this rule will hold good. We see in health, those who are healthy are not devoid of diseases or immune to them. Their vulnerability to disease is at a minimum or under control. Until Man initiates himself into the process of transformation this rule rules. The very first instance of physical substances capable of such transformation is the EM, the effective microorganisms. Neither in the Mind, nor in the vital such developments have recurred. Terrorism, religious fundamentalism, personal human cruelty blatant falsehood are on the increase in their intensities while the capacity to contain them is increasing. A parallel to EM in the vital can be seen, even if it is a distant example more of a lip service than of true emotions, is the series of apologies to communities and nations who have been wronged over the years or even centuries. Even the Roman Catholic Church has forgiven the Jews of their crime.

Sri Aurobindo agrees with the essential truth in Darwin's theory of evolution, but calls it as evolution of forms. He describes His spiritual evolution as an evolution of consciousness. There are gaps in the evolution of form between one species and another because at each such stage a reversal of consciousness takes place. Science, He says, does not explain these gaps. Such gaps, such reversals do occur in the social evolution. One such is the creation of paper currency. Formed society does put up very serious resistance to the stress of evolution or any change towards that direction. How much the merchants, the traders, the bourgeoisie were looked down upon by the landed aristocracy in Europe, particularly in England is well known. Today the aristocrat is a museum piece. The birth of manufacturing was an evolutionary progress frowned upon by the Lords and Dukes. Even the birth of money in the form of coins met with such a fate. It is worthwhile discussing all the stages of development in currency and note the extent of resistance and forms of opposition it generated. Its final form in USA was a President who espoused that and cause and took initiative to suppress the activities of banks. He went to such lengths that the Bank that was serving as a central Bank at that time was forced to close.

Beliefs matured into theories that in turn fortified the original beliefs turning them into economic superstition. Goods produced by dint of hard work and labour was considered real money. Paper money was accused of being not real money. It was conceived as false money calculated to cheat the honest population that exerts. It is true that Banks created at that times 3 times the money deposited with them. Honestly men in position felt that the surplus created by the banks was unreal money intended to cheat people. This is the gap Sri Aurobindo speaks of when Man moves from physicality to mentality. Money produced by the body by work, is in smaller quantities. Money produced by Mind - paper money - is proportionately higher because Mind is more productive than the physical body. People were not wrong in not being able to see this evolutionary fact. Banks, it is said, now, produce 9 times the money deposited with them. With the advent of fast Internet communication, I believe, it is many times more. Though this phenomenon is not unknown to the economists, the theory of social evolution behind it is not seen. America offered stiff official resistance to this stage of change. Man has a way of perceiving the good angel coming to him as the devil, the good fortune as the misfortune. The change from the physical to the vital, that from vital to mental do meet with opposition and resistance. The religious fundamentalists opposing modern way of life, insisting on male authority over women, denying education to the women stem from such a perception. In India stiff opposition to planning was born in the sixties in the person of the last Governor-General, an embodiment of conservatism. He was a man of foresight, extreme intelligence bordering on intuition. Still he campaigned to drop planning and it was shelved for sometime in deference to his views.

America was a young nation in 1803. Mature nations respect Constitution, protocol, international law, tradition etc. Young nations do not have that luxury as it is a question of survival for them. Whether it is a question of survival or greed of youth the basic psychological response is that of youth i.e. weakness. Even mature nations faced with overwhelming situations act as young nations as all Europe capitulated to Hitler. The law here is when the weight of the situation overpowers the native strength of nerves man begins to feel the ends justify means. Otherwise those who have history or tradition assiduously keep it pleading that the right means should be employed to reach any end. Such a situation arose for President Jefferson, a dedicated constitutionalist. During the French Revolution they had an occasion to acquire a large chunk of land in America that was French. It was Louisiana, Maryland and Mississippi in all amounting to 530 million acres. It turned out that the French were willing to part with it for $15 million if cash was readily paid.

The constitution does not authorise the union to buy foreign lands. The sitting President is one who swears by constitution. The touch of reality brings the heaven of idealism to the earth of practical affairs. It was a time Bank money was frowned upon as false money created by the clever heads to defraud the people who toiled in the fields and created real money. The hard fact is the land is good. It is essential to the country. Constitution stands in the way. The French are willing. If cash is to be paid readily, the government has no cash of $15 millions. Banks are willing to help find funds. Now, if adherence to constitution is thrown to the winds, the legislature can endorse the purchase. Should the scruple about false money be set aside, Money is readily available. The government acted in its best interests and acquired the extra lands offered to become double in size as the existing USA. This brings USA equal to the size of Europe.

It is true that all nations put ethics aside and act on their material interests when the issues are grave. It is equally true that mature nations during normal times act with prudence, caution and circumspection, follow the rules, honour the constitution. It is a turning point in American history when she acted according to her convenience, not according to her conscience. The president recognised in a letter written at that time that he was overlooking the constitution. The most the hour could bring to the surface was a compunction that was honest scruple. Whatever the moral ethical position is, the American act fits into the Theory very well.

The Americans are now known for high technology. Its origin was the naval war against Britain of 1812. Its direct result was the discovery of the submarine as well as the steamship. The settlers in America were not primitive people of 100 A.D. or 200 B.C. He too reclaimed land for agriculture, but it was just to secure food. His effort was minimal as his aim was for a modicum of food grown, instead of gathering. As the land gave plenty, a little effort would go a long way. Any way, he had no great claims of a comfortable living. All that he needed was shelter and food and fuel for winter.

Those who settled in America from England or Europe were people who had behind them 1500 years of civilised living. He was a far better man than the primitive who switched over to agriculture from hunting. He had all the skills of the European of 1500 A.D. though poor. While the primitive had no other goal than growing food, the settlers had an aim of catching up with the European compeer. The vast difference here released vaster energies. The primitive's exercise was primitive, but the settlers worked as Europeans to achieve the aim of equaling them. The very act of reclaiming the land, defending them for survival, protecting their gains released for greater energies than needed for cultivation. The excess energy sought expression in innovation that was discovery. In such God-forsaken conditions there was constant occasions for improvisation. It occupied their innovative energies. They had not satisfied themselves with importing the organisation they had known back in Europe. New circumstances demanded new organisations. They created new ORGANISATIONS which absorbed most of their excess energies. Still their energies were overflowing. Hence the conquest of the wild West, mining metals etc.

The naval war with Britain was a new occasion where they had little skill, but their enormous energy readily set down to innovation here. That is the origin of the American passions for high technology. Robert Fulton was of Irish origin. He lost his father early. His early childhood exhibited astonishing skills at drawing with a combination of inventive mechanical skills. He made his own tools - pencils, brush. He was a young man with rage written all over his face. Samuel Morse of telegraphic fame was his younger contemporary. Fulton had an abiding interest in propulsion. In his youth he made a skyrocket, designed a paddle - wheel and invented guns. To him freedom of the seas was the high road to human advancement. The first submarine was his creation. He called it U-boat. It could submerge to 25 feet and was fitted with torpedoes. The eager interest of the French that promised him 400,000 francs if he sank a British frigate, was lost when Fulton failed. Though the British were his arch enemies, he approached them. Here he completed his promised mission of blowing up the French invasion fleet, but the end of war with Napoleon made the British lose their interest. Later, he turned to building steam-ships.

Mechanical skills or skills in cultivation are only skills in the abstract sense for any theory. But in the scale of life metals are placed higher than mud. To make the soil grow plants is a skill which can be very well placed lower than the skills required to make the metal do what Man's brain thinks. The metal is dug out as oar and smelted into metal. It is thus not a primary product like dirt or earth. To make that metal or fashioning it into a tool that carries out human wishes is a harder task and a higher skill. Whether it is steam ship or submarine, technology is at a higher level. Perhaps that is why Industrial Revolution succeeded agriculture, not preceded it.

America, the land of toiling masses, also set its sights at cultural developments. The East coast is traditional and cultured. The West is Wild West. There is a popular phrase called Boston Brahmin. It denotes the educated cultured elite of Boston, a city known to be the centre of Eastern sea-board. Man works hard, receives the rewards of his industry regardless of any other social circumstances when he is struggling for survival. Once survival is granted Mind thinks about law and order, education, comfort etc. Having attained them the next goal of Man is a longing to enter the ranks of the cultured elite. The Brahmins of India have been over thousands of years the cultural elite of India. Perhaps that title captured the imagination of the labouring classes of the emerging United State.

Benjamin Franklin invited the European population to come to USA to share her prosperity. USA promised 10 times the reward for human exertion as she is the land of promise. He said immigrants were happy and prosperous. He styled his description as generality of happy mediocrity. Man came to USA to be free, to be prosperous, both of which he attained abundantly. It was not an old nation of culture and civilisation, nor did people come there seeking to be civilised and better their culture. What they sought, they achieved. No wonder they were mediocre. There is nothing to be sorry about it. From the point of social evolution Prosperity offers happiness and social security; it does not offer education, religion or culture. Happiness indicates excess energy. As there was no culture to absorb the excess energy, it tries to find expression in productive efforts. The American citizen of those centuries reached the peaks of productivity possible. Still the energy was in excess. It tends towards innovation. Innovation of skill, capacity, talent and ability is psychological. Innovation of organisation is social and functional. Production does not absorb so much energy as organisation of energy into skill or higher skills. Skills, capacity, talent and ability lie in a grade and absorb greater energies than the previous member. Creation of a system or devising a system is exclusively mental. It absorbs far more energies than skill etc. Americans have distinguished themselves in devising excellent practical organisation all the time. That absorbs individual energy in its creation, collective energy in its practice. The amounts of energy needed to create such organisations are phenomenal. America has supplied that energy without stint. Still there is excess. These systems that absorbs Himalayan energies, once they are created unleash equally great amount of energies.

The American have developed the belief that no problem is without a solution. Sri Aurobindo said that the Westerner has discovered Brahman in Matter. As the Indian sage is devoted to his Spirit as god, the westerner is dedicated to his work as god. He treats it as Brahman and it is true he has discovered Brahman in his work. The phenomenal results of his scientific study, the ease of his classification, the pains he takes to verify his facts, the order in which his tools are kept, in short, his attitude to work is exactly the same the Indian Sannyasi has towards the Self. Punctuality is to the westerner is an article of faith. It is called the manners of Princes. Punctuality is worship of Time. It is one reason why he continuously conquers Time and Space.

Taking all the scientific discoveries of Europe, one can well pronounce that Infinity has revealed to the Westerner in the finite, his search. Infinity reveals itself as Sachchidananda to the Rishis of the Vedic period. Infinity is Brahman. Infinity is at all levels. Nature is infinity. Life is infinite. Mind is infinite. Matter is infinite. It reveals itself not in one way. It can reveal as energy, laws, ideas etc. Man will be right if he declares that many problems have solutions and some do not have or the other way about. Sri Aurobindo says when an extreme statement is made we have to know we are before a Power which we cannot brush aside. Often it is made by one who stands face to face with something Infinite.

He who pronounces that every problem has a solution, surely he is making an extra ordinary statement. He may be one who has solved all the problems he has faced or he is one determined NOT to give up. The vastness of land he is trying to conquer or tame is infinitely vast. His labour, is sure has been endless. The infinite physical labour he has put in with infinite patience, opened his mind to the buried infinite in his Mind. No one who has not been touched by the infinite can ever make a statement like this. No wonder he easily gets into the larger rhythm. During wartime they - their military - abridged a 3 month repair job to 10.3 hours. Their factories produced planes, tanks, and trucks in hundreds of thousands for their troops, for the British troops and for Russia. They are people who built in 6 months the biggest cement factory in the world. They discovered a trestle that poured millions of tons of cement. Their bigness is a shadow of the Infinite they have successfully invoked in work. Churchill's single-handed fight against all Europe is the infinite courage of the human mind. The infinity of the Americans is the infinite they saw in work.

An American industrial worker could save in three years enough to buy a farm. This was true because wages were high, land was cheap. The farmer still had prestige, not the industrial worker. The migration from the cities to the rural areas was powerful because of this fact. It was in no man's power to prevent it. The need for labour saving machines at the factory was ever present and constantly growing. The cotton gin produced 50 pounds of cotton instead of one pound the slave can. It was Whitney who designed the gin. The fertility of the American genius was extra ordinary. Mechanisation demands standardisation. The Europeans saw mechanisation destroyed the craftsman and his individuality. Labour itself was expensive. The craftsman is a costly luxury America could not indulge in 1794. The demands of standardisation being enormous, creativity at simpler levels of designing machines or parts of machines had a large scope. To create parts that could be a standard is a fascinating exercise to one endowed with a little imagination. To qualify oneself as a trained worker in these machines because of standardisation itself is to upgrade one's skill for a farm hand.

At the bottom of this inventiveness lay the 10 times wages of the US immigrant. So high a wage could be paid because land produced more and man worked harder. Inventiveness needed mental energy. A full stomach and the utmost exertion of the body generates all the physical energy one can. In an atmosphere where invention was in great demand, the physical energy converts itself into mental energy. The pioneers, the leaders worked harder than others that men were unwilling to co-operate with them at their pace. The immediate benefits of these inventions were great for the industry as well as the individual. Inventions are the result of pressing need of the hour made possible by the excess energy. A British politician and industrialist who visited America declared that the labour-saving machinery of USA was superior to that found in Britain. Obviously it is so because the demand for labour was not so great in Britain as in USA. It came to be known as the American system. One hundred years later it was this system of standardisation that made Ford's assembly line production.

One direct result of such inventions was the huge growth of the cotton industry, making cotton America's largest export. Whitney was a mechanical genius who was responsible for most of these inventions related to the growth of the cotton industry. It is said high literature, especially poetry is born out of a static society. Poetry is the emotion of the depths. So, it needs an educated society that has become stable and remained so for long. Literary genius such as Milton, Shakespeare are the result of such a period in the era of Elizabeth. Genius in Mathematics springs from a spiritual potential of the Mind. A mental culture like Greece produces geniuses like Socrates, Plato or Aristotle. Artistic genius will see the light of the day when there is a renaissance of thought. America produces mechanical genius as there was abundant physical energy and adequate pressure on the Mind for inventions. During a period Europe launched herself on scientific discoveries that are original, America exhibited originality in scientific technology. They were after practically usable inventions in the field as well as factories.

Those who study Power, how it gathers, becomes formal, entrusted to an organisation, become institutionalised and then moves from formal to informal centres will be rewarded with the innumerable documents about every government. They are now available in print, on the web. Apart from the government's official documents, diaries, newspaper articles, memoirs, biographies etc that would reveal these movements of power are endlessly available. In ancient cultures such as India and China the community always had this knowledge. Its essence is seen in their ethical treatise. The Theory of power can be summarised as:

Power is the capacity of one to dominate another.
It comes from excess energy expressing in action.
Individual power gathers as collective power.
Collective power is expressed by a single individual.
It finds its centre in his Ego.
His power is exercised or executed by a team around him, called his cabinet.
To begin with this team is composed of his cronies.
As the public conscience develops, it becomes a formal cabinet constituted by the leader governed by the principles that brought him to power.
Law, later democracy, makes it into a formal cabinet.
All power is wielded by the cabinet formed as a formal institution.
Around the formal front lies the informal subtle reality of power.
It is said power moves from the formal centres to informal centres. Originally power resided in the informal agents and later it was handed over to a formal organisation. Naturally, it often moves to its origin.
Ultimately power resides in the formal organisation, often wielded from the informal centres behind within the scope of formal limits.

In a few pages Paul Johnson presents us with a few hundred touches of this movement, possibly gathered from a few hundred pages of various documents. He concluded that the future course of America was decided by a determined lady in the person of the wife of the then War Secretary. Power lies not in the surface mind of the one who holds the Power. It is in the depths. The movements of formal events are recorded in the surface Mind, not in the depth. Those around him have access to his depth. Rajaji deplored in the sixties that he was not there to whisper into the ears of Nehru. That whisper matters. Often it is a woman. Women have greater access to the depth in Man's mind. In the theory there is one phenomenon; Significant small things. It describes how the great acts of history were triggered by small events that turn out to be really significant. Hitler arrived at a proposed meeting of his Generals who tried to overthrow him an hour before that meeting was scheduled. The course of history would have been different, there would have been no world war II, had he come an hour later. It is a subtle phenomenon. The role of Mrs.Eaton in determining the course of American history depicts the functioning of informal power centres behind the formal cabinet.

I made a brief reference to Jackson's antipathy to banking and his measures to fight banking as a principle. His doings come under a broader heading of resistance to change which divided into 1) change of the part, present mode of functioning to something new and 2) innovations that bring new life to people.* One is from conservatism and the other is out of fear of the unknown. The fear arises out of ignorance of facts. It is fortified with the exhortations of people who are vociferous based on their superstitious belief. The most wonderful part of this behaviour is when we see American companies refusing to use the computer fully. Bill Gates could not see the value of the Internet initially. Here I would like to dwell not so much on the actual facts of resistance that I shall be enlisting as on the type of human mentality in the cream of men, often leaders of nations. Priests protested against windmills winnowing the grain. To them God alone could raise the wind, Man should not. Should he do so, he becomes the Devil. This logic is alive in men's mind even today. The inventor of steam engine placed one in a ship and brought it to the port to be inspected by the officers of the Admiralty. They refused to go to the port. The British Prime Minister refused initially to inaugurate the first railway built by Stephenson as he had no belief in it. The Indians ex-communicated the first batch of scholars who went to England for higher studies. There was stiff resistance in the British Army to use the tanks when they were originally introduced. Professors were proving mathematically why flying was a theoretical impossibility years after Wright brothers demonstrated their aeroplane. Long after printing had come books were

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*This whole section of explanation will be later moved under the heading resistance to change without reference to a particular period. Links will be put in to this section with every reference to change or resistance to opportunities.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

written by hand by religious people. Copernicus and Galileo were put in prison for their discoveries.

In the case of paper currency the opposition was from the head of the state. That state was USA where the fastest social change was taking place then. About 150 years after that the US dollar has become the unofficial world currency. It is paper money that has now made possible for the best part of world's wealth migrate to USA. If anyone has been the beneficiary of paper currency, it is USA. It is self-evident today. The law of life, adopted as a principle of the Theory of Social Evolution, demands that the greater the future benefit, the greater will be the opposition now. The opposition coming from the highest political quarters is significant. Earlier we explained that paper currency among other things represents Man moving from physicality to mentality. Maybe the body offers its own difficulties to give up the coins of silver and gold. Jackson even made his hatred of banks an election issue and got a landslide victory. Opposition was universal. Opposition from the beneficiary is classic as well as insurmountable. The evolutionary forces were impersonal and stronger enough to overcome that opposition. Jackson read Adam Smith. He was indoctrinated by an economist who was popular then. Now, he will be classified as a quack. When opposition takes shape especially to an incoming opportunity, the opposition is usually uninformed, uses brute force. In this case the theoretical knowledge was used in defence by Jackson to prove that people were defrauded of their honest labour by scheming people sitting in offices using their brains. To Jackson they were veritable Devils.

Today we do not think of agriculture when we talk of America. To us America is industry, industry is America. It was Sir Arthur Louis who wrote a thesis that agriculture surplus made Industrial Revolution possible. Behind today's American industry lies the vast surpluses of their agriculture. What happened in USA till 1850 is worth analysing. They were,

Land produced one third surplus
Conquest of the West was a second exploration after Columbus, releasing similar energies.
Industrialisation came to America as mechanisation of agriculture, which made greater yield possible.
The initial settlers had to put in a lot of labour over the years to collect a little savings for expansion. To the farmers of the West in the first half of the 19th century, credit came easy, through banks that had the savings of the East. The West was building on the shoulders of the East.
Factories making innovated farm implements proliferated across the USA making it appear as industrialisation.
The Smithsonian Institute came into existence offering codified organised mental knowledge in the form of weather forecasts and maps about water sources and mineral deposits.

Thus agriculture in the West had the advantage of earlier experience, expanding market, accumulated capital, and organised knowledge. Jackson who was defending the genuine creators of wealth in the farms and fields, little thought ONE major reason for their producing real money was the easy availability of 'false money' which the banks readily lent. It is one thing that Man opposes a future good luck and it is another thing to oppose the vary sustenance which makes his life enjoyable. Surely, it is a known human trait whose presence we have to take into account in all studies of development. These are the theoretical landmarks on which this history will rest. In India farmers enjoy free power. The government which has a monopoly of power generation is unwilling to expand power generation or invest in it further as power so generated will have to be supplied free. Thus the farmer who gets 3 hours of supply against a promised 14 hours is indirectly working against a 24 hour supply. Here is a double inversion. 1) he has to pay 2) his free enjoyment hinders full utilisation. In the case of America there was no such inversion regarding Bank notes. Agriculture was expanding mainly on Bank notes, what was criticised as false money while Jackson worked against banks on the plea that paper money undermined farmers. Of course, Jackson or anyone else in his place was not expected to know the intricacies of paper currency in those days. Here we see the value of Nehru's words that to develop a nation the consciousness of her people must be raised. Man is unconscious NOW, he was unconscious then about his own benefactor. This is one serious law in the field of development.

Nations do not take on them a moral tone in any serious sense. It is so because even in the individuals who are ethical, moral, pious, spiritual the faculty of Reason has not come as a functional guidance. In the case of Russell, an embodiment of the philosophic mind of the 20^th century we see he oscillated from pacifism to advocacy of war. It, certainly, is understandable. Having done so for years, he 'forgot' it. When pointed out he was rational enough to say that was not different from his earlier stand. One can be rational in his Mind and thought. To be rational in his acts when his own emotions are at stake, is not given to the human mind. A Gandhiji can be truthful and own up his shortcomings which is magnanimous, but it will not qualify for rationality in action.

That is the human situation now. Nations behave as their political, economic conditions dictate. They are functional or natural, never even attempt to be ethical. Except Asoka 2500 years ago, history has no record of kingdoms espousing a policy bordering on ethics. At a time the American agriculture was a roaring success, the Americans had come to value the cultivable land. The Mexican war burst out and redrew the borders of USA. One who has weight, throws it about, especially when a weak neighbour prods. It may sound to historians that annexing territory makes political, economic common sense to America. In politics and economics the rule is the strong man rules. Might, in these domains, is right. It has the sanction of world opinion every time a strong nation overruns a weak one. By sanction of world opinion, I mean the human conscience is not offended. We see the opposite phenomenon of the same world opinion every time a strong nation overruns a weak one. By sanction of world opinion, I mean the human conscience is not offended. We see the opposite phenomenon of the same world opinion celebrating the behaviour of the strong man. Public conscience can fail, as it is not yet formed. If any thing, the instinct of humanity does not tolerate such methods of strong arm. The fall of Hider shows the way that instinct can act.

The role of America is evolutionary. Maybe it is social evolution. Her role is not moral. No nation ever attempted to don the robe of morality. The overwhelming success of mechanised agriculture put a large surplus in the hands of the farmers. At that time agriculture was a major occupation. It means the economic might of the nation was visibly felt. Economic strength is political might and it naturally expresses as military expansion. Even in the first world war America played its economic cards so well that it boosted its economy. It was inspite of America participating in the war. In the second war, till Pearl Harbour America was only a supplier of arms. Roosevelt threatened to send a warship to South Africa to collect the dues to her. Economically whether a country is in war or supplies another country in war, her economy expands by such activity upto a point. Isolationism had paid America very well in the two world wars. In her case both the wars directly helped USA to be what she is today. Her building up Western Europe again paid economic dividends to her in the extreme. After the war, the cold war tension caused the military expenses a great rise which again goes to the economic well being of the nation. America or for that matter, no nation has ever seriously pretended to don the mantle of morality. The Mexican War was one such usual exercise of a growing nation backed by economic might.

'Democracy in America' was published in 1835 and 1840 in two parts by de Tocqueville, a French noble man who was sent to America to report on the Penal Code and the Prison systems of that country. What caught the imagination of that French man was the Spirit of America, the democratic spirit of the common man there. Therefore he published his impressions in the above titled book. For the last 170 years the book has remained in print. The theme of the work is the gradual development of the principle of equality is a Providential fact. He says that he rejoiced at the way the American aristocrats accepted the new democracy. He terms it a gracious generosity. The universal suffrage in America that elected the Legislatures made an impact on him. In France anticlericalism was rampant mainly due to abuse of power. Its complete absence in America was noted by this author. It was not only absent but was unknown. He could see in America Christianity in a completely fresh light. He attributed it to the inherent freedom of the population and an economic life where one was free to produce what he wanted and sell it anywhere he liked. There was little interference either by the society or its usages. To him religion which offers no freedom is the source of strength for institutions to function freely. He was able to see the basic spirit of religion is freedom. The hand of the government which is invisibly present in all civilised cultures and which tangibly interferes in regulated areas was not there in the American life he saw. No country can hope for such a social environment. The America of 1830 was an unformed nation where the individual was creating the nation at its roots especially in him, the individual. He was the government. He was a law unto himself. Such an individual grows strong as there is no inhibition around physical or subtle. He lived all by himself unsupported by an organised way of life which a society is. He acts on his own as he has no other alternative. His circumstances compel him to think with reference to no other influence present but to his own self. He emerges as an independent thinker based on his own practical necessities which is his political life. Such men rise in their own opinion and his soul endorses it.

In de Tocqueville's opinion this situation is the direct result of the wide spread education. In 1830 America was the most literate country. Comparing with Germany he says America excelled Germany in mass literacy. His observations were mild. The masses understood public affairs better, had information about law and its implementation. De Tocqueville saw in them a greater capacity to understand their country in the light of their self-interest. He calls them most advanced in practical political education. Having been the victims of class distinction they were eager to make a mark on their own society. This urge was universally present making social equality a reality. They knew the aristocrats of their own homelands were respected not so much for their wealth and status as for their education. Ordinary men may acquire wealth but not culture. It is a possession given to the upper classes of Europe by their education. The aristocrat had three careers before him, politics, clergy, military. In all these fields the basic qualification is education. Education, they knew gave cultural substance to wealth, power and worship. The Americans as soon as they found that survival was secure, made universal education readily available. Education of poor men does not give the same vitality to the individual. The American education came to one who had a full stomach and complete freedom. That was Power.

It was a period when Germany was known to have the best universities on earth. One will be led to assume that that country would lead in literacy. USA had, by then, a rate of literacy higher than Germany. The spread of literacy in U.S.A. during this period can be best understood if we know what happened to their society. We cannot assume that quest for knowledge is natural when the population becomes prosperous. The Blacks who had all the advantages the white people had at least in the North, had not shown a similar tendency. Till the civil war only 28 Blacks graduated in the whole of America.

The movement of immigration to America from the beginning was not a mere social phenomenon. It is the spirit of Man breaking the chains of class in Europe. It was a spiritual quest of the fettered body. Such a seeking was there even in the in land migration to the West. Education is the awakening of the Mind to the Spirit. Europe that had greater facilities for education did not witness the spread of literacy at the same speed. Colleges sprang up overnight in USA as soon as people were settled in the fresh expanses of lands. It was followed by an Act that authorised the city to found an agriculture college. What started as an agriculture college soon grew into regular universities. There was an urge to acquire education. It was the urge of Mind. It is the way in which Spirit emerges in Mind. We call it spiritual awakening.

The world knows of spiritual awakening to reach heaven. Here we see spirit seeking to express in life through education which is itself the spirit awakening in the Mind. It is in the same period Science began to flourish in Europe. The Spirit in India sought moksha. Spirit usually seeks God or heaven. Spirit trying to emerge in Mind as scientific inquiry was witnessed in Europe. It was looking for the Laws of Nature in various fields. It is an act of descent by the Spirit, in its action in life. In America, because of the open mind of the population, the expression of Spirit in life took the form of seeking education. The population in its entirety sought for knowledge in work, in agriculture. This is a further descent of the spirit. The spreading of education took on wings because it is not the usual course of society seeking mental enlightenment for its own sake. That is a slow process as the world witnessed everywhere else.

Behind the nation America then was and even now is there is a pronounced urge for social evolution. The spirit was trying to evolve in the Mind and in the body, rather the work of the body as that expression. The larger rhythm spoken of by Sri Aurobindo issues out of this urge. Knowledge is not sought as a mere mental possession. It was needed for practical work. Man sought to express knowledge in his work. The work he was doing was agriculture. He tried to saturate his work with all the knowledge he could muster. Hence, the sudden appearance of colleges as soon as he came to possess vast territories of land. The urge continued in all directions. The college was followed by an agriculture college. It later became a full-fledged university. American education was practical. It was Mind presiding over work. It was spirit emerging in Mind to guide the work of the body. It is social evolution in action. It is spiritual evolution energising social evolution and expressing itself as widespread education - education intended to be used in the field.

The American character

The expert has come into his own in the general life of America. The expert is different from the professional practitioner. General production is under the banner of standardisation which means the individual worker's knowledge is little. In a system like this crisis, emergency or opportunity cannot be rightly responded to by the mass of men. Hence the need for an expert and he does gain importance.

The Americans invented machines of very big size and they all worked very well. Their very size had a power over the imagination of those who designed those equipment. It is true these machines were invented for a purpose. But the megalomania that developed over these giant equipments, overshadowed the purpose and the creators. The machines that were the means to human ends, ultimately because the end in itself.

Europe is cultured. Man had a human standing there even a few centuries ago. The physical man acts; the mental man thinks. Europe gave birth to Martin Luther who announced to the world the ultimate value of Man as one who can think for himself. American life leaves little scope for physical rest. Rest may means death from dacoits or starvation. If not, one will be left behind his peers. Living in wilderness the very bodies develop extra senses of alertness demanded by protection. One living in New York slums witnessing everyone around him moving into his own apartment in a few months or many weeks, has little ability to think. He must move out of the slums which means incessant labour. The social climate of America makes one readily act but does not inspire him to think. Even mental education was brought down to earthly realities of technical education. Andre Siegfried says the American has inherited from the German the fanatical respect for method, for objectivity. Germany is situated just in between the mystic Russia and intellectual France. Germany is neither. She has clung to method and objectivity. The American has gone one step further: To him the tool itself is more important than the method. Andre was a professor visiting American universities for lectures. He was amused when the American Professors were more interested in showing him around their high buildings. He had not seen in these professors the same interest in ideas.

American life is astonishing in the sense that every thing there is based on the future. They had no past to preserve. They did have a great future to look forward to. Man focussing on the future becomes a forward-looking Being, a progressive animal. The past will contain regrets; the future contains only hope. Looking to the future is an innate human trait that can make one flourish. It is confidence, good will, optimism that the foreigners witness in the American view of life. Europe, during the 19^th century, with limitless opportunities opening before her, enjoyed a similar outlook. As the social atmosphere changed, they lost it. In America such a view of life was on the ascendant in the mid 20^th century.

America is geographically akin to Asia and Africa, not Europe. The Europeans consider Americans childish which is true. Nehru who visited USA in 1947 said there was no manners in them and no one from India who wants to visit a foreign country should visit America first. They should first go to Europe. The American nation is boyish. Their achievers have a boyish look like Bill Gates and Microsoft millionaires. This prevents Europeans readily imitating America. The geographical affinity of Asians and Africans may make it easier for them to tread the path of USA. Among the many traits of the Americans two stood out. They are,

Focus on the future.
Give up no problem as insoluble.

Only those who have seen the INFINITY in some fashion are capable of saying this. Those who are speaking in this strain are certainly those who have had glimpses of the Infinity. The infinity will emerge only in the tender young and not in the fixed rigid old age. Hence the nation and its citizens are boyish. It is a virgin land. The people too have a virgin mentality unencumbered by tradition, custom, usage, religious injunctions and inhibitions, the settled nature of an ancient culture. Absence of obstacles offers freedom of thought. Biologically the American is a nomad. His coming to USA, the shifting of population, the internal migration, his own inner urgency to find food and shelter all make him an essential nomad. A body on the move does not help the mind to think. Today he is moving all over the globe. His interests take his army or his production outside his country. The continuous increasing prosperity does not allow his mind a static settled position conducive to thought. Now, his mind is on the Moon and Mars.

The American continent, as any continent is, is a fundamental physical reality of concrete unity. Boyishness and childishness are natural to one who is in the presence of newness especially when it is the newness of immensity. The landscape is immense, the task ahead is gigantic, the obstacles are insurmountable task and the very opportunities in all directions are immense and of endless variety. Their sizes generate an optimism and a sensation of boldness. The youth of the nation, in her unstable conditions feels the pride of the occasion and the weakness of the instrument.

The proximity of the immensity is a compulsion to expand.
What would be unsettling to an ordinary mind is an invitation to a mind that is fresh.
The idea of physical space changes its character to mental space resulting in expansiveness.
Having an enormous space before his physical existence, the idea of conquering territory that arises in cramped civilisations of tiny nations does not present itself as a vital reality.
It is a physical fact that many states do not have the physical boundary of a river or mountain or the vital barrier of another language. It is a line arbitrarily drawn on the map.
Nor do they have the urge of dictatorships or poor nations or barbarian to attack another country.
The impulse to dominate arises in slave nations or those nations that were slaves for long, not in a native free nation occupied with acquiring abundant prosperity.
As man in South America directly shifted to the plane from mule-riding, every walk of life permits a shift from the lowest to the highest.
Conquering vast space by transport and communication the American has conquered Time and space. Such a mind cannot be mature and will not be on earth.

Physical and psychological potentials

Whether a man is physical or psychological, it is his conceptions that shape his life. There lies the value of spirituality as its conceptions are stronger and better formed. A firmly structured conception shapes one's life with unshakable foundations in outlines that are more precisely defined. For this reason spiritual life offers inexhaustible potentials. The physical man's conception of space is physical i.e. land. His conception of Time is the time taken to complete a work. Going west was a slogan in America. It was to break the barrier of space. So, it came to be known as a frontier. In stable cultures the goal is to preserve the sacred past. That was the duty, the ideal. Society has given him an ideal to preserve and he endeavours to keep it safe. His movement is inward, slow, traditional, quiet, makes no noise. Young men in America were inspired by the dictum "Go West". It was an adventure, an external effort, it releases an excitement, prevents any possibility to think. He goes west, works, risks, learns to survive hazards, to be alone, to be able to take care of himself based on his OWN decisions, thus developing an individuality that is physical. When he achieves, his achievements are of physical perfection, especially achievements of practical organisations he has evolved, all on his own.

Such a physical frontier will come to an end sooner or later. In America its end is not in sight yet. Wherever it has apparantly ended, the energy in pursuit of it is not, the frontier changes its character, and becomes a psychological frontier. The conquest of expanding West, changes into mechanising agriculture, conquering labour shortage by labour saving machinery. The domain of technology serves as the inner frontier. In discovering better technology, one creates a fresh organisation that helps utilise that. New technology simultaneously serves to conquer Time and Space. U.S.A with 160 million populations in 3 million square miles achieved this evolutionary growth. U.S.S.R with 200 million people and 8 1/2 million square miles has greater opportunities than U.S.A. if she enters into a similar spirit - the spirit of social evolution.

Comfort and wealth are sought by all, but achieved by a few. we can say it is achieved by a great majority in America. If you take these two concepts comparatively to their previous position, we may be able to say all have achieved it. Having struggled hard for long they have a right to comfort. Health is to comfort what capacity is to skill. Naturally temporary comfort is upgraded into permanent wealth. Comfort gives physical ease. Psychological ease comes out of wealth. Today the American wealth is six or seven times the average wealth of the world. Their wealth accumulated because of their isolationism. Isolationism is the opposite of ubiquitous presence. The prewar isolationism has now been transformed into postwar ubiquitous presence all over the world. Sep 11, 2001 was a fateful day. It stunned America into action in hunting down Osama Bin Laden. Out of that democracy was born in Iraq. Saudi Arabia is talking in terms of elections for the Municipalities. Even in a monarchy democracy is making in roads. Ukraine and Georgia along with another CIS state are on the way to democracy. America takes democracy to all corners of the world. The whole western world raised a cry against U.S.S.R for infiltration. Now they are silent when U.S.A is taking democracy to other countries. This is acceptable to us but how is this different from U.S.S.R spreading communism? So much for the rationality of the world opinion.

Before slavery came to be practised, convict labour was employed to earn great profits. The desire for one's comfort has a way of driving one at the expense of another's comfort or even freedom. At this point we see three laws of evolution functioning. The opposites are true. One endowed with freedom by circumstances is the instrument to deprive another's' freedom. Each direction seeks its perfection. It may be common sense to expect Americans who earned their freedom by settling in the new continent NOT to deprive another's freedom. Or when they do so, we can certainly expect them to indulge in the direction minimally. The forces of Nature when unleashed certainly seek their ultimate perfections. It is that character which makes the opposites true. It is true one who emancipated from slavery will honour another's freedom. It is equally true that only he will be most tyrannical. The employment of convict labour, desire for comfort and wealth, the birth of slavery explain all these laws in action.

No country will offer us the opportunity to study the impact on the nation of the various ethnic groups as U.S.A. affords. In any country ethnic minorities are minorities. Here every minority group has a scope to feel for one reason or another that they are more than a minority, because of the absence of what is known as a national population. The White Protestant may well claim it but it may as well be denied to them by other groups for an equally valid reason. The truth is at different periods different groups were leading and their hegemony passed off as a wave. What asserted is the American Personality and what emerged is not anyone particular group but that Group where the blend of groups dominated. Nature is making an experiment here in evolving a citizen who belongs to the nation. The practical idealism of the American never turned down any useful trait from any quarter. Maybe the early Puritans could have dominated. It was at that juncture the Irish spirit invaded the country. They are of excessive vitality not under their control which makes them leaders at the local level. Their sense of humour carried on a wave of phantasy captures the public imagination. It gives the much desired relief for an over worked population. The spirit of the Germans and that of their northern Scandinavian brothers is exactly what the American work can benefit from. The American works to death, puts in maximum energy. It can bear greater results by a well-regulated system nearing perfection. Conscientious research can give a direction to the copious energy of the American for greater result. It is not in the American attitude to reject such welcome aspects. They had not grown that sectarian. The national psychology is dangerously conformist. The passion of temper makes things unpredictable. It is the Jews and the Irish that contribute this element of uncertainty. The personality of the American will be in no danger of sliding into capsules of conformity when a strong dose of passionate unexpectedness is introduced.

The American is not the result of assimilating the incoming members by a parent stock. There is no parent stock. What emerges is the blend of all types into a new creation of human personality.
Those immigrants who were peasants in origin brought with them the tradition of savings that emphasises individual effort. That element has come to stay in the American way of life.
The serfs of Europe suffered greatly. Shaking off his fetters he arrived in America to find the new dignity of MAN who earns his living. He felt gratitude to the land that offered him independence and prosperity.

Striving after success, raising the standard of living and disregarding of the past are American traits. Struggle for survival demands greater energies than for normal living. He who has thus created it does not level off as soon as he survives. The excess energy continues and prompts him to strive for success. The principle is one who lags behind will excel others if only he catches up with them. While in Europe the population tried to protect what they had as they always had a prospect of losing them as one can be evicted from his land. Here in America there is nothing to lose and everything to gain. The space itself is immensely vast and it calls upon Man to expand. He endeavours to raise his standard of living. The settlers were not proud of their past and anxious to remember it. Even after they made it the past was not a pleasant memory. The future is glorious as the status of middle class for slum dwellers. Past is clinged to when there is something worthwhile in it to cherish. They have come into a physical environment whose very atmosphere was revolutionary with the fervour of a freedom movement, freedom not from the conquering country but from his own countrymen who in the name of class were their overlords. It is more than inviting, sweet in contemplation with a sense of gratitude to the Almighty.

The early settlers were Puritans. The early successful entrepreneurs in America were Quakers, the purest of the pure in their religious motives. Puritanism is characterised by a self-creative energy because of discipline and purity. The basis of any discipline is self-denial. The later waves of immigrants came not to open a continent not to found a settlement and subsequently a nation. They came to enjoy the benefits of earlier work. No wonder in the American Psyche we see this element of self-denial in one form or another. The Theory says each temperament includes every other temperament in varying forms; even the opposite temperament will be seen in an inverse form for perceptive eyes. He who dares into wild wilderness denies himself safety as well as comfort. One who compels himself to work all waking hours, expresses self-denial in the form of giving up home comforts and enjoyment of relaxed company. Most of the pioneers were this way. Assistants unable to stand that rigour often deserted them.

Man in his progress falls into a rhythm. As long as it is the rhythm of Nature his progress is phenomenal. When his own faculties take shape and acquire a personality, he becomes humanly creative, thus falling into another rhythm of the Spirit in itself. That is a height of creation whose organisation cannot be supported by Nature's equilibrium or social stability. Those are the occasions when men of genius, sages, Messiahs suffer at the hands of the community. Even otherwise, in the measure his work, life and urge have to out-grow the rhythm around, friction if not conflict ensures. Achievements of the society often turn into obstacles and stay forever as anachronisms. The line that divides achievements and obstacles is thin. It varies according to perception as well as purpose. With varying purposes the dividing line too will shift. A time comes when Nature is unable to pursue her progress or human development in her within the structures she has created or permitted man to create. It is then she resorts to calamities or catastrophes in the shape of cyclones, earthquakes etc. That is her extreme course. In the case of Nature opening the American continent, she tried to break through the encrustations of social hierarchy by offering those daring souls that chose to leave their homes a vast territory to be tamed. She sought a geographical remedy to a social constitution.

Beyond this man is a creature of inherited habits, wherever he goes, he carries the culture of his forefathers. Geography can cry a halt over the continuation of a historical process. In America geography did triumph over history. His habits of worship, submission to priests, resort to prayer found no use or scope in the forbidding environment of America. There was no time for worship, nor was there any inclination to it in the absence of the social eye that constantly passes judgments of approval or otherwise. Nor he perceived any priest around him. His normal inclination was not to prayer or work. The environment demanded work and work returned the intended award. His old habit was to pray in vain which he did resort to out of habit. His new compulsion was to work that rewards. His earlier lifeless piety shifts to present meaningful individual effort. As a result, what develops is his individuality which generates self-confidence. Settled ways of self-confidence is optimism. Good hard work naturally generates good will. As geography triumphed over history environment overcame the compulsions of heredity.

America is undergoing what human development elsewhere under-went long ago. In that sense, her situation in the 19th century was one stage of human development. Still it is with a difference. As every subsequent generation passes through the same stages of growth as their parents, but with a major difference that they belong to a subsequent generation, America is undergoing one stage of development with one essential difference - the difference of being an evolutionary pioneer.

Once the American citizen, especially the worker has attained a standard of living, he cannot stand the loss of it. The Great Depression took away his job from him. Unemployment, poverty, rights of the wage earner were stark realities. In the face of it, ethnic and religious rivalries paled into insignificance. The role of the Great Depression needs a separate and a fuller theoretical development. But even in 1825 there was such a wave. Marxism speaks of the periodical crises of capitalism and its eventual death. Marx's socialism is a creed he gave to the world. Capitalism is no such creed. It is the economic functioning of human society in the setting of Industrial Revolution. The advent of technology and the culture of manufacture gave birth to the class of employers. As they found the initial capital, they were called capitalists. They were actually entrepreneurs. What was described as capitalism in the 19th and 20th centuries was the unorganised, unregulated economy of the then manufacturing culture. With the passing of decades and the birth of minor and major crises in the economy, it came under some regulations. Regulations were minimal. As far as organisation of the economy was concerned, there was no such thought in the air, nor was there any possibility beyond the trade organisations that came together nationally for purposes of negotiating with the government. An unorganised national functioning coming into clash with external or internal circumstances is to be ordinarily expected. What was bombastically known as Great Depression, especially as it spread all over the world, was nothing but a part holding the whole to ransom.

Economy is in several sectors, producers, consumers, financiers, channels of transport, life line of communication, labour, employers, middle men, stocks, shares, exchanges, speculation, investment etc. Any of them can hold the entire operation to ransom if it gets into a position of manipulating power. In an unformed activity that is under no regulation, it is possible that any one important strand can place itself centrally and demand attention. In theory, even the least component is capable of it. Of all these various partial expression of the economy Money occupies a special position and can get special powers. Such powers can end up with anyone the bankers, investors, middlemen or anyone else. In the absence of any worthwhile regulation, such power can do havoc as tyrannical kings devastated vast populations in the previous millennium. The society that faced the utter disruption of the economy during the depression has woken up to many aspects of it, endeavoured to regulate parts of it. Thus a recurrence is effectively prevented though recessions rear their head off and on. If only the economy can be planned such a phenomenon can disappear. For that the rulers must be those who see the validity of the Theory.

America is a newly created continent for Man to grow and prosper not only freely, but strike a new path of social evolution. In Europe the stratification of the society had come to stay to the extent that the social elite came to respect and cherish the way society was organised. So the desirable change can arise in the U.S without recourse to Revolutions. But America was so constituted as to accomplish it in her society by avoiding such upheavals. What Revolution alone can achieve in Europe can be achieved by changes of essential attitudes. It was an open society with little social barriers and wages already as high as 10 times the European wages. Scarcity of labour was a chronic aspect of social existence which compelled them to discover labour saving machines. The worker enjoys a respect in America for these reasons. Even the employer is an erstwhile worker. Whether these men are all skilled or not, they do partake an atmosphere of innovation. Hence the worker is no mere commodity to be dispersed with. In these conditions, it is natural that the worker enters into some kind of collaboration in a programme of productivity. Through some side road the worker has become a part of Management. The French have felt from their point of view a lack of spirit in the American labour movement. To them it is indefinable.

America was to achieve by evolution what Russia aimed at by Revolution. While Russia was ideally unsuited for a proletarian revolution as there were no proletariats, America was ideally suited for the evolution of the proletariat into an entrepreneur. Marx's goal was achieved in U.S.A by a different route as the context here was socially differently set. Marx's ideal was for the proletariat. America offered such an ideal for the entire society. Laski characterised it as a different civilisation. A Supreme court justice could not agree with the thesis that capital robbed labour. He convicted them with despotic intention. A judge who sees the labour more prosperous than the European middle class could not bring himself to subscribe himself to the view of the famous 'Communist Manifesto'. The theory of the manifesto may be right but humanity that lived in U.S.A. has evolved a different pattern of the society.

Inspite of revolutionary movements one finds in the American labour an absence of class consciousness. In a small sense his own ambition is to become an entrepreneur if he does not aspire to become a capitalist, though he sees many of his likes have achieved it. Violent revolutions spring from mass poverty. America was a nation saturated with prosperity at a high level. Over the generations he had developed an aspiration to continually raise his standard of living, but never harboured impulses towards an imperialistic goal. He sees before his very eyes men like him very ordinary folks, rising to the top levels of industry. That keeps his own aspirations, however humble, alive. Communism or socialism never struck root in American politics.

Higher wages means higher costs. It is a contradiction to say that higher wages go with low labour costs. This is one of America's achievements. This brings out a certain facet of the American life. Work means physical in those days as learning means memory. Efficient management means tough supervisors extracting more out of each worker. A skilled worker's output is more but he is paid more. America has been innovative in some areas, creative in many other occasions, thoughtful and daring in her conceptions. Resourcefulness is always a resource with the Americans. Their greatest endowment is the capacity to create new organisations of work for practically efficient purposes. Let us see how they have achieved low costs inspite of high wages.

Theoretically work, as everything else, is a field of infinite possibilities. In stagnant societies these possibilities are out of men's vision. At times of crises we suddenly see evidence of improvisation and the emergence of resourcefulness. Thoughtfulness comes into play when you have to create not a work organisation but a human organisation. Where men are persuaded to put up their best attitudes to achieve the goal or the minimum. In a work what is involved is material, men, time, space, money, energy, human relationships, skills of various types, capacity in needed measure and practically every other thing existing on earth. We draw upon each of these components to the extent they serve the goal. It never occurs to us to STUDY to what extent each of these items can expand and how. Should such a question be asked and an answer sought, each of these items will reveal an infinite scope in a flash as if it is a lightening. What an acute crisis will reveal of these things, the American has seen all through his life. His life in America started as a crisis, it developed through various crises and came of age to live in a permanent crisis in the sense that that urge remained with him thereafter. An environment of ever-present crisis has made his senses awake to the ever-present possibility of change for the better.

Scientific organisation of work is the contribution of U.S.A. to the culture of work. Work is organised when it is conceived of in its relation of man to another man. That becomes scientific if its components are studied and measured. Such a study must be based on these measurements. Measurements guide but, if organised, measurements will govern. To have a work so arranged is a beginning for its scientific study. The advent of computer brought in hundreds of individual facilities to the user undreamt of till then. Spell check was one, dictionary was another. At a later stage these individual facilities have a way of combining with each other to make a higher facility possible. The computer could evaluate the quality of a certain writing and award a grade. Each new combination of today will become a component of a wider complexity of tomorrow. Language grew in that fashion. Culture was its climax. The growth of science is a standing evidence for this process. Unconscious psychological growth has undergone all these stages. No thought has been given to organise it on a conscious footing.

Work has always been work everywhere. America has started organising it on a scientific basis. At once the individual worker who has initiative and responsibility becomes a part of the collective team. Along with that a culture of work, the mentality of doing a work collectively, in an organisation, scientifically has emerged. It reveals to him that he is an individual capable of far more talent than he knew. What forms out of it is not merely individuality but the individuality of the worker. This atmosphere pervades the country and even at a young age children are benefited by this sense.

An American is boyish. He thinks with his body. He has lost all the creativity his European counterpart had. It is true. But he is an evolutionary specimen. He carries in him that urge. All that he does is informed by the Spirit of Social Evolution. Nature expects him to lead the world's economic prosperity.

American history written from the inside view of the Americans is of value. Such a history written by an American will make fascinating reading of how the MAN was born again in the American soil as a free soul, endowed with human dignity well earned buried in material well being. I am doing it from the theoretical point of view. Every human trait or temperament is of value for this view, especially if its birth and growth can be traced. What Henry Ford writes is of value.

He is the one who discovered the secret of low price and the value of purchasing power. It is not given to a capitalist to think of lowering the price of his product. Sri Aurobindo dividing Mind in three stages describes the middle stage as Practical Mind and says Ford was endowed with it. He was himself an artisan and had it in his blood to the end. In his own company it was possible for him to think of expediting the speed of production of cars. It is understandable that he was endowed with that capacity for mechanical innovation. Maybe it was an innovation in the organisation of production. In him the world found the genius of discovering greater profits in low price. It was creative genius in the field of marketing a product. His own loyalty to the class of his origin gave him a selfless ideal that each worker should have a car. True, selflessness is creative in the Mind. The rule of this Theory that a creative idea in selflessness can be more beneficial to selfish interest is confirmed by his experiment. He was a genius of the Pragmatic Mind in Sri Aurobindo's terminology.

He brings out one more notable experience. He says men do not fear anything so much as an idea. This is known only to yogis. Ford has seen this in his own work. To us it means much. He does not need specialists. He recruits only rural labour. Any skilled work the new recruits learn in a few days, maybe in a few hours. Those who do not pick up like that never learn. This information is of value to understand the practical psychology of workers. It also explains the state of American factory workers. Sensory skills learn. Absence of it does not learn skilled work. The men who so readily learnt are the same men who dreaded ideas. Ford does not speak of philosophic ideas. Obviously he was referring to ideas in the work spot. In the physical mind energy can be organised into a physical skill. Rural labour who sought work in a factory belongs to this category. In the population the sensitive acquire sensory skills. It is situated in the physical mind. It is not a centre for ideas, even simple ideas. It is such men who have built the America of 2000 AD. Had we no America standing before us as a finished accomplishment, it will be difficult for us to convince ourselves the fact that such men can accomplish such feat. Here we see the infinity of the physical plane. And, on that strength U.S.A. rules the world today. All the achievements of U.S.A. including their landing on the Moon are by such men and their offspring's. The mind that was incapable of an idea in 1930 created the modern computer that holds a whole library in it. The physical plane is an infinite plane of infinite possibilities.

Henry Ford observed that his workers were contended with what they got. He would have them seek promotion, would have been better pleased had they exhibited greater initiative. Had they come forward to acquire greater technical skill their own intelligence would have had greater scope for progress. This phenomenon needs an explanation from the Theory. Each country and each man has greater potentials than he is presently utilising. Leaders clamour for fuller utilisation or at least greater utilisation. This raises the issue of potentials and the further issue of creation of potentials. Potential for what? Obviously we talk of potential for progress. In that case progress has to be defined. In the case of America of the 19th century we are discussing progress is defined as higher standard of living. It is an economic goal. It is achieved by organising one's productive energies. The energies themselves are released by aspiration. Usually the aspiration rises out of external compulsion or possibility. Rarely it rises from inner compulsion. This being social evolution, we can limit our enquiry to social aspiration as aspiration too exists at all levels - physical, vital, mental, spiritual and supramental.

The workers of Ford were contended and did not express interest in taking greater initiative to offer wider scope for their intelligence.
There were men who in America received 10 times more wages than in Europe.
If there was no initiative that sought greater scope for their intelligence it means there was no mental energy for that purpose.
Mental energies will surge when vital energies are saturated.
Saturation is achieved by organising.
Such an organisation for these workers was the stable achievement of the higher standard of living. Many or most wanted to save enough and buy a farm. Their mental energies will be released after they are established in the farm and that experience is exhausted.
Ford himself had undergone such a progress in the second generation. He developed that aspiration after he established Ford motor company which effort had exhausted his vital energies.
Ford had good will for the social and mental progress for his workers but was unaware of the law of human mental progress.
We see in India and other Asian countries a sense of oblivious indifference bordering on neglect towards the technological opportunities the world has opened to them. The same law is in operation here. But here is one more potential.
India cannot avail of modern technology in industry or even in agriculture unless she fully utilises her energies in the previous stage.
That previous stage is education. She can avail of the modern opportunities in the measure her youth are educated.
In India education is academic and of poor quality whereas in America education is by the social milieu and is offered at a higher standard in the schools.
India has the unique advantage of having the spiritual atmosphere which they can use.
It is present in the society as subtle knowledge.
Our educational system must endeavour to acquire the western technical education not exactly as they have developed, but in a fashion that our spiritual heritage will be availed of. It can be done only via the subtle knowledge. It is not the best possible method, but an immediate possibility.
In fact, it is time the whole world avails of the subtle knowledge India has to offer especially because of the advent of internet.
Ford's concern in 1950 was a valid perception but a social reality. To convert the social reality of unavailed potentialities into maximum utilisation for each country an education system can be devised by those who are familiar with the Theory.
A plane of energy offers its energy as potentials for progress only when that energy is fully organised and utilised. Until then the energy remains energy and does not convert itself into usable potential.
To study the American educational system in the light of her social aspiration in the various sections of people - factory workers, farmers, retailers etc - will reveal to the world the theories of social evolution. It is possible there in view of the availability of any record or statistics this study needs.

In the opinion of Andre Siegfried a French economic geographer the American personality took up an individuality breaking from his earlier European personality in the 19th century. Till then they found something common with the Europeans which distinctly disappeared thereafter. He says the reason was the rising standard of living. We see in the Islamic countries non-muslims convert to Islam as survival dictates that. Between survival and religion survival scores. This is done by the compulsion of the government, what happened in America was the same phenomenon in the psychological field. But it is done voluntarily. The immigrants were largely European peasants who were capable of labour. His labour in the USA has earned him far more than in Europe. He kept his habits of life. Religion itself for many is a habit of living. He shifted his continent for this higher income. It was not his expectation that this higher income implied higher opportunities. When the whole society saw the implied fact of higher status and higher opportunities in the new income, there was collective mental awakening. The new found energy of greater measure, the fresh skills into which they organised themselves, the dissolution of rigidities of ignorance, responded to this collective awakening as a readiness to pour themselves into a hitherto unheard of collective organisation that was the social infrastructure for rising social status.

Social existence is transformed into a new social infrastructure. Children born into it are a new psychological species as children born after Indian freedom have never tasted the crushing fear of slavish mentality. No longer the European can recognise him as a part of his. It is new milieu productive of a higher status through higher income. The American has by then acquired a personality of higher productivity. So, the professor argues that this new personality was the result of the highest standard of living. what was thus born was inventiveness of the Mind. Improvisation matured into innovation. And innovation came to stay. One direct result of this mentality is the birth of a new social organisation. It was an organisation of practical production. The world sees the scientific technology of U.S.A. Its material results are visible. Its invisible component is this organisation. It was made possible by the mentality of inventiveness. All these changes were in order because the American effectively and essentially broke with his European past, a past shaped by superstition and soaked in ignorance.

Manufacture produces products. Politics produces leadership that rules. Today America is a shining example of democracy where the individual liberty enjoys a pre-eminent position. The politician is financed by business. The role of gangsters in American politics is something that cannot be missed. Life in America started in the wilderness. It creates the possibility of muscle men looting the produce at the time of harvest. The possibility of the earliest settlements came to stay as a feature of wild life. It was felt as a necessity by men of muscle power. Many work and produce. Those who are endowed with strong muscles and no conscience find looting a possible profession. Even after towns came to be organised that way of life was an avenue of earning for many, especially because men in power sought their help to quell strikes, breaks processions, shout down orators, assasinate leaders. Gangs come into existence in the social life and operate in collusion with political leaders. The theory must have its pronouncement on this feature. An ideal monarch can wipe them off or keep them in control. In a democracy as the low passions of high placed people are in display, the high ambition of the lowest section of the population is not only not denied existence but are enfranchised. To them, particularly the strong amongst them, democracy is a fertile opportunity. Society in this respect has always preferred the method of allowing the population to exhaust their exuberance to suppressing them. It is in tune with the spirit of democracy of adult suffrage. It allows the ignorance of people to be slowly educated by experience. The ignorance of illiterate voters is the political counterpart to the violence of the muscle men that are gangsters. In a dictatorship, there is a large possibility for the gangster to become the chief. Gangsterism is the dictatorship of the illiterate muscle.

The Negro will more readily adopt himself than resist assimilation.

He is more completely Americanised than other immigrants.

He is likened to the English butler of the 19th century who was proud of his position.

Neither the Jews could find any hate in them of the German people, not the Negro had a bad word of America.

Promoted Negro officers suffered greater indignities than others denied promotion.

Civil rights to the Negroes are a reminder of their humble position.

These are opinions about the Jews, the negroes and the conditions in USA in 1950.

To fully understand these expressions that are studied opinion of scholars and the narrow observers of the US situation they need to be viewed in the light of what we know of human nature and what this formulated position of the Theory states.

'The Indian hated the British rulers. He had not hated the British people. He adored them', is true or largely true.
A fact is Mind can understand rationally the valid kernel in the above ideas. Mind is not constituted to forgive the one who was a source of humiliation.
In the light of present advantages, the vital especially when it is keenly conscious of them, is readily capable of adoring the one who earlier humiliated it. It is a known capacity of the vital and not the Mind.
Deep-seated grudges of the person that are lodged in the physical have over the centuries exhibited two capacities. 1) It can accept any gift or sue for any favour now from the hands that mortally offended them. This capacity of the body that is physical is a wider extension of the vital attitude. 2) The Mind in the physical which remembers the habit of hate of the enemy will rise automatically and act in its original fashion of offended dignity. The response is automatic as well as subconscious.
Mother's body was allergic to fire even in this birth remembering her experience on the stake of Joan of Arc. No act is ever forgotten by the Mind. There is nothing in the Mind, vital or body that can forgive. The vital's acceptance of present favours is an inversion of its inability to forgive.
Draupadi's disclosing her secret desire for karna as he was a Pandava is a confirmation of what the mental experience of the body is capable of. As she was the wife of the Pandavas, her body - the mind in the body - longed for Karna.
Ralph Bunche's declaration of his love for America can be fully accepted without reservation. Suppose America is poor like Africa, would these statements be still forthcoming is a question worth asking.
The theory states when a statement is true, its opposite too is true. If loyalty of the Negroes and the broad mindedness of the Jews are true, their opposites also must be true.
We must consider the statement, "Adoration is not from the right or benefit but from the present exalted position of the adored". If history provides examples to the contrary or great literature spelt out such truth it is worth thinking about. Transformation was not a power in human existence before His advent, especially before the descent of Force in 1956. If any theory of such transformation had been developed, we can examine it.
Assimilation is possible only through integration which means each should appreciate the need of the other for himself with comprehension and without condescension.
Transformation is fully reliable. Mental control in its own time will express itself in its original characteristic. As a behaviour Mind is capable of good behaviour, even excellent performance.

Let us consider another set of views:

- The country is moving to maturity.

- The American differentiates essentially from the parent stock of Europeans.

- His vital energy is overflowing.

- This is due to nervous instability.

- His attention span is short.

- His overwork is due to his enthusiasm for results.

- Nervous breakdown is the result.

- He is infatuated. It becomes hatred.

- His modern machinery are being made perfect.

- It will directly lead to mental sloth.

- He values technical achievements and relies on experts.

Had they been satisfied with their astounding success in agriculture, today they will appear to be a marvel in agriculture. That way they would have leveled off. These would have resulted in no maturity. What Europe underwent, America too underwent but in a short period. Doing it in a shorter period is to abridge social evolution. It needs a vaster amount of energies which is created by that decision. What developments Europe could not meet with, America witnessed. At this point they outran Europe. This was in quantity and quality. The increased quantity gave higher standard of living. The higher quality of life offered freedom to the citizens. As they were achieving these results in fresh conditions with an energy that was overflowing, more than greater results, they created new organisations of work. Such organisations helped maturity to emerge in production capacity. The excess energies were not fully absorbed by these greater results and the creation of better organisation. Hence the nervous instability. Mental faculties have not been fashioning as fast or as copiously as the higher skills for work. His thought is not centered in understanding in the abstract. His thought fully emerges in the work expressing his excessive energy. His values are work values. His aim is action for greater results. Such an attitude absorbs the energy into enthusiasm for work. His energies are for in excess to be so exhausted. Still, nervous break down over takes him. In the absence of social or mental values taking shape, his energy becomes infatuation. In lesser vessels it can become hatred. The KKK was one such expression in the extreme. His dedication to the creation and designing new machines is complete. That enables him to create perfect machines. The aim is vaster production not finer products. There is a vast domestic population waiting for sewing machines, boots, hats, refrigerators, kitchen utensils etc. His ultimate achievements are technical. His work is focused. For everything he has to rely on experts. Life of this intensity in total freedom, creates various grades of successive political conditions that are opportunities. Politics is filled with all possible avenues. The strong dominate. Mind is not sufficiently developed to be of any use. Enthusiasm is for production, not for governance. In the absence of mental energy to create new political organisations, the strong in politics become gangsters. There is no mental energy for abstract ideas or their application to new conditions of government. Mental sloth is the result.

The personality of a nation has all sides and in each side there are two opposite directions. Observing the history of any nation from any side and how the movement proceeds one finds the value of the Theory as they all end at the goal the Theory has extracted from Life or history. Literature is at several levels from the penny novels to great poetry. Great literature is born in mature societies that have remained stable for long. Every great revolutionary movement is initiated by the work of a great mind producing a great political thesis. There are several levels of literature and there are several levels of social movements. It is significant that the Indian Freedom Movement of sixty years had not given birth to a fiction depicting the aspirations of the people. Indian social life was not ripe enough to produce an idealistic's writer of that level. Indian languages had not met with anything that could be called a Renaissance except in Bengal where Bengali was directly stimulated by English by the presence of capital in Calcutta. Kerala showed a little flair because of the contact with the European missionaries. It is a tribute to the American Mind to have captured the emotions of freedom in a fiction. Uncle Tom's cabin's success as a novel was great. It was one of the causes for the civil wars. It was perceptive of Lincoln to have recognised it and magnanimous of him to have mentioned it to the author when he met her in the white house. Its success was instantaneous and international. The reason was the book captured the vibration of Freedom in fiction even though the victims had no strength or organisation to protest.

Law is public conscience codified. A law cannot be effectively implemented if the public conscience does not endorse it. The hurry of the elite to enact laws to educate the public is only self-deception. No man can be taught. He must learn himself. What he does not learn by himself is no learning worth the name. Slavery was abolished after the civil war. But the Negroes were ill treated and insultingly discriminated against till the Civil Rights Movement. Man is constituted selfish and mean, says Sri Aurobindo. He is meanly selfish. It is the basis of his irrationality. Lenin said people would even change geometrical axioms to suit their rational arguments. Social evolution takes the selfish man to selfless impulses by generating social compulsions of progress. That has always been the increasing standard of living in America. It operates in business when the business man seeks greater profit. The goal of greater profit makes the retailer go out of his way to meet the customers' irrational demands. A man who bought a house found a box of old tools in the house rusting. He was good enough to demand the money back from the seller. The shop obliged. An irrational man is compelled to become rational by irrational circumstances. This is one of the ways of life's inversion.

Slavery was abolished by law in U.S.A, law proclaimed by the majority of the legislature. It had not reflected the deeply felt sensation of the public who must uphold it. It remained on the statute book, was never translated into action, at least in the South, actions that issue from natural sensations. The authorities that are to implement that law implemented according to their inner promptings and not what was on the statute book. Constitution becomes law which is implemented through the rules of administration. They in their turn generate Government orders for the officers to follow. In following these orders there arise procedures. These procedures are endorsed by the custom of the land which comes to be known as usage. Tradition is based on the behaviour of the community's usage. The individual responds to this milieu and rises to the public occasion that demands an appropriate behaviour from him. Laws enacted without such sanctions of the society at various levels are not implemented according to its letter or Spirit, but by the infinite resourcefulness of the population. There was NO respect in the white heart for the Black. Perhaps still there is none. He invents devious ways to escape the law or even uses the very forum of the law in his favour to serve the very opposite purpose. Professor Siegfried looking at this dismal picture quoted Shakespeare that all is rotten in the state of Denmark. Even the President invents a route of behaviour to refrain from calling Booker Washington Mr. and discovers refuge in Professor. No white was punished for violating a Negro woman in those days while a Negro for the same crime was lynched. Equality was not born in the hearts of the white till 1960 or so and Martin Luther King paid its price with his life.

The Individual and the collective

Pioneers are rare. A time comes when the pioneer is successful. The society may admire him or oppose him according to its social maturity. In the event of its accepting him and his achievement, the masses begin to follow the pioneer. This is the rule of social evolution. In quickly advancing societies, a great many pioneers arise. The pioneer is the conscious tip of the social iceberg when its subconscious matures. A more mature society generates more pioneers. Nature opened the American continent to create a society where everyone will be a pioneer. Can we conceive of a society where every one is a Nehru or Gandhiji? We are not in a position to envision a society of graduates. No country is in such a position. A pioneer is a mountain of achievement while a graduate is a mild version of a pioneer whom the society consciously trains. Only those who dared to leave the safety of their home, left for U.S.A. There he met conditions in which he could not survive unless he became a pioneer. Only pioneers survived. America was thus a nation of pioneers. Pioneers are formed individuals.

Societies are led by pioneers, that are few. In America we have a society where everyone is a pioneer. Every individual is a pioneer there. The collective composed of individuals who are each one of them a pioneer is naturally a dynamic one. No wonder it is many times more powerful than any other nation. The quantitative increase changes the quality of the nation. This is the secret of America leading the world today. From early days the American was compelled to

1) Overcome obstacles

2) quickly improvise

3) give constant thought to innovation

4) take care of himself

5) train himself in self defence

6) create organisations for higher production

7) convert obstacles into opportunities for survival

8) co-operate with rivals and enemies for the minimum need of bare survival.

9) new-create

10) recognise the superlative value of education

11) respect the individuality of everyone especially his children

12) work all his waking hours

13) hope that there must be a solution for any problem

14) have glimpses of Infinityin various ways.

Assimilation of races do not occur on their own. Broadly, we can say that assimilation proceeds on the gradations of political, legal, social, cultural, psychological and spiritual attitudes.

Politically one foreign race is permitted to enter the territory of a local race.
To accord them equal status in law is a measure of political broad mindedness. In the ancient settlement of villages which even now we find in a great number it is a great generosity to extend an outsider equal legal rights. One is acutely aware of parting with a basic privilege. It is done only in cases where there is no substantial loss to the Local community. Even the mythical prestige can stand in the way.
It is a big step from that legal equality to move to treat an outsider their social equal and accord them such a treatment. All over the world the outsider is a suspect unless he is a source of benefit or prestige.
Social equality is to let him participate in a non-religious function of the village. Cultural identity means inter marrying. If the previous one is a big step, no one can contemplate letting an outsider enter into their cultural life. It is not so much of cultural identity as a pride of possession of their own cultural exclusiveness.
Cultural identity is to enter a family as a blood relation. Psychological assimilation, though sought after outside social and cultural groups, insists on the prior sanction of social permission as well as cultural identity.
Spiritual assimilation is generally understood as religious unity, but in fact people of different races, habits, temperaments do not seek spiritual unity. It is not a task the world has before it till now.

In the experience of changing generations all these differences are honoured in full. Economic advantage especially in the collective is the real corrective. One force more powerful than economics is the Man's attraction for the woman across the border. Such transgressions remain unassimilated except in the heat of the initial exuberance. Only when we witness the regret of the inferior group we see the strength of the attachment to the clan. Mostly superiority and inferiority are well defined socially as well as psychologically. It is understandable that after a long period of the attempted assimilation that the member of the superior group regrets. But the regret of the member of the inferior group is equally strong. Ideals are ill defined in the living of it. The living of daily life is determined by language, habits that are dictated by cultural traditions and social sanction. Assimilation does not take place unless the urges of the idea are stronger than the satisfactions of linguistic usages and the taste for one's own food. Those who have studied castes in India have found the importance of food and the social expressions of cultural practices. Knowledge of the new ideal that overcomes the personal preferences alone can have any hope. It is true economic considerations overrule these barriers. Stronger than that are the considerations of status. The ultimate truth about assimilation is no real assimilation takes place except by efflux of time and general oblivion.

- Franklin, Jeffersonand many others believed that men freed from social injustices of the old regime would live wisely and virtuously.

- The conception of a sacramental and hierarchical priesthood is alien to the American mind.

- A strong anti-catholic feeling unaccompanied by antireligious feeling was witnessed.

- Conversions to catholism was on the rise. There was some worldly advantage in becoming a catholic.

It is always a human hope that if a major obstacle to accomplishment is once removed, all the rest will take care of itself. 'Give me the capital, I shall be an entrepreneur' is the cry of many youth. The sheds closed in industrial estates are standing witnesses that it is not true. Entrepreneurship requires many more components outside and inside. A goal will be reached when all the requirements are in place and in proper proportion. There is more. The right harmony too must be there. Beyond that grace must be there. In social accomplishment, grace means the social sanction. Mother believed sadhaks would seek Supermind if their needs were met. But Her founding the Ashram in that hope led to other ends, along the paths of human ingenuity. Human nature has infinite scope for expansion. Society has a fixed goal. It is one of the many possibilities human nature is capable of. Left to itself i.e. in freedom, human nature will follow its own inspiration not the goal fixed by the society or the goal the Spirit has in mind. This was Mother's experience. It is gratifying to know that it is the experience of Jefferson and Franklin also. The same is true about a religious ceremony. Man taken into the fold of religion allows himself to be shaped as the church desires. Then he believes in the ceremonies of the church. In America, Man was not given the life he had by the church. It was a life he made it for himself. In settled communities as in Europe, Man is born into a religion. He comes to believe that his own life is given to him by the Society, by the church or by his family. That is a social conditioning. The successful American is self-made. He does not know of any church, religion or society till he becomes successful. To him the traditional conceptions about sacrament or hierarchy are alien. Here we see that economic considerations or considerations of survival take precedence over social or religious beliefs. In the absence of such recorded facts, it is difficult to argue in favour of this theme.

Even in the rising rates of conversions to Catholicism, we see man values social advantage more than religious convictions. In human survival growth development and evolution economic, religious considerations enter powerfully. We can offer our theoretical convictions about all these. It requires an elaborate study to substantiate such statements. Some of them are.

- Survival, growth, development, evolution is the sequence of social change.

- Society follows ONLY this movement. Any other influence such as religion, ethics, economics, values, habits are accepted to the extent they further this central movement.

- What is a determinant at one stage is not at another stage.

- How that determinism varies with different combinations is another statement, but the basic theory of this movement, will hold food.

- Europe's sufferings make her wary of sanctifying success.

- Absence of suffering makes America optimistic of unfailing success.

- American Catholicism hopes to be Americanised.

- The magnificent impression of the ceremony on the faithful.

- Religionmust have a practical character in modern times.

- The Protestant formula of living one's own life and making one's own destiny.

Sufferings issue out of a social environment that lacks in opportunities. In such a situation the talented make headway. Also the dishonest succeed. In an atmosphere of suffering few come forward to face it cheerfully and overcome it. The best stoically accept it. The weak develop theories or beliefs of destiny, karma or go further to convince themselves that the present suffering is noble as it will provide them with a place in heaven. To them success is suspect. It will never occur to them that they lack the capacity and skill which those who succeed have. Out of long-sufferings they grow cautious in mind when someone hails success. America had suffered in the period of the earliest settlers. It was not social or psychological suffering witnessed in Europe because of lack of opportunities and human creation of cruelty. It was effort that was out of proportion which demanded the body to suffer. It was a painstaking effort, not suffering in emotional stress. His physical opportunities were vast. Turning to land he had them in vaster quantities than he could dream of. Taking to cultivation the land yielded more. At the market, his produce was readily purchased. There is no better heaven for the seller than a ready market with a rewarding price. A bent towards industrial production of the simplest type such as making ploughshares, axes, boots, hats etc, he is sure a wider market awaits his small produce. Everywhere he learns tales of success, often infinite success. Like the New York slum dweller, Americans whoever they were, heard of people continuously moving up the social ladder. Often they find themselves moving up for having taken no particular step towards that aim. He finds himself carried on a wave of betterment of social life. As his compeer back in his mother country no social opinion inhibits him. There is no priest to persuade him one way or another. There is no society with whom he must conform. At home he is not a son under the ever vigilant eye of the parental control. His individuality is respected by one and all. Optimism finds such a psychological soil fertile. Once optimism is born it has a way of multiplying itself. And above all he finds himself in a human climate of eternal optimism. No one speaks of failure. He sees no failure around. He discovers a greater inflow of human material which conceives him of his own success. It is the success of people like him that invites the human invasion. To him success becomes a way of life. Soon it becomes in his thought unfailing success.

To be Americanised means to acquire the personality of survival in the atmosphere of wilderness where one has to reclaim it for livable social life. The Theory states the various levels of social development and underlines the fact that life subordinates all other aspects to that central movement. It can be stated in ordinary language as

Ethics, religion, way of life and every such thing else is for Man. Man is not for these things.

The historian records that there was conversion to Catholicism. It means people have crossed the level of survival. At a stage where the population is struggling to survive, religion would not matter. The impressive ceremonies of the catholic church draws the faithful means man is no longer struggling for survival. Another one lays down the rule that religion must be practical. He too is speaking the same social truth. It is true of all the four stages of development. Upwards Movement social or evolutionary is not a partial function. It is a primary function requiring all the energies of the society. In such a period the society will have no energy to spare for any other activity. When society exhibits interest in any such secondary activity, it means the society has come to stay in the stage of growth they are in.

Ireland was long torn by the strife of internal conflict. The movement in Ireland to restore ulster to the Republic was active from the days of its creation. It could not develop its backward agriculture. Poverty persisted, fight against UK too continued. The Irish continued to migrate to other countries, especially to America. For about 150 years it looked as if the Irish found only one solution to their poverty and lack of complete nationhood. It was emigration. Even in America their wit and vivacity gave them local leadership not national pre-eminence. They are Catholics impressed by ceremonial parades, not Protestants capable of formed individuality. Nor was there anyone turned inward seeking the ultimate reality, the Divine. The surplus of agriculture spills over as industrial development. Societies mature with manufacture branch off offering greater service to the population, developing the service sector. The Irish in USA were recipients of the developing agriculture and industry. Their personality did not overflow with energies to return to the motherland and rebuild her economy. IT came to U.S.A. and supplied her economy with an overdose of social energy. What flourishing agriculture and expanding manufacture failed to do, IT in its early stages did. Information Technology is a far greater evolutionary tool than agriculture and industry. The Irish who succeeded in IT returned home and set up IT related industries which helps her equal her age old rival UK.

In India Tamilnadu was clamouring for secession. Long after that the Sikhs raised the banner of revolt. In Tamilnadu it also took the form of anti-Brahminism. Central law prohibiting secession made the separatist movement die its natural death. The separatist movement had no life of its own. It was expressing another frustration in that form. That movement had no political individuality. The strong hand of the centre in prohibiting secession compelled them to abandon it. It made them turn to a hate campaign. What they needed was a political individuality. Their entry into politics and an increasing signs of victory there made them lose interest in the hate campaign and take to political pursuits. In Punjab increasing prosperity led them to secessionist politics demanding Khalistan. There too the fissiparous tendency had no real life. It is the excess energy of newfound prosperity. Timely police action and further development of the state especially in the small-scale sector absorbed their energies. The separatist movement lost its momentum. The law remains

Primary interests prevail.
Secondary interests assume significance and appear as primary interests in a distorted picture.
Development impetus is primary. Politics precede other impulses.
Life is progressive and expansive if mind does not intrude is a principle.
The Depression was caused by one such intrusion.
Immediately after the War in 1945 the public feared a slump. The economists agreed. It is obvious that the huge war machine gluttonously consuming every consumer goods is no longer there. What will happen to that productive forces except to burst?
What we witnessed then in USA brings clearly out the character of progressive life.

Progress in life is never in a line, an arithmetic progression. It is ever expanding, in a geometric progression. Each successive generation has been enjoying more of the good things of life from the earliest of time. 1945 is no exception. Each new generation is, ipso facto, a wider market than the previous generation. The end of war ended the fear psychosis of people. Absence of fear is the beginning of expanding energy in freedom. Expanding energy is productive. If it does not directly produce products for sale in the market, it produces enthusiasm, ideas, new attitudes, new strategies, new outlook etc all of which are socially creative i.e. productive. They are the sources of the modern service sector expanding limitlessly. War was a symbol of destruction of the body. About 50 million people died and 6 million were gassed to death. Mind is constricted by its physical rigidity. With its symbolic destruction Mind is less encumbered or enjoyed greater freedom. Such a mind will have less tendencies to interfere with the social process. War was a period of self-denial, a period of rationing for every commodity. With that constriction removed, life feels less fettered and more expansive. Expansive life is expanding economy.

Common sense says a depression is the order of the day. Common sense contains the experience of the part. The situation after the war is a situation of the future in the sense a condition the past never knew. Only imagination can know that. For imagination to see it, one needs the laws according to which societies grow. Such laws had not been evolved then or even now. Just now projections of the future are made based on past recorded experience. It will be a better guide than an impression. In that measure the world has a greater tool today than in 1945. But what happened in the U.S.A. and elsewhere was a phenomenon of life whose characteristics are

1) A fall like war is followed by a boon.

2) Tension caused by literal battles scorches life. Release from it releases human energy of a higher plane.

3) As it was considered a war to end all wars, a deep sign of relief was taken by the world population.

4) The reconstruction of devastated areas is an unprecedentedly wide market.

5) Moneythat played a negative role in society had an occasion to play a positive role.

6) Cold war that followed the W.W. immediately activated the existence of the front lines and helped to maintain the war market partly.

7) 45 Asian countries ushering into freedom created a new market for every producer anywhere in the world.

- The European who cannot stand the American is yet attracted by his unrestrained behaviour.

- The American relies on the school and college to prepare the future generation.

- Men there prefer men's company.

- Economy is dependent on employment.

- The young American wife is superior to the Englishwoman in organising the household.

Europe settled down to acquire some culture at an early stage of her prosperity. America is still in the stage of organising her work. When she turns to culture it will not be the physical culture of Rome or vital culture of Europe. It may even be the spiritual culture of the world rising from below. He has not acquired manners of culture. It is still the uncut gem of manner of work, a work that has won its victory over defiant circumstances spilling over into organising those very circumstances to serve him. Those are human endeavours that can absorb an ocean of energy. Still his energies are overflowing which attracts even the European who is repelled. May be the U.S.A is endeavouring to destroy the family first demolishing marriage, ideals of the Mother. The primitive conditions in which settlers had started life created a strong bondage of family that needed dependence for survival. The same conditions generated in the youth full capacity for independence. The women were steeled into pioneers and a kind of explorers. In the wilderness her dependence on him was total and physical, a condition that fosters work not so much of family. Man remained centred in work, work for survival. Even when he was moving up, it was survival at a higher level he was aiming at. Family of vital affection is born when the doubts about physical survival are long forgotten. Before any family ever took shape the American life ushered itself into an age that needed its dissolution. In America MAN was born who had had no serious encumbrance of the family to whom his loyalty was pledged. The external conditions fully liberated him before the ties formed.

The centre of his living was not affectionate emotion that generates the family. It was efficient execution. With the family not taking its original shape, he quickly formed that centre in education. The father is lost in work, work during all the waking hours. The mother is free to organise the household whose demands are much. The child grows at school devoid of human touch. He becomes highly sensitive, never acquires the sweetness of childhood. Sweetness in human life emerges long after physicality is forgotten, submerged into the engrossing affection in an artistic family environment. Wealth creates the latter. Poverty though devoid of artistic influence can offer the sweetness of living together as a family in a culture that makes it its goal. Men prefer the company of men as work is primary. Unemployment is no serious concern. Employment is the centre of existence, not the family. To the American wife in her youth a certain material abundance unknown to other cultures came. That drew her to the household away from the home. The home was never born in America. Hence her capacity as the organiser of the household. The faculty of organising is in the air. She too shares it. She excels the British woman as the English woman does not have so much chattels as the American woman. In the absence of wealth or a civilisation that creates a household full of various articles, the woman can only find refuge in emotions, especially if her culture enables her to cultivate it.

- The price of slaves was rising all the time (1850).

- The South felt the North was exploiting them while the North accused the South of exploiting the slaves. This is exactly what the Third World felt towards the First World.

- JeffersonDavis, the leader of the South had not known life outside the South. He took much for granted and believed slaves were treated nicely as in his home elsewhere. He disbelieved cruelty to slaves.

- Davislacked imagination, was self-indoctrinated, had a passion for certitude.

- He was morally aggressive, accused the North of hypocrisy.

A social habit, a way of life will have its essential sanction in several foundations of the Society. Economics is a main area. Slavery was in existence and was flourishing. The fact their price was rising reveals that as an institution it was serving a useful purpose. Without such an economic, psychological sanction no institution can ever thrive. The accusations that South, North and the Third World were making against exploitation indicates that it was time exploitation of any kind should cease. In prewar India no one complained that there was male domination. No complaint of exploitation of Harijans was voiced before the advent of Gandhiji. The strong naturally dominates the weak. The weak accepts its as a way of life. Values are fashioned that it is because of such domination that the weak exist. The submissive weak come to take it as a value of life. Submissiveness runs its course and outlives the use of its behaviour. In such a phase disobedience, non co-operation and rebellion take birth. During such rebellion the opponents point out the domination of the accuser of their own weak members, a theoretically valid phenomenon. Awareness arises as accusation. Hypocrisy in the accuser and the accused surface. Each sees the other's insufficiency. Such an inner awareness leads to the external conditions changing in favour of the abolition of domination. Domination often degenerates into cruelty. The history of the South, its war with the North, the abolition of slavery, the lingering cruel discrimination, the organisation of KKK, the rise of the 'Civil Rights Movement are theoretically valid land marks in human evolution. It is based on the path the low consciousness travels to reach the higher consciousness.

It is based on ignorance issuing out of insularity.
Ignorance in its intensity develops a passion of certitude which prevents the birth of imagination, generates self-indoctrination. The martyrdom of a modest culture has nothing magnanimous about it, but to the martyr it is his magnificent hour.
Intensity of shallow emotions necessarily turns aggressive, accuses the opponent of exactly his own unpardonable defect of which he is subconscious.
For the historian who is looking for the emerging lines of the Theory of social evolution, this is a fertile field of incontrovertible facts.

The civil war

- Population North 21 million, South 8 million

- Army North 2 million, South 1 million

- Free males North 4.4 South 1 (ratio)

Factory production   10                       1

Iron                           15                        1

Coal                          38                        1

Fire arms                  32                         1

Wheat                     412                        1

Ship-tonnage            25                        1

Wealth                        3                        1

Rail road mileage    2.4                        1

Farms                          3                       1

draft animals            1.8                       1

Live stock                1.5                       1

Cotton                       1                        24

- It is a historical fact that most civil wars are lost by one side running out of money. The American civil war was an outstanding example.

- Davisis entirely wrong by the very first rule of decision making that the external factors must be there. All of them should be there. In fact none was there. The internal endowments are cipher. Where one should have confidence David had expectation.

- Any one studying how emotions develop knowledge will do well to read the doings of Davis, their beliefs, the truths on which these beliefs were based.

- South had no gold. They relied on paper money whose value steadily depreciated to the point the Northern currency became an inspirer in the South.

- One million of immigrants freshly landing added to the population of the North of which 400,000 served in the army showing that the cause of the South found no favour from any quarters.

- Davis's appointments were all a fiasco, he himself became sick and short tempered.

- In meeting an issue EMOTION tries to know more of itself along the way. The more it loses, the more confident it is, as it looks inwardly only at itself. Emotion cannot see the fact. It does not try to understand. It is not endowed with that faculty. It can only feel. Instead of calling such a one stupid, it is best to call him emotional.

- The characteristic stamp of emotions is flying in the face of facts. No one in his right senses will go to war when the figures above speak of the situation.

- Lincolnfought the war more for preserving the union than for abolishing slavery.

***

To accomplish a goal the relevant skill is ncessary. The overall need is the capacity. A skill is converted into results when it works in the context or atmosphere of capacity. Among the many essential requirements the unity of the foundation is the basic. Sri Aurobindo has set the goal of India to be the Jagat guru, the Guru of the world. It is the aim of Nature. The very first condition for that is the geographical unity. About 800 years ago Nature found that India was in several fragments. No effort of hers, says Sri Aurobindo, gave results till then. So, she resorted to foreign invasion. The Muslim rule brought the best part of India under their one banner. The British rule brought the entire country in her extended version including Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaya, Singapore under one flag. The Britisher gave India unity. He must then leave her. Sri Aurobindo got her freedom from the British. It came in two parcels. The first necessity is geographical unity, the next is freedom. The item on the agenda next is Prosperity. Prosperity must be achieved by values. India must seek it by spiritual values. Then she can pass on from prosperity to spirituality. The spirituality the world will follow is the spirituality of psychological prosperity. Material prosperity will precede it. Unless the material prosperity is achieved by the values of Spirit, India cannot acquire psychological prosperity by spiritual values. India knows the values of Timeless spirit. They are austerities born out of self-denial. Honour that sacrifices one's life, chastity that is loyalty irrespective of the qualification of the object, endurance for endurance sake, obedience to authority in utter disregard of the rightness of authority, doing one's duty without seeking the result are some of the major Indian spiritual values of the immutable spirit. To become the Jagat guru, India needs the values of the evolving spirit. They are accomplishments born out of self-fulfillment, Harmony that fulfils another's life or the life of every other person, courting of eternal romance that is the fulfillment of the universal in the individual, surrender for the sake of surrender, obedience to the Inner authority in utter disregard of the outer compulsions, doing ones transcendental duty in the individual regardless of the social, psychological result are some of the Psychic values of the evolving Spirit.

The American nation that became vastly more prosperous than any other part of the world, urgently faced the need of geographical unity as she had to lead the world in the next century to material prosperity. Secession rose as a political issue symbolising the status of the slaves. The civil war was known to be the war to abolish slavery. Lincoln said he fought the war to preserve the union not so much as to abolish slavery. As slavery symbolised the cause of secession, the war for the unity of the union turned to be one for the abolition of slavery. It is note worthy that the union was fully preserved, but the abolition of slavery was a law on the statute book. It was never practised for the next hundered years in spirit. America that preserved the union in the civil war is now qualified to achieve the world union. She would do well if, in that process, she helps India to restore her own unity. Should she do so, she will be achieving a double goal. 1) She would undo the injustice she committed in 1947 to Kashmir and India. 2) She would undo the mischief their ancestors the Britishers had done to India on their departure. It is significant that U.S.A. is now waging a war on the Muslims who as the predecessors to the British in India are refusing to let their hold on her to relax. Containing the Muslims in their own homes, it will be possible to restrain them in India. Thus Lincoln's war against the South is set in the full perspective of global evolution out of physicality into mentality which is psychological well being.

- A moving frontier is a solvent of all America's problems, unknown to Europe.

- America is unique and distinctive.

- The West made U.S.A. constitutionally violent.

- The concept of honour in duelling was as strong in America as in Europe.

The nomad who discovered agriculture discovered the land produces far more than he can consume and land is all around in an inexhaustible fashion. Discovering the uses of electricity for light and power, one was face to face with the entire world's activities for him to extend the application of the electric power. Now software developers who entered education saw a similar occasion. Society has thousands of fields as education, not hundreds. Man who finds a new use for his capacity or a new capacity is always before a field that never comes to an end. A historian addressing an audience of historical background saying the moving frontier was a solvent to all America's social, economic problems, says in other words

Expanding opportunity dissolves present constraints.

The reference above is to the land when a square mile of 640 acres were available for the occupation of 2 to 6 people. That lasted for sometime. A puncture close to the retina occurring a second time could not be handled by an expert doctor and his laser treatment. When the patient agreed to imagine his mind on both directions ostensibly towards infinite ends, that expansive movement relieved the stress on his nerves and healed the puncture. The unique distinction of America is the possession of vast lands and a willing population to reclaim it for cultivation or habitation. Nowhere there is such a physical abundance.

Such a physical abundance of land too was soon exhausted, but its production had created an abundance of purchasing power and an emotional longing for convenience that is comfort. Again a similar inexhaustible field was opened up in production for household articles, farm implements all that go with it. It opened up a two dimension of small scale production which created endless number of entrepreneurs and an equally great numbers of retailers catering to the rising expectations of the slum dwellers to become respectable middle class citizens. Their European background and the practical experience in America taught them the value of new information that was constantly pouring forth of scientific studies and discoveries. To avail of that invaluable information one needs to have basic education. This social knowledge led to a movement of wide spread education that took America beyond Germany in literacy. The European legacy came not only as the value of education but as the honour of the individual's self-respect. California believed in gun shooting. Even the jury in a court of law would respect the emotion of honour of self-respect that urged one to kill his opponent. The legal apparatus took the side of the violent citizen. European duelling prohibited in all Europe by law found a rebirth in U.S.A. in the Wild West which provided ample application of it to daily existence.

The frontier never ends. When it ended in land, it reappeared in business and manufacture as well as in education. Education releases mental energy. Success in manufacture and retail creates purchasing power, a form of increasing social energy. The original impulse of immigration now became an impetus as it carried energy in a great measure. From education that same energy has now entered scientific technology. The Uniqueness of America lies in the ORIGINAL excess energy which continues to increase in every field it enters.

- Industry had been there from the time of the Napoleonic Wars.

- Respect for competition has almost become a religion.

- History of the USA is awakening, creation, adventure, competition, corruption, credit, innovation.

- Nations awake by exhausting their existing potentials.

- Bankers were the prime movers.

- Whole legislatures were bought by the sugar trust and other financiers.

- There was no income tax.

By the Napoleonic Wars America was 200 years old. Only a few decades prior to that the U.S.A. declared her independence. As the population was struggling for survival, there was no thought of rights. The power of the people is in proportion to the success they have and the savings on hand. Both were considerable. By this time there was no one in America who had not been something of a pioneer in one front or another with assured success. Success and savings are the ingredients of security. It is at that time Man is conscious of his rights. He overthrew the English rulers who had not played any significant role in their building America. What right do they have now to tax? The birth of industry in America is preceeded by the overwhelming success of their agricultural operations which offered its surplus to be invested in industry as capital. It also came to them through Banks. Hence Banks were the prime movers. In primitive conditions of operation agriculture or industry the prime motive of each individual is to wipe out the opposition. When it is not possible Man settles down to competition. The Americans had come by then to respect competition and it became almost a religion. This shows social maturity. The vast unconquered territory at the disposal of the settlers removed any urge to conquer other territory. Similarly, the infinite opportunities for the contending parties has removed any possible urge to destroy the competition. The circumstances have helped the population to overcome pugnatious impulses and come to respect competition.

To exist or subsist one has to improvise. Constant need for improvisation has created a mentality of innovation. The settlers came to America with an awakened sense of accomplishment. That awakening was ratified by the extent of opportunities witnessed. An awakened Mind in the midst of limitless opportunities becomes creative and innovative. These faculties find expression in organising a living, hunting for occasions for progress, creating new tools, improving the existing tools, adapting the tools to the occasion, organising a home, discovering new relationships with members of the family and members at work. At no point life pours itself into a mould. At every point it is a new creation that is a mini adventure. The attitude to life becomes the attitude to work. There is no energy to think of others in the field.

Moving from one level of life to another a whole new organisation is to be created. It happens when industry is to be created. Its birth no longer demands the adventure agriculture presented to them as by this time wealth is accumulated. The adventure of accumulated wealth is to buy wholesale bodies of politicians who have to make the necessary laws. Corruption helps create new planes of social functioning. As hard work, risk, adventure were the order of the day in the previous centuries, corruption became the organising force when industry was to be born. Income tax had not come into existence by then. Even in the mother country there was no income tax till then.

- Six reasons for the boom in US production.

By civil war U.S.A. was the wealthiest country in the world.
The civil war gave a huge impetus to American industry.
In 50 years her output of manufactured goods increased 18 times.
W.W.I boosted the economy to thirty three times.
The decade of the Civil War was the take off period.
From the 5th place in the world of manufacturing in 1840, she came to the 4th in 1860 and stood first in 1894.
By now she doubled Britain's production which was first in the world.
Her production was half as much as the whole of Europe.

The reasons are

1) liberal patentlaws- By 1911 there were million patents.
2) Scarcity and high cost labour compelled invention of labour savingmachines and compelled installing them.
3) This helped standardisation of machinery and parts.
4)The extraordinary success of agriculture dynamised manufacture.
5) The abundance of energy sources - waterpower, steam power from wood and coal, electricity. From 2346 million hp in 1860, it moved to 42,931 million.
6) America combined free trade and protection. In 1900 the home market was buying 97%of the products.

A child's growth from 5 to 15 has no parallel. This is the period of his natural growth, when growth is fuelled by the dynamism of his youth. He gets the best parental attention. Destructive wars are agents of development. War destroys, it is true. It destroys forms of fetters of growth. Over a century or two, some times more, a nation produces modes of living, methods of production, attitude in the public towards organised production, arranges its primary unit of family to function suitably, creates social ideals of service and usefulness to community, makes them the cherished forms of individual values, adjusts its parts to function harmoniously with the whole and creates deep beliefs of living. Thus a social culture that enables and supports its productive energies emerges. Man collective as well as individual comes to repose his deepest emotions in these cultural values and ardently desires to pass it on to posterity, little knowing that in a changing society all that was venerable to him will in future be venemous to life. All these are forms, physically shaped and vitally energised, not mental convictions. Mind can learn and change in theory and not in practice. The vital according to theory has no instrument to learn but in its own original position is energetic. The physical is a durable form made of enduring substance. The question of change does not arise. To remove them, they are to be demolished. Analysing the civil war from the above understanding, we see the South had taken the position of independence and secession, exactly the role of the part as against the whole. Its mental conviction was rooted in inexperience that was ignorance. Davis was its symbol. He had not travelled outside. He did believe that slaves were treated well, basing himself on his own personal experience. He believed slaves are property and to deprive the owner of his property is a sin according to the Bible. That belief issued not out of understanding but out of ignorant experience. Being knowledge of experience it rose to passionate intensity. Passion is power. Passionate intensity is the peak of power. Vast energies are released when its citadels are destroyed. Energy itself is neutral. Once made free it is used by the direction of authority that presides.

One principle of the Theory is the finite that moves into the path of evolution becomes infinite. Infinity is a contextual concept. For one in an organisation, the head post of it is his own infinity. So, the rule framed from this principle is, he who seeks infinite's way serving his own organisation will lead his organisation. Here, in the U.S.A. we have an example. In landing in the American continent the people faced infinite hazards, met them with infinite endeavour, and expanded into an infinity of space that is land. Of all the nations then in existence, America was the youngest and started life poorer than the poorest. The path of infinity took her to the top of the world, the same thing that happened to Britain earlier. Prior to that it was the turn of Rome and tiny Greece. The principle of transformation says the lower one is from others when transformed will rise higher in proportion. That rule too is incidentally evident in this instance. Now we can examine or comment on the causes-six in number-that made this possible and pronounce how far our theories are vindicated by this fact.

Let us attempt to examine the six reasons from the Theory.

1. Liberal Patent laws.

Life develops by consciousness and consciousness develops by organisation is a principle of this Theory. Organisation is an acute force of development. Education is organisation of knowledge. The difference between the rich and poor nations is the presence of education and its absence. Education is organisation of knowledge, but what we call ORGANISATION is organisation of consciousness which is far more powerful. We call this age of information. There is no need to explain its value. They say information is as valuable as capital or technology. What is information? Information is organisation of data. Data that is merely data becomes valuable information when organised. During the Second World War German submarines were sinking hundreds of Allied merchant ships for want of one information. Such a colossal loss was stopped the moment the Allies had the information about the German submarine code. Information is a tiny bit of organisation. Organisation is to make an idea into a vital tool, that does a work. Law is organisation of public conscience. Thus it is a mental tool of the society. Laws are not always liberal. To have the law on one side is to have the entire power of the society as one's energy. A liberal law offers the activity the generous support of the whole society. It means all the energies of the society are focussed and directed towards higher production. In any other society social production always meets with small or great opposition. Social accomplishment is inspite of such obstacles. In America such opposition was not there. Hence a million patents came into existence i.e. all the social energies were producing.

2. Scarcity of labour and its high cost:

Nature hits a population when it is lethargic or sluggish. Natural circumstances support when the society is progressive. Mother would not give us occasion to lie if we do not choose to lie. Similarly Nature will not raise obstacles when the society wants to progress. Scarcity of labour raises its cost. That higher cost is its purchasing power, its source of optimism. It compells to build labour saving machines. The building of such machines makes the mind think. Sri Aurobindo writing in 1920 to his younger brother Barin said that India had lost its thought - power. He would not mind the slavery and poverty but loss of thought power mattered to Him. Thought originates from the body. Freedom of the body builds power of thought in the Mind. Political freedom can be had, even poverty can be abolished but how to restore the thought-power? As India has preserved her spirit, the moment the thought-power is activated, it will be energised by the spirit and all that was lost can now be gained in one stroke. In America the bodies were free and thought power collected. It was not abstract thought. It was thought directed to higher production. Scarcity of labour directly led to standardisation.

3. Standardisation of parts and machines

The U.S.A. has 110 voltage supply. We following the British have 220 voltage. This is an obstacle. Modern equipments from computer to toilet seats are made standard. This standardisation created by the manufacturing public is more important, at least as important as the founding of the UNO. The UN works for political unity. Standardisation creates the foundation of economic unity all over the globe. Standardisation is a spur to production on an immense scale.

4. Free availability of power supply of many types.

Where Man wants to exert, Nature goes there already and waits there offering her help. Waterpower, wood power and electricity was available in increasing abundance. What Lenin wanted to achieve by electricity through the Soviets, the Americans achieved by individual initiative, entrepreneurship.

5. Combined presence of free trade and protection.

They are opposite principles. Each allows a certain amount of progress. The opposite principle mitigates the progress of the other principle. In the initial stages one nation chooses free trade and another protection as each helps. The greatest progress is by both working in harmony. Command economy and free market are opposite principles, but unless the free market is regulated, it does not yield its maximum benefit. So also, the command economy of the communist systems showed remarkable growth when a touch of freedom is added, as in china. Contradictions are constraints. When contradictions become complements the maximum results issue. It is exactly at the point of reconciliation that the highest output results. Again that is another principle of the Theory. In monarchy giving way to democracy freedom is retained in the field of politics which authority is relegated to administration which goes by inflexible rules. The French call the Administration as the fixed axle on which the changing political leadership rotates. Freedom to choose the rulers; discipline to administer the nation is the combination that is desirable.

In the USA free trade and protection conspired to combine effectively to boost the economy of the nation.

6. The extraordinary success of the American agriculture.

Agricultural surplus leads a nation to industrialisation is a thesis. Reducing it to first principles, it becomes the success and saturation of the first work leads to the initiation of the second work. In the order of things manufacture cannot precede agriculture where Man works on the soil. Apart from the capital agricultural surplus offers, agriculture is the activity where man turns his subconscious endowment of organisation into a conscious mental possession for work as a tool to be employed. His hand learns the skills needed in planting, weeding, harvesting. His vital acquires strength and strategy to protect his crop in watching over it. His whole family turns into an organisation of production dividing the various functions among them. The uncertainty of rains make him alert to take advantage of rains whenever they fell. Forethought is supplied by his keeping the grains as seed for subsequent cultivation. When Man came to manufacture it is these skills and this organisation that he used with advantage. Agriculture and manufacture enjoy the same essential organisation with local variations.

- There are three great crops raised in Nebraska. One is a crop of corn, one is a crop of freight rates and one a crop of interest. One is produced by the farmers with sweat and toil from the land. The other two are produced by men who sit in their offices and behind their bank counter and farm the farmers.

------------

The above is a statement whose intention is not clear. May be it says the bankers and railroads fleece the farmers. Whatever is the view of men, there remains a fact which is eternally true. It has several aspects:

In a changing society earlier forms become obsolete especially when the new one comes to stay.
It is capable of fully replacing the old i.e. crush it out of existence.
At the other end it is capable of energising the old form beyond all recognition.
There are many grades and many mixed conditions in between.
Children receive their first pay check equal to the father's last one or exceeding it.
Modernising agriculture makes it very lucrative, sometimes more lucrative than the newer form of production. It is so because the hidden potentials are great and they are brought out.
Railroad is industry; tax is government.
The agriculturist sells his produce in the local market for a small price. Railroad takes it to any place where the prices are the highest. Such a facility brings enormous produce to one trading centre in the hope of the highest price and crash down the market price. The law that operates here is not the one that governs agriculture, but that of the market economy. Growth of society takes the society to planes of existence unknown and inconceivable to the original plane.
Its social expression can be powerfully seen in education. Once the son is educated, he rarely desires to return to agriculture. Whether his income is more or less is not the question but he becomes an urban bird, will never countenance the rural home thereafter.
In the earliest conditions grain is sold for barter i.e. for its cost of production. Only a market where trade is carried on brought profit. Grain was produced for consumption and not for profit. Generation of market is a new way of life. Profit was an unknown concept for the primary producer. He produces for consumption. Barter came and helped him to expand his amplitude of consumption as he can now consume what he has not produced. Railroad is technological innovation. It brought the entire national market to the farmer. Usually it enhances the farmers' produce. It can also act in the opposite direction as henceforth grain is an economic product.
The farmer produces by forethought, parsimony and a capacity for self-denial. His seed is to be preserved for the next season. He must wait for the rains with all the implements ready and sail into action. Banks came with their capital which contains his forethought, self-denial and frugality. Those who had all these benefitted by the banks, were able to save them from ruins and build up their future. Those who are devoid of it, availing bank credit go under. So also government with its tax enters the picture establishes law and order and raises the farmer in the wilderness to the status of a national citizen. Banks, tax are forward looking instruments. They can, when misused or misapplied, ruin the customer. That part is not agriculture but economy. To see one's own exploitation in the new boon is a human failing. A newer facility is not for one who cannot give up old ways and adopt to new ways.

Robber Barons

- Jim Fisk and Jay Gould deserve this title.

- Vanderbuilt who started as a boat man learnt how to bribe judges, square politicians even whole stale legislatures, get aid from federal government. He owned a pirate boat Bellona.

- He built for his wife a 270-foot long yacht which remains the most expensive to date.

- Vanderbuilt had in his pay a notorious judge George Barnard.

- Fisk and Gould milked the railroad Eris, throwing in 100,000 shares to explode like a bomb.

- America enjoyed the most modern railroad system in the world.

- America excelled the rest of the world in the rate of innovations.

- Labour productivity in freight services more than doubled.

- American freight rates must have been the lowest on earth.

- Investment in modernisation, safety and speed were prodigious.

- Railroads had 98% of passenger traffic.

- They tried to manipulate the President, successfully manipulated all the officials.

- It was not corruption in the course of business, but corruption created and organised in collusion with the entire brood of politicians.

What is given above is only one sample. The entire history of America's progress is the history of corrupt men and their corrupt ways. One can safely say the success of the U.S.A is the success of organised, unscrupulous corruption. It is exactly what we know in India today. The Theory must pronounce on corruption based on the following facts.

Corruption was a phase every nation had passed through.
To us corruption of 100 or 200 years ago is evaluated according to present standards.
Corruption rears its head when the country is fast progressing.
A phase of corruption is followed by a phase of clean administration.
Corrupt politicians get elected by a great majority.
The rate of GDP growth is high in corrupt countries.
Non -corrupt countries do not progress.
Our study confines corruption only to the phase of development, does not extend to that in periods of war, revolution, famine, riot etc.
Corrupt leaders go scot free. There is little public disapproval. Rather the public silently endorse their ways.

Market price becomes black market price when a law introduces a fixed price in times of emergency or scarcity. Corruption is a way of life that exceeds or breaks a fixed code of government or society. Society rapidly changes during periods of progress, meaning the narrow structure of society must be replaced by a wider structure. Society does change like that at several points. The progress of development is faster than the pace with which social structures change. Such excesses are in both ways, positive and negative. The negative excesses are known as corruption. Society absorbs the positive changes by law, custom and usage and accords its sanction. Corruption is evil is true. But corruption is an instrument of progress in undeveloped conditions. If corruption stops, development will stop. The Gopis were complaining of Krishna stealing butter. When Krishna stopped the same gopis complained of his not visiting them. Even the cows had given less milk. In the America of the late 19th century, the nation building needed strong men with strong voices and strong spirits. Such men are not to be contained either by law or by social norms. Development itself is changing the ways of the society, giving the society another set of higher norms. That involves breaking the present ones. In the interim period STRONG men thrive as strength alone permits. To them initially murder is no crime. It is a way of life, a necessity to get ahead. All is fair in war and love is the maximum they borrowed from Shakespeare and extended to national progress. To them their own progress is national progress. They are energetic in the extreme. Energy released can only emerge in violent explosions, not in a steady settled way. Their corrupt ways are indefensible, but one has to understand if not justify them. In such violent conditions bribe is a milder alternative to murder. Society civilises itself by giving up violence and accepting a bribe. It is a shift from violent physical to flexible vital, a progress.

Thought-Power in American development

Sri Aurobindo writing about the misery in India in 1920, said the greatest loss for India was her losing the Thought-power. The foreign invasion Nature contrived to unite India, did unite her. From then on gradually India in the process of gaining territorial unity lost the independence of thought. Millennia ago her thought rose to discover the unknowable Absolute as Sachchidananda. That gave her mastery over Mind. All the sensations the primitive had as an animal, the sages know they have access to from above. The knowledge Krishna brought was overmental knowledge. It came along with the psychic love of Brindavan. Now her spirit is there in the soil and the atmosphere as well as in the bodies of men who are not westernised. She needs the Thought-Power again.

The American made it in the wilderness, in agriculture, in the Wild West. Again he made it in manufacturing. What made him achieve is not just labour, physical work all the waking hours. They realised the importance of knowledge not in the abstract but in work, every work they did. They sought practical knowledge in the work spot. They sought education for that purpose. They sought education for all the population for every work they undertook. The prosperity of the U.S.A today is a direct result of knowledge in work. The next stage is knowledge in life, which they are totally unaware of. The advent of Internet makes possible for man to acquire subtle knowledge of work, life and mind. Internet does not offer subtle knowledge directly. It gives all the knowledge one needs in the shape of information that is necessary to acquire the subtle knowledge. Indians won't value the treasure they have. To them it will acquire value if the American values it. Should life knowledge be developed, it needs a base of work knowledge. In that sense America is well poised to develop it. The Indian equipment in software technically qualifies them to do it. The spiritual endowment of India can readily respond to such an attempt. May be it is first to be developed in the U.S.A for the Indians to awaken to their deeper potentialities. The computer is an eminent instrument to take up the simplest ideas of spirit in life and turn it into a programme. Already such successful attempts have been made. They are about breathing exercise, i.e. physical. Psychological skills can be developed on the computer which can serve as a beginning so that those parts of spiritual knowledge that lend themselves to programming can be taken up later. E.G - Silent Will can be trained on the computer if it is programmed.

The work spot needs hundreds of psychological skills. Of them decision-making stands out. Agriculture in America in 100 years dropped its percentage from 60% to 3%. Now manufacturing has come down to 18%. Man is lonely. Child rearing is exacting, though schools are playing a wonderful role. Man whether he needs a wife or not needs peace of mind and inner joy. The child needs a mother, more than the school. By a supreme effort the school can replace the house and even the mother, if the psychological skills to rear the child can be learnt. The computer can be programmed to impart all these knowledge. America has the need and the mechanical milieu. It is an area well suited to make a beginning. The Thought-Power, if it should come, must come out of the knowledge Sri Aurobindo has given. Life-Response can be that subtle spiritual Thought-Power. India can develop it as a software programme, if she sets her mind to it. Maybe the need of America and her readiness will enable her to try it there. Should that be created as a subtle TOOL, the entire spiritual power of India can surface and wipe out her poverty, backwardness and silly shallow personality of her social being.

- At this time (1880) the United States had no proper financial system of a public nature.

- Of the three fundamental duties of any government - external defense, maintenance of law and order, maintenance of a stable currency - the U.S. government provided none.

- One quarter of the great cost of war was met by taxes, the rest was paper currency.

- In a free market, the available coins had unpredictable effects on national finance.

- J.P. Morganwas the only member of the financial committee, everyone else trusted.

- Morganbelieved the market was the surest regulator of the public interest.

The above ideas and statements raise a few fundamental theoretical points.

1) Relationship between social progress and public finance.

2) The presence, creation and role of external pressure offered by Nature.

3) What does a war mean to a country, especially for the finance it requires?

4) Role of gold and silver coins, their role in conditions of inflation.

5) Value of men of integrity.

6) Capacity of the market to regulate the currency value.

During this period the U.S.A was the richest country in the world. The irony of it was she had no proper financial system. Does it mean the public system of finance will hamper the growth of a country? The Theory emphasises the existence of a line, a dividing line, in life, in every aspect of it. The same rule acts in opposite ways above and below the line. If that is conceded, we can say that

Absence of regulation in a dynamic country abounding in opportunities allows for maximum growth of the economy, and
Introduction of public regulation enhances the same economic growth to the maximum extent the system will permit.

These are valid laws of vast social power which do not lend themselves to quantify easily. But the basic truths hold good. An analogy in education will help. A child learns all the time and readily and that learning is the greatest in uninhibited conditions. A child's scope of learning is limited by his physical senses and thus limited. A system of education brings the child the entire scope of education the world has experienced. It is incomparable. That experience has a structure developed by the world over centuries. An individual child has no possibility to develop it by himself. What a system of education can offer is not available for an individual child. Still it is a system. After serving the child in a magnificent way, the system begins to reveal its characteristics as a system. At this point, the child will again benefit by freedom from the system. What follows next is self-education whose scope is again endless. The U.S was a dynamic nation. Everyone there produced relentlessly. He needed no guidance. Any regulation will be inhibition. At this stage the absence of regulation was a spur and incentive to economic growth. I am tempted to say the power of such activities had a momentum of its own and its force prevented the creation of a system of public finance. The individual incentive from initiative cannot go further positively. If allowed, it would organise into plundering the neighbours physically or otherwise. At this time introduction of a system is vastly beneficial. What a system of finance can offer a nation of industrious citizens is inconceivably vaster than what prevails as it brings every individual the financial power of organised society, organised in every sector. J.P.Morgan's statement was appropriate to an unorganised society or the initial stages of regulation. A system cannot conceive of the limits of growth or otherwise of a population's financial power. Its own capacity for self-regulation instinctively knows it precisely. Once the system is in place and its benefits are enjoyed, the value of central regulation will be apparent. The U.S who enjoyed the protection of the oceans then, cannot hope for the same now. Now she has one as she needs one. The character of law and order internally, the protection of the coasts, the regulation of public finance are essentially the same.

War is an activity of the whole community. It is paid for by the entire community in one form or another, in the shape of goods or currency. The amount of goods produced will be exact and precise and cannot be extended even a little. The system is an organisation and a symbol. Its symbolism will permit an extension which the production or its process will not permit. Hence inflation can serve the nation's purpose up to a point. The rule here is

A symbol can be extended or abridged while no such adjustments are possible with a fact, particularly a physical fact.
We may offer imagination as a comparison. Imagination is creative and will accomplish what reality cannot. Beyond a point the power of imagination degenerates into that of fantasy. Social symbols are faculties of social imagination.
Money implied in barter is a socially imaginative act and constitutes such a symbol. Coins give another valid form to it. Shells etc do not have such a value as possessed by the valuable metals. Shift to paper is a big leap in the social imagination. To that extent, it is sensitive and demands a delicate handling. The psychological link between the symbol and fact is trust of the public in the financial soundness and financial health of the society. It is expected that the government should evaluate it precisely.
The North managed the civil war with one quarter of taxes and three quarters of paper money which means the systems of currency permit the extension of the real currency value of the nation to 4 times. Without that system that extension was not possible.
War is a physical organisation. Currency is a mental organisation in the vital plane. Wars arise during periods of national crisis, a crisis of the national psyche. War tries to solve in the physical plane the stress created in the emotions of the population. As there is an extension of planes, the value of the currency can be extended. But it has limits.
Credit extends the present development of man to his future capacity to earn. A mortgage of 20 years allows man to enjoy now the comforts of his income over the next 20 years. In that regard, credit is a civilising force. Public finance, though offers no direct credit, has something of the character of social credit. The individual exertion is an act. Finance is a system and a symbol.
Social progress is mainly through such symbols. War itself is a symbol in a small way. Instead of two nations destroying each other, both agree to send an army and accept the results of their battle as a valuation of their strength. War is a symbolic act. The king is a symbol of the society uniting. Currency is such a symbol conceived by the mind, enforced in the plane of living to control and coordinate acts and activities in the physical plane.
As a battle is headed by one trusted individual, this system too hands over its management that is leadership to one individual. His own integrity matters. How much the public repose their confidence in him matters. How much of that confidence, he deserves is a question of great significance. In the initial stages the whole system hangs on that one man. Even after a century every such system requires one such individual but then the system will prevail over the personality of that one man. The fact that such a man existed shows the public activity of production and its strength had created that personality. Individuals are the products of the society. They are the conscious human formation of the unconscious collective living. They are not the rare individuals descending from above to lead the society like a Buddha or Jesus. Even of them, the same principle can be extended but another factor of grace will then enter there in such a consideration.

- The US has come to appreciate co-operation in the place of competition.

In a free society economic activity produces primeval chaos.
Each man wants to rise to the top. Men fight savagely.
Morgan was a towering figure, who believed in order.
Concentration of Hard money in the hands of a trusted person enforces that order.
Corporations and Trusts achieved that concentration of money power.
Corporations had immortality, individuality and suited the vast areas where it has to function.

Society is a living organism. There is no dead or non-living moment in its existence. Its energies are always at an equilibrium. Its existence is like the flow of a river. In the plains its flow is imperceptible as it is gentle. Nevertheless the flow continues. When the gradient increases, its flow is rapid and perceptible. Society is exactly like that. All the time it is sensitive to outside or inside touches. The life of an individual too is exactly like that of the society or a river. The energies of the society are increasing when it is dynamic. Gathering to a point of intensity, it is ready to express itself, sometimes to explode, depending upon the intensity of the inwardly gathered momentum. Man develops physical habits, vital attitudes, mental opinions, and spiritual values. The necessity of work lets the physical energy flow through a series of acts such as breaking a branch of a tree or making a leg of a stool. The first man who tried his hands at such a work is in the process of learning a skill. When acquired the skill remains a habit. Attitudes, opinions, values are similarly formed at other levels. It is a valuable study. Society is a collective. Its skills are social habits. Organisations are its values. To start with they are capacities. Co-operation and competition are social organisations. Co-operation is a higher organisation than competition. Competition is between two individuals. Cooperation is between two or more individuals. Each individual considering himself a centre of activity and making it the ultimate goal of his society, he organises himself fully, arms himself to teeth and fights all others savagely. Economic activities are production and distribution involving packed power of the individuals. They are not occasions like social intercourse where thoughts are exchanged by acceptable manners. Behind each individual lies the full power of production. Each tries to get ahead brushing aside all others. It results in primeval chaos. No man gets any result, but many witness self-destruction or self-diminution. It dawns on all that it will not do. Some other way of functioning is necessary. Thus co-operation was discovered. It is not always total co-operation. It is often partial.

Competition gives way to co-operation.
It generates partial co-operation within the family or friends so that they may compete with outsiders.
In the Visa card it is co-operation of all so that each will compete with the other in the field created by the total cooperation.
It can even rise to total co-operation of the entire field to serve the population permitting competition in the service.

The stages of competition yielding place to cooperation are dozens. Each stage develops an attitude of the individual towards other individuals. That attitude becomes a strategy. The creation of new strategies, the shedding of old strategies, the modification of each strategy, how an attitude serves as a strategy are richly varied studies for which the history of the U.S.A provides recorded facts as well as documented figures. The stage where the absence of a stable currency changing into a stable one is here discussed. In fact this is a period of transition. The role of personality of integrity in the period where there is no organisation is illustrated by the function of J.P. Morgan, his belief in cooperations and Trusts.

Competition is a natural process, co-operation is not. Still co-operation has emerged in public life in the form of corporations and Trust. Those who are competitors, finding competition is mutually destructive arrive at an idea of co-operating with each other to form a corporation. This is a social process. Every such social process involves a reversal. Here the reversal is from competition to co-operation, yesterday's rivals are today's partners. Though this reversal is obvious, many other smaller but significant reversals are either invisible or go unnoticed. One of the endeavours of this theoretical history of the U.S.A will be to identify all such reversals small and big with the help of recorded facts. The very first such reversal was the nomadic man settling down to a fixed place to practise agriculture. He gave up his nomadism in favour of the new found knowledge of cultivation. The Theory further states that there is no progress to the next stage without an essential reversal. Knowledge of this Theory becomes more and more perfect when one sees the smaller reversals and grasps their significance. Broadly speaking, as a Man advances in his adherence to truth, his relatives and friends desert him. No one can accept more of Truth and keep all his old relationships unless all of them accept the Truth in the same measure. Generation of Money itself is such a significant progress. It gave birth to Banks and Bankers. Here we see their work moves to mind from the physical body. The birth of Money, we can say, has moved the work in that measure from the physical to the mental. Not all men are bankers who work entirely in the field of money. But, after the advent of money, everyone who handles money, works in its plane in that measure. Work moved to Mind in so many other professions. In all such professions we see such a reversal in a proportionate measure.

The corporations of America were big and remain till today big. Bigness suits America says everyone who writes about her. Earlier we touched upon this theory of the Americans getting into a larger rhythm. At the bottom of this bigness is the unlimited energy of the explorers who were the first settlers. A great energy needs a great form. Again that great energy was released in action as the settlers were unconsciously seeking the infinity in the physical vastness of the land mass that the U.S.A was. Infinity of any kind refuses to be shut up into a small form. It was again the first appearance of form from out of that energy. The first formation will not be the perfect form. It is natural that imperfect forms are initially big. Hence the giant corporation. A public finance system is based on the financial activity of the society. For the finance system to emerge the financial activity needs to take on itself organisational forms. Corporations and Trust were those organisational FORMS. Someone describes these corporations are work of human imagination, existing only in law. Perhaps it was part of a judgement. Anyway it is true. These invisible forms are the right vehicles to carry the product of imagination viz. Money.

- How Morgan saved the big Houses

On October 20, 1907 Morgan summoned all the big houses.
He assessed who was worthwhile saving and who was to be left in the lurch.
He put accountants to work, called the banks, asked them to loan money.
This news subsided the panic in the Stock Exchange.

These corporations, says the expert, enjoy immortality. In India the saying is one cannot be poor or rich for longer than 30 years. It means what one generation earns, the next generation destroys. Corporations, being organised entities are not perishable. Individual achievements, being unorganised, are perishable the moment the central staying influence is removed. The organisation a corporation is, energy organised into a system. In the first generation it acquires individuality. In the subsequent generations it acts like a single individual. Banks are to finance what corporations are to economic activity. Economic activity is the gross physical production distributed. Banks, with their capital, occupy the nervous system of the economy and guides them or strangles them. The Federal Bank is the Bank of the Banks; it is the Bank for the system of public finance, more than the Banks who simply handle money. That system converts money into finance. The government policies that regulate such finance is known as the fiscal system.

The country's economy was booming. Money was in a glut as production was overflowing. It was poised to evolve a higher system of functioning. The Fed was to be established only in the thirties. As the King precedes democracy, Morgan, the trusted individual, preceded the founding of the Fed. Founding of the Fed was a landmark in the life of the country's economy. In 1907 the situation in the market was fluid. As the pyramid of the society rises, a peak is seen. It is not necessary it will attain the status of the Peak. It may or may not. It can slide down to a lesser level. That is in the central movement. On the fringes the mass of mud or stone that rises, is bound to slide down with a crash all around. There is no question of saving such fall. Morgan was in control of these financial movements. He had Banks' money at his command, if not at his disposal. He knew what could be saved and what not. He had the power as well as knowledge. He acted with decision. He played the role of a federal Bank. He was successful.

Once the Fed came into existence the power to save corporations from financial crash is immense. A thief or a robber is caught by the public when the public are alert. The police department is an organised wing enjoying the governmental authority and its resources. The alertness of the public at all towns gets organised as the department of police. In terms of efficiency and effectivity the system is incomparable to a sporadic isolated act of a trustworthy individual like J.P.Morgan.

Institutions are preceded by Individuals.
For an institution to be born the social consciousness must be mature and saturated at the level of maturity.
The individual is a passing phenomenon.
The institution enjoys immortality.
The finance system varies entirely from the military system that is physical.
The system of Finance belongs to the vital plane of the society.
The mental plane belongs to the education system, but the media plays the role of educating the public at a primary level.
Politics essentially belongs to the vital plane of governance while finance belongs to the vital plane of sustenance that is material.
Stock Exchange is the nerve centre of the financial system of the country where Man's unbridled ambition plays havoc with system that was created to nourish the capital market.

- Rapid expansion of the American economy from the civil war.

The physical expansion was gigantic, even monstrous e.g. the two monster-cities, Chicago and New York.
In the 19th century cities sprang up in a few decades. Still Chicago was an exception.
It was made possible because Chicago used the latest technology.
In 1830 Chicago had a population of 200, in 1887 it was 800,000.
Army was employed to clear the obstruction of the sand bar.
Balloon Frame was discovered for house construction.
100 trains arrived in a day on eleven different railroads.
In 1856 the city council decided to raise the entire city 4 feet, unique in the world.
A hotel of 5 stories, weighing 22,000 tons was raised while it was working.
Such a thing could not have happened in Europe.
The Chicago fire of 1871 destroyed 17,000 buildings.
Fireproof material was used in rebuilding.
A steam elevator in 1857, a hydraulic one in 1864 and an electric elevator in 1895 came. The city had 3000 elevators.
Tall buildings paid well. So they built them, not because there was no space.

Economy expands rapidly when it expands. The expansion America witnessed was certainly an exception. It was in tune with her role in human development and not another expression of a civilisation arising in another continent. It is pertinent for us to know that this expansion was ignited by the civil war. The American life was on the run and the civil war gave one more impetus for a further speed of growth. The expansion was not only rapid, but gigantic, reaching monstrous proportions as seen in the construction of the two big cities Chicago and New York.

The landscape is vast, labour to reclaim it was infinite, resourcefulness exhibited was endless, expansion was rapid, gigantic and monstrous. It was as if Man was determined to discover infinity in work and life.
Cities grow into their full size over a century. Only in the 19th century Europe cities sprang us in a few decades as life was urged by the spirit of discovery and the new results of technology. It was nascent energy that achieved it. The growth of cities in America had dwarfed all such experiences. America was a nation of towns, rarely there ever was a rural America.
Technology may be discovered. It does not mean it will be readily adopted. We see for 60 years India is not taking over the Western technology because there is no technological climate in India. Origin of Species sold out on the day of its publication means for 40 years when the studies on evolution was going on the public were informed. They awaited each new development with interest. That creates an interested informed public. They would readily buy the book on publication. In the USA technology was being constantly developed not so much by research institutes as by the user public. Even after a product is on the market, the public contribute to its further development by suggestions as well as improvisation. In a sense the population is technology minded, they are in some fashion originators of fresh improvements of technology. There is a technological climate in the society. Any new technology released in such a climate finds ready reception and full utilisation.
In 50 years a population of 800,000 came to Chicago shows the speed of the American migration within the country. It appears they built this city as if it was an emergency. The Army was brought in to dig a canal to break the sand bar. Chicago became the seat and centre of the American gangsters because when life expands at this speed, the rule requires the opposite too must expand equally.
Balloon Frame was an invention this speed generated. It was a wooden frame to house several apartments. Theoretically it is significant that in 1871 fire destroyed 17,000 homes showing the pace of expansion outran the pace of human development.

There is an equilibrium of energy between the activities of a society and that of the physical atmosphere in which it acts. The physical atmosphere is not inert. It is live. The social activities of building a town absorb and exude a great quantity of such an energy. The 1871 Chicago fire indicates that that equilibrium was disturbed. 17,000 homes were to be built again for which the entire population of the town had to put up a great effort. The external help that descended on the town for rebuilding raised the level of energy. Thus the new level of activity was sustained. Another population would have been disheartened by the fire and gave up the rebuilding for sometime. But the Americans were undaunted. In the face of such natural calamities they put their best foot forward and raise themselves to the need of the hour.

Clearly the American pace of development was moving at the maximum possible speed, the fire indicating that they inadvertently crossed the limit.
The historian gives an example of how wide and large their social activities were. On eleven different railroads everyday 100 trains arrived in Chicago. That was a lot of traveling for 150 years ago, perhaps even in today's context.
The raising of the entire town 4 feet above achieved by the Americans remains unsurpassed even today anywhere in the world. How at over 5000 points over 1000 people operated jacks to lift the building of 5 stories explains the mental daring they were capable of. It is not only doing big things, but enjoying doing them is the American character. They seem to count such opportunities or even create them. The urge for innovation has come to stay as a requirement of intense living. Europe is a stable civilization. The author who reports this incident expresses the opinion that such a thing in Europe was not possible, perhaps inconceivable. The European was, during those decades, looking for avenues of mental adventure. His field was scientific enquiry. The freedom Martin Luther gave the European nations by awakening in their individual souls that no intermediary between God and him was necessary, released him once and for all from the fetters of superstition. Scientific enquiry of the Mind was the direct result. The population developed a taste and an urge to appreciate the latest scientific findings. They were abreast of such activities. It was an activity of the Mind. In the American what was active was the mind but the mind in the body (No.7) while Europe activated the thinking Mind (No.1). The enormous energy of the Americans is thus explained.
We see in any community after a disaster the old way of life quickly restored. It is social dynamism. Society refuses to accept defeat at the hands of a calamity. The American did one better. In rebuilding they used fireproof materials. Carnegie's newly made steel at cheap prices did the work. When one point of the society suffers, we see another point of the society readily offering help in the shape of innovation. This is a symptom of a growing community.
The history of elevators, their discovery, operation by steam, hydraulics, and finally by electricity is the history of new inventions installed at once. To have 3000 elevators at that period shows that everyone who could have afforded it had it, as the cell phone of today.
The Americans found tall buildings were profitable. It is more for the sake of profit than for their tallness, tall building were resorted to. The urge for bigness now found a vertical expression.

- Contradictions are complements.

Al Capone was born out of the ill housed overcrowded apartments of various nationalities.
The positive side of the crime dens.
Out of these wretched hell-holes sprang magnificent industries, even first-class arts of high quality.
' Send these homeless, tired, poor wretched refugees to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door'.
America was led by New York. She transformed penniless frightened immigrants in millions into self-confident wealth-creators that are social cultural assets is the essential strength of this country. Now there have become her own people. She continues to create the New individual for three centuries.

An English girl was enamoured of a young man. He was an American. They met and she asked where from he came. He said Chicago. Promptly she continued the conversation, "Are you a gangster?" That was the reputation of Chicago. And that is true. Al Capone, the leader of a notorious gang was a product of these negative intensities. These wretched hell-holes strangely gave birth to magnificent industries, even first-class arts of high quality. We see it as a fact of ocular experience, but we need to understand how it came about. Analogies or parallels in life can explain to convince us. It is again to extend our experience which is no explanation. It is better to know the process by which this is possible in life. That will be a theoretical explanation. We see Matter is dull, void of sense, brute in appearance but the scientist tells us it is energy, with a wonderful structure wherein particles are in motion. It does not reveal to our naked eye. Man has developed the microscopic eye and upgraded it to be an electronic eye which is able to see the wonder Matter is. What the physiological eye misses to capture, the psychological vision can discern. Should one develop the yogic vision the dirt and slush will reveal the original wonder of God. The divine white lotus is born out of a marshy tank bed. There are certain tanks where the water is famous for its sweetness which has also a health giving taste. Such a body of water is nourished by the dirtiest mud full of worms and microbes. Science has also discovered that the same slush contains microbes that are capable of converting the disease breeding organisms into health giving organism. Still, this offers no theory. Sri Aurobindo offers a theory that originally these evil products were sources of GOOD. The GOOD inverted itself into evil so that it can have the joy of reversing and transforming itself into the original status. This hypothesis deserves a more philosophic discussion for a proof. This is not the context for such a consideration. But the behaviour of this evil bed of humanity justifies the assumptions of such a theory. Someone wrote a sonnet about these crowded breeding stations of disease. It welcomes these specimens of the homeless, frightened, wretched refuse promising to lift her lamp beside the golden door.

New York was the real leader, the nerve centre. It constantly performed the miracle of converting these human waste material into self-confident wealth creators who in later generations have become solid social cultural assets. Their creation of wealth is on an immense scale, on a scale humanity has nowhere attempted. Why, was this necessary and how was it possible? It was possible because this evil potential is really the potential of human good out of which untold wealth arises. It is necessary because MONEY is the spiritual link between man and supermind even as education is the link between man and wealth or man and status. Mind is the link between the coarse body and the rich spirit. In human life Mind comes to the physical man as technology and enriches his life with abundance of comfort and inconceivable convenience. America is the leader of social evolution in this century which role was played by Britain and Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. Before that Rome and Greece had that eminence. Being such a leader where the individual is to achieve the Revolution, she has produced self confident individuals.

Edison and Tiffany

- It was the intense competitive era of the early telegraphic age. Western union multiplied its few offices to 2250, 4000, 6500, 10,000 between 1866 and 1880.

- Edisonfrom 1869 to 1910 had 1,328 patents. At his height every 11 days he applied for a patent. His skills were intuitive.

- There was a pile of 5 feet high chemical books which he read in 6 weeks.

- Edisonwas an artistic scientist, Tiffanywas a scientific artist.

- Borrowing $1000 at 25, in 30 years he built the most profitable business in the world, selling diamonds to queens, buying gems for $1.6 million and he sold a table lamp at $750 while six room house was only $1000.

- The United States was an extra-ordinary combination of self-created wealth and native talent.

Edison was a phenomenon of discovery. Tiffany was a phenomenon of another type capable of catering to others' enjoyment. Great minds are rarely born. When they appear they are the only one on the horizon. Jesus came on the scene as Socrates 600 years before him. Socrates was followed by lesser luminaries in a succession of Plato and Aristotle. There ended the procession. Jesus had no such repetition for 2000 years. It is in the field of the Spirit, the highest reach of Man. Even when Shakespeare came, for the next 4 centuries no other Shakespeare presented himself. The twentieth century had a few geniuses like Shaw and Einstein. These are all exalted fields of human endowments. What we see in the America of 1875 was not to be compared with Jesus and Shakespeare. It is a material phenomenon. Mind flowering in Matter, enriching civilisation at a speed the world had not witnessed before that or since then anywhere except in America. It was the period of the early telegraphic age, an age when communication energised, abridged Time and Space, thus giving an evolutionary impetus. Not only telegraph, their period is packed with all such movements. In the case of the United States every century or every half a century can be characterised by such energy and such movements in one respect or another. Anyway, this too was such a period. Edison was an inventor par excellence. By quality and quantity he excelled. America then was a nation of inventive citizens in one field or another. Edison was its symbol at the peak. For great inventors the one misfortune was lack of support and appreciation. Some of them were jailed, the others ignored or treated contemptuously. That is the social atmosphere life offers to inventors and discoverers. In the case of America people in general were inventive, they appreciated every invention and the entire society was ready to adopt the latest technology. There was psychological willingness and social capacity to pay as there was abundant purchasing power. What is described about Edison is the pattern every American citizen followed each at the level of his own personality. Edison represented the Personality of America. Tiffany was his social complement endowed with the capacity to cater to the mental appreciation of the emerging social man of stronger means. Tiffany had all the talents of an entrepreneur, what we call Management capacity.

All these talents were created in the slums of Chicago and New York may be an unfair statement as slums were only a part. Considering the origin of the immigrants we find all the slums of Europe. The entire talent of America was native and arose from the people at the bottom of the society. Unless these talents were there, it could not have come out. Talents are there in people, whether they are in slums or palaces. Crushing circumstances alone bring them out. America provided such circumstances. In the nature of human being it is customary that once the obstacles are overcome, man levels off. The uniqueness of America was and is that once man attains what he seeks for, another circumstance that urges him presented itself. In the beginning it was hardships to overcome. Later it was rising expectation that is irresistible. The external demand became an inner urge. It is not yet Man who is the conscious spearhead. It is still Nature providing one circumstance after another and the American without disregarding them responds to them voluntarily. In that measure the American is an evolutionary tool.

Only in the period of the Vedas and Upanishads that great minds came in quick succession and in great number. After the Upanishads, it petered out. What happened to India in the field of the spirit, has happened to the USA in the plane of society. It is social evolution - Mind evolving in the body. The speed of cities growing, literacy spreading, inventions piling, technology adopted, is unheard of in any other period of social change. Maybe when further progress was choked in Europe by the rigidity of the stratified class system, Nature decided to provide an opening in America. We see that burst of energy at all levels. Edison's mind was prolific representing the Mind of the United States that was flowering in social life as a creative energy that organises itself into action for production.

- Not only Robber Barons thrived, the entire society enjoyed similar benefits.

- Government can only put in an occasional oar to keep the ship of society steering.

- Poverty is a sin in an atmosphere where there is enough and to spare thrive over.

- Then it was visible in the USA and was gently compelling man to avail of it. Today the same type of opportunities at a far higher level is there but is invisible.

- The future belongs to Corporate integrity not individual deceit. Infosys has earned it now.

Robber Barons was a serious theme. Some even raised the question whether they existed. There were good many of them at that time in the U.S.A. In India today good many rich men will qualify for such a description. They belong to a type. Their presence initiated a social movement that reached the judiciary and infected them beyond redemption.

Theoretically Robber Barons are a symptom of overflowing prosperity that outruns the socially valid norms and values from the very bottom to the top.
It is so because no event occurs in isolation. Any significant event is a type and can be seen at all levels of the society in one fashion or another. A westerner was struck by his servant talking about Karma and wondered how in India ordinary men talked philosophy. Bertrand Russell traveling in a taxi in the U.S.A discovered his driver held a Ph.D. in philosophy. It means philosophy came down in the society to the level of taxi drivers. Karma was the theory of our ancients. Over the centuries the philosophy of the Rishis has come down to the household and finally to the ignorant. One servant talking of Karma indicates the whole national culture is saturated with that philosophic knowledge.
The existence of Robber Barons finally proves the existence of vast wealth in all fields even as corruption is an indication of Prosperity.
In our Theory we state that no agency, even if it is the government can develop a nation. They can play the role of an initiator or a catalyst. A society will develop when it wakes up to the opportunities of development. Scholars who have studied this period in the U.S.A feel that the political system cannot create this market democracy but can help it develop once it is there. The ship of state is floating down stream in a mighty current of innovation and improvement. It is not for the government to create that mighty current of human energy. Certainly the government can help maintain law and order, remove obstacles of several types. The government is a centre of social power organised in the shape of political will expressing as law and law enforcing machinery. It can throw its weight on the side of development, it cannot create a movement of development. The government is not a movement of development. It never was nor is it its role. Development divides into political development, economic development, social development. The first is the domain of the government that comes to power by the process of election, The economic development lends itself to be regulated by the government. The Social development which gives the nation its life style today and the cultural values of tomorrow is not at all in the domain of government. The government or its members can share the society's development as they are part of it. It is a vindication of the Theory that out of the mouth of a leading historian this truth - that government cannot create development - should emerge. Our part is to establish it theoretically.

Governments and developments go together only in the post war period. The concept of the welfare state was practised in Europe in minimal quantities and that too at times of crisis compelled by circumstances.

The idea that the State has a duty in uplifting the incapable individual was not born before the Second World War.

Whether it is a duty of the government or not, let us see how far the government is capable in the domain of development. To answer that question we have to know how the government was constituted and why. The first reason for constituting a government was to protect the borders against the invader. The same power was a source of justice that can maintain law and order in the internal regime. Quarrels and disputes were settled by the fist. To pass that duty to an authority is a step towards civilised living. So, police and courts arose. Till 1950 governments all over the world discharged only these two functions. Trade is a great service. No government created it. It came into existence by the initiative of the collective dynamism of the society. So was transport; even the first railway in England was a private effort, not a government affair. When railways were to be borrowed by other countries, governments did that work as no individual has access to so much authority or capital. Education was and is a sacred trust. It was not a government gift to people when it arose as a large social activity. We see thus no government had anything to do with developing the life of the population. The first government came into existence in a developed society. Society is a wider plane and more powerful too, though it cannot enjoy the measure of organisation that government can command. America is unique in the sense, that it developed a society not from its primeval origins but from the members of other developed nations. They could start life from where they were, not necessarily from the primitive beginning. Here this Theory that it is not the government that develops the society can be seen in a greater clarity.

In India today everyone looks to the government for any scheme to be implemented. A cursory reading of the history of the American development will inform us that no one there ever thought of the government when they sought a new settlement. Cities sprang up in a few years. Whose was the government? After the formation of such cities, municipal councils came up. How could any government be there, as there was no tax? In independent India, Sri Aurobindo observes Man had lost Thought-Power. What power was he left with for action? How can one who cannot think act? So, he looked to some power that was around. The private educational institution that came into being by hundreds and thousands is a credit to Indian population. As soon as India became free, Man was left with initiative enough to run a bus or start a hotel. These were the years when urban migration started in a small way urged by the pressure of population on the land. Hence those movements. To be a bus owner or to start a new hotel was to be a local luminary. Entrepreneurship had only that much scope. Only after the nursery schools became a national phenomena the educational movement spilled over to starting schools and colleges. It was all social effort. The part of the government there was regulation that gave occasions for corruption. Imagine all these smaller establishments - buses, hotels, shops, SSI units schools etc - being founded by the government and run. It will take ages and a complicated bureaucracy would have come into permanent existence.

Society awakes by education, education from the schools and the media. Education has that awakening influence in an atmosphere of political freedom. Political freedom as a top layer on religious freedom provides the social climate for the population to take an economic initiative. That is what we are witnessing in India today. This awakening creates financial capital, by raising the human value of currency. India is flush with money in the banks, in the market, in foreign exchange, stored in jewels. It is of the smaller denomination but to India it is BIG money. One can see it for himself. America created energy, technology, market, transport, education by its own social awakening. It became WEALTH, wealth of the country. This is a fact that escapes the economist. But the other fact of society developing ITSELF has not escaped the historians.

For the state to arrive at the idea that it has a role to play in the social development of the various individuals, is a step towards Social Evolutionary Consciousness.

Karl Marx in his theory on Socialism assumed an advanced stage when state would wither away. The roles of the state at various stages of social development can be outlined to some extent.

- Society emerges as a collective entity.

- It is achieved on the basis of physical prowess, a might to preserve itself as a formed group. The physically strong achieves it and becomes the leader, its king.

- Several such local groups go on merging with each other and reach a saturation point dictated by the linguistic delimitation.

- The Nation as defined by the culture develops by developing a Nation-Soul and comes into existence as a political entity in a unified geographical area.

- Upto this point, its primary concern is defence and law and order.

- As a next step the nation gives way to humanity as a whole.

- This transition can occur as an extension of the nation to the world without resorting to economic development as a necessity. The world it seems, has chosen that route, a route of wider global economic development as a pre requisite to a wider political union. Of course an economic basis serves well achieving a higher geographical expansion aiming at one world.

- As one expression of that movement, governments have taken upon themselves the idea of a welfare state and are evincing greater interest in the development of individuals, especially those who are backward. Suppose the other route is taken, the backward population would have perished by its own weight of incapacity. The global society is to decide on the size of its population before choosing the route. Once the size of the population is decided on by the Society, it loses no time to bring them up. Hence it goes all the way to uplift every section of its people.

- The method world society uses is to relate the needs of two opposite groups so as to create unity at that level of existence. That is globalisation in the field of economics. Should the same impulse expresses itself in SOCIAL or cultural development, the world will be on the threshold of the Spiritual possibilities.

- Whether the government is going to be an active agency or wither away offering its leadership to the major social or economic organisation depends upon 1) the measure of education from below and 2) the measure of spiritual awakening from above.

The American social atmosphere in economic opportunities was one of excessive abundance as a tree's response to a man's aspiration for fruits. All that he could eat are a few fruits. The tree bears hundreds and thousands. The individual's need is personal. The availability is an impersonal bounty. To be poor there is a sin, a sin of omission. There is enough and to spare thrice over. The American affluence was not in potential, it was an actually available reality. The labourer was offered half a pound whereas he was working for a shilling; it is ten times. Nine tenths of it go into savings. Before the year is out his savings takes the labourer he is to middle class. America of 1860 was Raising the expectations of the slum dwellers and revolutionising the society, making it almost a society of middle class. A similar atmosphere exists in India today, but it is largely in potentials. Only in software sector the opportunity is a social actuality.

What happened to Enron and Arthur Anderson recently is an eye opener to all Corporate Management and sociologists. The period under our study is a valuable comparison. It was true Robber Barons existed. It was equally true that Morgan as a single individual saved the country from financial crash. Society expects the same integrity Morgan possessed in the corporations that later came into existence. What matters is not the existence of Robber Barons but the availability of individuals like J.P.Morgan. In the unformed conditions in which society was the extremes - Robbers and men of integrity - are found in the individual. We see the integrity of Morgan was slowly transferred to Corporations and Trusts. We also witness Robbers were trying to organise themselves into an entity. Al Capone came into existence as the head of a gang, but American society did not concede to him the right of organisational existence legally sanctioned. An activity like lobbying has come into official legal existence there. Social existence has never been normal, it has been functional. It is a wonder that in a nation that legitimised slavery and lobbying, the Robber Barons were denied that legality. Their existence shows the neutral social power accumulating in excess. Their being denied moral or legal existence shows the directions the society has consciously chosen.

Infosys has earned a reputation in India for fairness and integrity. The fact that even one big corporation in India can today claim that good reputation shows India has some hopes for the future. Apart from the West or the East, Enron's fate discloses how sensitive the system is with respect to reputation. Reputation is fragile. Like Caesar's wife the companies must be above suspicion. The future is for integrity in all fields, not for the Robber Barons whatever the situation is in great many countries of the world. Marriage may disappear, customs may change, people may walk dressed half-naked, politicians may rob the treasuries but the writings on the moral wall is clear. Integrity will survive, deceits and dishonesty will die a natural death. Man, the individual will be the future ruler and he will not emerge out of the morass by ingenuity. He needs integrity as an individual like Morgan. He needs to transplant his personal integrity to the organisation he is part of and establish organisational good reputation.

- The first international nation

Religion in a man is meaningful only to the extent it shapes his character.
The top post is at the end of the greasy pole for the politician. For one who carries the Force it is a straight journey.
God ordained, rather than government-devised.
The world war destroyed Old Europe for ever.
Teddy Roosevelt believed more in executive action than in constitutionalism. He handled the owners of mines toughly and made them bend to a compromise.

A nation becomes international acquiring several attributes that are its virtues. 1) It must have a message to all civilisations explicitly or implicitly. 2) Should there be an occasion to relate to those nations she must have an occasion or premise for that relation. 3) Life should bring these nations to her for some reason or another. 4) She must have the equipment, size, character, message or resources to play that role. 5) The world must be moving in a direction where that occasion will arise. 6) She herself must be moving in a direction which other nations will soon choose. 7) She must have shed what these other nations are to shed in the recent future. 8) She must be a leader in some field or a field when world needs leadership. 9) She must have at least one strength, the physical strength of the military, the vital strength of money power, the mental strength of leading ideas. 10) To meet the requirements of the law of equilibrium she must have something or better still the complement to receive from each of them to whom she offers help.

The message the U.S.A has for the world is 1) break the barriers 2) overcome the obstacles 3) Create a nation of all equal people - a nation of middle class 4) develop self-reliance as individuality 5) accommodate all types of people to create ethnic unity 6) Bring Mind to work to make it more productive and the nation prosperous. 7) Know life will break open your encrustrations if you stick to them 8) move work from personal labour to collective organisation 9) Conquer Time and Space 10) Know any problem has a solution 11) Do anything on a big scale 12) Give up nothing as too difficult. Her overwhelming production above a third of the world production was the great occasion for her to relate to all other nations, but her own population had absorbed 97% of production in the shape of domestic market. That occasion came initially as WWI for her to supply the Allies war effort, later it came massively as WW II when her productive capacities were utilised to the point of near exhaustion. Marshall plan and the reviving Western Europe sustained that capacity of production and expanded. Her man power and material resources fought and won the war against the Huns headed by Hitler and continued the effort to contain the expansionist communism. The first occasion was military supply which later became the political leadership and moral leading of the world to defend democracy. The fundamental qualification was the prodigious military equipment. The formal occasion was the decadence of all the European powers and the imminent threat of the USSR and China. Having developed economic overcapacity Life brought her the needed occasion as world wars and world's leadership. Her own equipment was developed at short notice to meet the global war front's demand for tanks, planes and supplies. All along she had the size of territory and a ready manufacturing capacity willing to expand to the increasing demands. The character of USA was isolationist but it reversed it at Pearl Harbour. Her essential human characteristic is the readiness to rise to the occasion with the spirit of adventure. As they settled down in the East Coast, conquered the West, they embraced the occasion of war as one fit for their energies to express in. This is the Message she had subconsciously. Resources were there in potential materially and as resourcefulness of the practical efficiency that seeks to improve itself. Hitler's uncalled for attack on Europe and Japan's raid on Pearl Harbour brought the world on its knees before the giant economic power U.S.A was. She was increasing the levels of literacy, longevity, scientific research, technological innovation, urbanisation, modernisation, standardisation that can make it a global power. The World needed all these and the U.S.A already possessed them in a good measure. She has shed class difference, racial discrimination, colonial status, poverty, monarchy, illiteracy, disease and was poised as a leader in these fields. She was a leader in all fields except culture and spirituality. She had all the strengths, military economic, political. By way of manners, culture, spirituality there is no nation from which the U.S.A cannot learn as those who are there from these nations are those from the last rung of the ladder and those who could not make it in their homeland. They have plenty to learn not only from their homeland but from all others.

Religion raises the community by raising the individual. we can also say it raises the individual by raising the community. It is religion that makes life worthwhile or tolerable. At all moments of insurmountable crises man seeks refuge in religion. So religious values have become valuable. A child is made functional by the family, particularly the mother. He is given education by the school in addition to social manners. Beyond this he gets anything himself. He does so from the society. The first ever crisis that compels him to reverse his attitudes comes to him from marriage. It being an insoluble relation, at least a relation that cannot be easily soluble, Man tries to preserve marriage and gives up his past attitudes. There are other encounters for him; but marriage remains the most chastening influence on Man. When job is threatened, money is to be risked, status is to be lost, death faces him, MAN stops and thinks and brings about the necessary reversals in his character. At all these occasions it is religion that guides him. If one is not religious, the religious values in the society shapes his character. Whether he takes it from society or religion, they are values. In America people are more religious than usual. But their religion is standard of living or simply money. No one prefers to lower his standard of living. It is generally understood as Money Value which is only a partial truth. Not only in America, everywhere man fights tooth and nail to preserve his status. When that front puts up a challenging crisis, it is his values that sustain him. These are religious values. In a corresponding position in India, man seeks survival. He does not have much of a formed personality or deeply ingrained self-respect. Nor is he as much attached to his professional code as in the developed nations. It is true, in India, people are spiritual, but that spirituality has degenerated into superstitious rituals sought after for mercenary purposes. For Indian spirituality to be revived, it must be revived in life i.e. Life must come to be guided by the values of the Spirit, honesty, integrity, loyalty, self respect, honour. In India there is a lot of scope for improvement along these lines. Next to the standard of living the American values practical organisation. It has become national culture. That expresses in education as the general interest of population in the scientific advance. People all over America at domestic level are as informed about scientific developments as the academic community in India.

But values, as in any country, do not reach the field of politics. So, the saying the top post is at the end of the greasy pole has come to truly reflect the affairs of politics. In India, the ostensible principle is the post should seek the person. At best there is a show of respect to this half-extinct culture. But politics is brash in the USA. They push ahead and believe in pushing ahead. Still there are eternal values transcending national borders. Often we see this phenomenon practised in all countries, even in America. It has one more reason. Posts of value are occupied by men of varying personality strengths. A smaller man to reach a higher post cannot have the same magnanimity of a greater man. The post goes to the great man. The man seeks the post when he is small. Even in this culture alternating reversals are the order of the day. To fix it finally, we must reduce it to a law. Posts and men move to each other offering a reversal according to the weight of the political atmosphere.

History has observed that the top post that lies at the end of a greasy pole, is still straight away available for the strong. Caesar and Napoleon rose to eminence when they were 20. In spirit the top post is available straight away if he carries the Force. In politics too the principle is true, if he carries the evolutionary Force of the Society. More than in any other country we see this is true in America. It is true in all fields in America. The birth of intelligentia 300 years ago brought the truth of this principle out. Senior posts in government in UK is only for those who are above 60. No one will be considered for such a post before he is 60. Man acquires capacities by experience and it does need time. Not all the aristocrats in England were educated before the intelligentia came into its own. Education was superfluous, even frowned upon by the aristocrats. The aristocrat qualifies by virtue of being an aristocrat. Education later changed the rules. America threw all rules to the wind, along with that all tradition. It measured men by their achievement. Politics permitted that meteoric rise. In America money ruled over politics too.

All American politicians of that period swore by God. He earnestly believed that his own achievement was God's achievement in him. God lingered in his consciousness more out of habit, than out of faith. Men who achieve believe in their achievement and pay lip service to God. When the Americans say God ordained rather than government devised, they mean it was achieved by them. The World War arose out of the death Europe died as a living entity or society. War destroyed that old Europe forever. All parts of Europe are adopting American style of life now. This is a serious idea. The European peasant is a gardener. The European worker is a crafts man. The farmer in Europe is not concerned in the quantity of production. Mass production by standardisation is alien to Europe. In Europe people discuss ideas, not plans or merely the latest information. The European has a culture to preserve. The American is yet to create any culture of their own. The American house wife has a flood of articles and trains herself as an organiser of the house. The European housewife has a family to rear, children to educate. She does not give up her children to be trained in the school. The American kid is hyper sensitive. The European child is tender. War has swept all this and much more in one stroke. The old Europe did not survive the onslaught of the war.

Teddy Roosevelt believed more in executive action than in the constitution. Executive action is of the individual. Politics is to reflect the will of the people and enshrine it in the constitution. The step from the constitution to the Act of Legislature is a mature exercise of a nation that grows to be a society. We saw that distance and political labour in the abolition of slavery. Constitutionalism needs political heads who really know the will of the people about their long-term existence not the pulse of the people as to whom they will vote. He does not appear on the scene one day. It needs a movement of society, a movement of Thought about their social existence as a nation. Once that political basis is created and enshrined in laws of the land it has to be handed down to the executive for action. In the US the President is the chief Executive directly elected by the people. He combines the leadership of politics as well as the power of the head of the Executive. Teddy Roosevelt was anxious to exercise the muscle power of the Executive. He did so in handling the miners strike. He was tough and made them bend to his purpose.

- At Harvard Charles William Eliot entered his 40 - year tenure as President of the college in 1869.

Such long tenures are for the founders or those who form the organisation into an institution. An organisation is a systematic collection of acts and activities. An institution is a live organisation which imparts values to these activities. Energy becoming acts or activities is an organisation. The same activities working by the energy of values is an institution. Several lessons taught is an activity. It is done by the energy of the teacher or the school. The same lessons learnt or taught energised by the value of education makes the organisation into an institution. Today Harvard is a pre-eminent institution in the world. It is so because it stands for so many values. They are values of education - curiosity to collect facts, representation of them factually, arranging them into a system which is classified. All these educational values subserve a social value of evolution. They are unconscious of their mission, but are not uninformed of their duty. It was a period when America emerged from agriculture into manufacturing. Nation's manufacture not only required engineers and scientists but also needed information about her mineral and power resources. The minerals had to be smelted into metals. The resources of power must be gathered into usable power. It is an engineering feat in one part. That part to come to fruition the entrepreneur must be abroad. The spirit of adventure characteristic of the entrepreneur must pervade the nation in all fields, even in education. Harvard was a pioneer in that adventure. Therefore Eliot had a stint of 40 year tenure.

The founding of Harvard was organising the future of national education as the backbone of the national existence. We see here the parallel to Oxford and Cambridge who laid the foundation of religious education and thus created the class known as intelligentia. The Universities of Vienna and Paris created the European culture of today. It is an academic culture. Harvard similarly founded the basic reinforcements of national economy and national prosperity. What the 20th century directly needed was not aristocratic culture but the culture of a prosperous population. Paris and Vienna served the prewar period when man curled into the cozy comfort of cloistered culture confined to the upper classes. It was social culture. The world needed work culture, prosperity. It needed to flow outward to all mankind, not confined to a class or a country. So, the interdisciplinary studies came into existence as a first step. Spending a year in another continent, in another culture gained momentum. Mind was outgoing. Biology was studied from the point of view of chemistry. Attempts were made to study economics as if people mattered. Economics was mathematically interpreted. Physics and mathematics almost merged. Archeology drew upon chemistry. Economists viewed economics from the point of view of geography. Statistics became a science. It lent itself to mathematical formulations. A new science of demography was born. Every subject has developed its own bearing on the population content of it. The work of surveying reached its perfection and extended into the ocean. The relationship between cultural life and geology was explored. Biological forms lending themselves to mathematical equations were perceived. The era of patents gave way to the era of intellectual exploration.
Mind expanded on all sides, entered into Life though through the postern began to forge a unity of sorts at some level.

- Income tax came in 1913.

Eight-hour day came in 1916.
Income tax was 1%, Max was 7%.
Randolph Bourne (1886-1918) saw War would enormously accelerate the already perceptible growth of Big Government: "War is the health of the State".

Atleast for 300 years the USA was in existence as a country before the income tax came to the scene. We would normally expect a wealthier population to be taxed more. Income was 10 times higher than in Europe, but there was no income tax. How did the government function without tax income? It is said the government existed on customs duties and prison penalties. Income tax was not levied even in Europe or India before this period. When tax was levied it was 1%. If incomes are 10 times higher 1% of tax in U.S.A would bring as much revenue as 10% of tax in Europe. Absence of income tax indicates the absence of the effective presence of the government in the daily lives of the people.

When Man worked for himself he was working all waking hours. By 1916 industries had sprung up and the labourer was no longer working for himself only. By 1916 Russian Revolution was in the offing. Every country in Europe was ready to do everything in its power to ward off a Revolution. Though that was not the climate in the U.S.A, the eight-hour day was on the agenda.

Wilson, the President, was a pacifist. In the World War I initially he declared American neutrality. He saw the reality of ruthless brutality in Man and warned war would bring it out in action. Randolph Bourne was a radical. He knew the economic truth of an active war. He could see the growth of American prosperity was perceptible. It was clear to him, as well as the left-wing Democrats that a war could enormously accelerate the growth of Big Government. He said, "War is the health of the State".

Man is basically brutal. He needs an outlet to his brutality at least his brutal strength. Unrefined raw strength of man fashions into an unformed instrument. To us it is crude in its functioning, brutal in its expression. It is a natural composition of Man; his strength in a civilised state is nascent. Civilised living offers no scope for the brute strength to express. War is the ideal condition for such an outlet. War activates the economy as well as the pugnacious potentials of the government. We are tempted to say a government is formed in the crucible of the battlefield. War directly activates the economy, but the government organises itself by waging a war. The administration during times of peace often rises to the war pitch. A government will be better qualified to govern and administer had it been through wars. To maintain the supply line of the army from the rear is the real training ground for the peacetime administrator.

- The army grew from 200,000 to 4 million during the war

The cost of WWI was ten times more than the cost of civil war.
It was more than twice the cost of operating the federal government since 1789.
It was $112 billion.
IRS became a serious actor in the lives of ordinary citizens.
In Europe most industries were taken over by the government, either for management or ownership.
In Germany this method was most efficient and was called "War Socialism", Lenin admired it, made it standard in running the Soviets.
Wilson who was neutral was dragged into war, by the German attack on US ships breaking earlier promises and to provoke a Mexican War.
Wartime efforts remained later under a different name - E.G. Boards set up during the war remained to do other acts.
About one-half of the American War personnel was conscript.
The American delegation at Versailles was by far the best informed and documented.

The US was isolationist. She was dragged into the War by the German callousness to their own promises. Even in the second war the US remained outside. This time it was Japan who compelled the US to enter the War. After 1945 the US was to be the natural leader of the world - in military, politics, economics, and every other field. But it never struck her to join the war on her own. Life compelled the US to assume the world leadership. For over 100 years she was preparing herself for this role. Nature had prepared her for this role. Still when the hour of action arrives she keeps away. She was to be provoked into it. This is because the world was physical. A physical person never responds to anything which does not TOUCH him physically. See the actual role she played. Her army increased 20 times costing 10 times more than the bloodiest of wars she fought on her soil. Her eminence was thrust on her. It fell plump into her lap as soon as the war was over. It happens to every physical man when Life has to make him wealthy or famous. Physicality is self-contained. Even when it loves, it prefers to receive in the beginning.

An act once done has a way of perpetuating it. And it grows. For Life acts are neutral. Good and bad are equally capable of this behaviour. An act is an initiation. It never vanishes, on the other hand it grows. IRS was there when the foreign loan of $10 billions were to be collected. Later it became permanent. Several Boards, Committees were formed to handle wartime works. They stayed on and did allied work.

War and Peace are not opposite, separated, unrelated. Peace is a continuation of War. Life is common to both and that is why Boards take root in the national life.
War is Power, naked power. War means delivering the nation's full power as a single blow at the adversary. Naturally her means will be of power. Lenin saw this act before he got power. Once he got into using power, the USSR could not come out of it for 70 years. Power is virulent and issues out of consciousness at the earliest stage. Hence it is in a nascent condition. It is incapable of learning before very long periods.
Germany made it 'War Socialism', a slogan that was internationally popular at the time of the First War. Man does what he wants or what he can and gives the most exalted name of the period.

What the running of the federal government over 100 years or even 120 years is less than what the War cost. One year of war is equal to 25 or even 50 years of peaceful life in terms of cost.

Man lives routinely. Routine life maintains, neither learns nor creates.
War is a vast destruction, clearing the path of social progress and offering opportunities to learn.
An opportunity to build is really an opportunity to learn, but man does not learn through the opportunity. He accomplishes by the opportunity.
In the process of learning positive results precede knowledge.
Results are in the physical plane, knowledge in the subtle plane.
One who accomplishes rightly several times is often seen doing the wrong thing when he thinks and acts.
One accomplishes by virtue of circumstances, not necessarily by thought.
Vast amount of barriers and anachronisms accumulate over the decades which are to be destroyed. Of the human mind that superstitiously believes in the past is the arch type. It has to be destroyed, cannot be educated. To destroy that mind, the body that houses its brain is to be demolished. Hence the war and the enormous cost of destruction and subsequent construction.
War is a crisis on the physical plane which cannot be resolved or shelved by efforts in the other planes.
The physical form is enduring. Therefore unwanted forms are to be demolished when they are no more than museum pieces.
No progress can ever be made without their basis taking lasting forms in the concrete physical material plane.
Opinions of the mind, and attitudes of the vital are more difficult to change because they are less material and for that reason is more powerful.
The above quantification in terms of cost is more than proof for the character of War described here. Hence the value of the statement of Heraclitus. The Mahabharatha War could not be avoided by an Avatar physically present among the parties. Krishna is from the overmind. It can accomplish in Truth or Knowledge disregarding the presence of falsehood or ignorance, but Overmind is incapable of dissolving that falsehood or evil. Duryodhana's jealousy is evil. It issues from the physical blindness of his father which can be traced to the fear his mother had of the visage of Vyasa. Blindness and fear are no source of anything good. Going further back we find its origin in the greed of Satyavathi. And that issues out of the sentimental pining of Santanu and the Vow of Bhisma to fulfil his father's irrational urge. It was the war of Kurushetra that had to demolish all such obstructions to ordered civilisation. It fell to the lot of an Avatar to establish Yugadharma the law of ages through an internecine war.

War is a moment of life and death crisis for a nation. At moments of crisis, the form gives way to the content. The symbol has the capacity at those moments to become reality. A crisis is an occasion for an entity to render the symbol the whole. The government is the creation of the society. It is a symbolic representation of the collective functioning organisationally. The power of the symbol is limited. Crisis opens all the springs of the original energy. That energy energises. It seeks new forms. It seeks to saturate the existing forms. The government exercises the functions allotted to it by the social will. The society delegates its power, or part of its power, to the government through laws enacted. In a moment of confusion where crisis brews, the past expands to the whole either constitutionally or arbitrarily. The government extends its right over all the centres of production. It takes over the industry for management or ownership. This happened in Germany. Lenin who was observing such proceedings found in that process a valuable instrument for his ideal when he came to power.

Government is part of the Society, not the entire society.
In times of war government becomes the society by its own necessity and initiative. It is essential, right, but a dangerous moment.
Power once tasted does not go back to the owner by itself, unless compelled by the weight of the formed public opinion that finds organised expression which occurs in a democracy.
It is a test for a nation's political maturity.
The fact that half the army personnel were conscripts shows the population did not enthusiastically enter the war effort. This is in tune with the governments declaration of neutrality.
Germany is an immature nation. It is neither mystic like Russia on its East or intellectual like France on the West. Their forte is their method and its perfection. Industries taken over by the government cannot easily go back to its owners in an immature nation.

The American delegation to Versailles was briefed by a group of scholars commissioned to collect facts for the meeting. Normally the cabinet minister who attends the meetings gets his facts from his own office. When a group of scholars undertake to study that issue and other allied issues, it is natural that their labour will be more comprehensive. Thus the American delegation was posted with the greatest number of valid facts. Here we see the American efficiency and its method. The Americans value in a work.

1) Information is related to that and their education offers that information. Mothercalls it the practical organisation of the Americans.
2) They give the form of an organisation to acquire that information thus empowering the individual. The individual in America is no mere individual. Always he is part of the whole - the whole of the organisation.

- Walter Lippmanndisapproved of the treaty of 1918 at Versailles.

A British historian said that had the Treaty been drafted solely by the Americans, it would have been the most scientific document.
Wilson's 14 points were set down in a hurry.
There was anxiety to meet Lenin's position on self determination of the peoples. Lenin just then published all the secret treatises to the embarrassment of all.
Interests of international trade, restoration of lost territories, redrawing of the national boundaries, are to be addressed.
The French and British leaders had reservations about the Wilsonian code.
A week after asking for armistice the Germans sank the Irish civilian ferry drowning 450 people. This disgusted Wilson.
Wilson was a professor.
The Germans felt it was a swindle, an outrageous injustice and an affront to their national dignity.
America never joined it. From the start it was a covenant without a sword.

Germany's production was the third after America and Britain. America was involved in her own dynamic growth which was all engrossing as it drew inward all her energies. She had no problems of defence or internal disorder. The accumulating wealth constantly and continuously organising itself as higher ways of production and higher and better ways of living. She was in a self-absorbed self-contentment. Britain who was in the second place was engaged by the widening influence of the Empire which was her pride and hence contentment. France whose production was nearly equal to that of Germany or England found her economic energies well absorbed by her intellectual efflorescence. Paris was the world's fashion centre. Intellectually the French language was pre-eminent. French was poised to become the world language. Even in distant Russia French was in fashion. Russia the strongest of the European powers was in a ferment where the first proletariat revolution was under way. Germany with her perfection in methods had developed a great economic merit which was an urge. She had no Empire, not intellectual fame nor was she self-absorbed as the USA. Her educational systems had created excellent higher educational institutions and the highest mass literacy. For all these reasons she was a potential dynamo. She needed an occasion to explode or an excuse to initiate a conflict. This view presents that each major nation is positively or negatively self-poised for action in the international arena. A wider view, a view of the whole would have seen that the world was in the throes of emancipating itself from her physicality and emerging into vitality or mentality. That view is justified by the post war period and the post cold-war period. In the absence of the view of the whole, not to speak of an integrated outlook, each part puts up its own dynamism, thus creating a fertile field for confrontation. The treaty of Versailles came in the middle of it after the first phrase of this movement - the World War I - was over. Should this view be conceded now as a more comprehensive one, it is obvious that a dexterous handling was called for in 1918 to make the WW I the war to end all wars. The Theory would say such a delicate handling would not emerge out of that situation. A cautions and a calculated mishandling would emerge making ample room for WW II to take shape. It was right the Versailles Treaty was seen as the cause of WW II by many. Walter Lippmann was one of them. Wilson's academic background, his pacifism, UK's secret reservations, Germany's outrage, her sinking of the Irish ferry, breaking her promise are all in place if viewed from the stand point of the Theory. They are not fortuitous circumstances. They were there because it was the order of the day.

- The enfranchisement of woman.

The real American will be a fusion of all races.
Cola drinks grew popular fighting hard liquor.
Women entered politics through the movements of temperance and abolition of slavery.
The Supreme Court said, "The constitution does not confer the right of suffrage on anyone".
American women got the vote in 1870, 1883, 1893, 1896, and 1920, two years behind Britain.
American wives preferred control over their husbands to the selection of a President.
Johnson says they would have had their rights by 1850 had they exerted themselves.

Social evolution is a process, a process of society continuously rising to greater heights. This it does by moving from a subconscious existence to conscious existence. Once it becomes conscious, it continues its movement of development by organising itself in successive higher levels of complexity till it reaches integrality in its functioning.

It divides into routine and crisis each leading to the other.
A long phase of routine existence culminates in a revolutionary crisis which initiates another long phase of routine existence at a higher level.
Wars are moments of such crisis when man moves from the physical to the vital plane.
Today the world has essentially outgrown the need of wars in the future but as these are not abrupt points of turn around, the remnants of war linger as border conflict, civil disorder, racial confrontation and finally expresses itself into hardened terrorist movements.
Society initiates not one movement at a time, but it unleashes all the movements simultaneously and fosters their development along its lines of growth.
The emancipation of slaves, the enfranchisement of women, shifting from hard liquor from soft drinks are topics here.
Presently the world is in the process of promoting one government known as World Union through creating one single economic market all over the world called Globalisation. This of course needs the cessation of all military conflicts by establishing a single World Army. To discuss the realities of such an institution from the points of view of Jallian Wallah Bagh, Partition, W.W.II and illustrate the several stages through which it is moving from another movement such as woman's suffrage or abolition of slavery can throw full light on the process of the Society becoming self-conscious.
The American is not the White protestant nor the Black American but he is in the process of making, a fusion of all the races. If this is true, the future citizen will be one who has transcended the racial identity not merely the religious conviction.
Abolition of slavery passed through many stages. Still it is only half way through. After the Civil War they were accorded equality before the Law, but only after the Civil Rights Movement they received social recognition. Still, it is not psychological equality. Civil War itself was preceded by a couple of centuries of slave labour.

Civil War - emancipation - movement to North - Well paid jobs during the war period - Ku Klux Khan - Segregation - Voting rights - Civil Rights Movement - Inferiority complex.

These phases are not particular or peculiar to slavery. They are common to all other social phenomena. The world has seen the birth of several such phases that have come to stay. Agriculture, manufacturing, service are movements of economic production. Physical, vital, mental, spiritual are more basic phases of man's spiritual composition. Domination, submission, co-existence, co-operation, co-ordination, destruction, protection, support are expressions of the growth of power in its various stages of play. Production, trade, commerce, transport, communication, distribution, consumption are economic movements organising themselves in the social life. Life expands. The selfish individual becomes the social collective individual, he loses and gains his individuality in the collective in the process of moving from the vital to the mental plane. Skill, capacity, talent, ability are stages in his energy organising itself for action at the individual as well as social dimensions. Duties and rights are values that emanate in this process

- Each plane matures and moves on to the next plane when it rises in its functions to the spiritual plane and expresses its skills as values of its own plane. Honouris the spiritual value for the physical man for which he fought duels for over 1000 years. Then duels were abolished by law and was replaced by debating societies in the shape of Parliaments.

- People of Romeenjoying the gladiators being torn to pieces by hungry lions showed the intensity in Man enjoying cruelty. Executions were public. It was to the taste of the masses. These were sure signs of War as an institutionsurviving for the next 2000 years. This was the psychological base of wars.

- Jallian Wallah Bagh massacre where 389 people were killed and over 1000 wounded followed the ending of the First World War. War was an arena of physical cruelty and torture. When it was over on a global scale its itch in the individual General expressed in Punjab, the most martial of states in India. The Britisher never interfered with the Indian religion or customs. He was a man of character and was extremely fair in his duties of administration. But he was a conqueror. Jallian Wallah Bagh was life's reminder to Gandhiji who was toying with the idea of satyagraha from 1915 that without armed uprising the Britisher would not leave. India's spiritual support to the British in the Second War neutralised that need for bloodshed. But the Britisher was the second conqueror. The Muslims preceeded them. An armed uprising would have united the Hindus and Muslims against a common enemy and there would be left no Muslimintransigence. That was not to be -Gandhiji tries to win the Muslim heart by prayer. It succeeded in the Calcutta communal riots but failed in All-India politics. Hence Pakistan and partition became realities.

- Japan's insularity and backward physicality was one major reason for the WW II. Germanywas to outgrow her smallness which attained PERFECTION of physical methods. Not even Luther's freedom was enough to accomplish it. They had to kill Jewsin millions to overcome the rigidity made possible by perfecting their methods.

T.E.Lawrance, known as Lawrance of Arabia, espoused the cause of Arabs. In the battle ground he had an occasion to sympathise with an Arab victim of injustice. He exercised himself to save his life. A little later the saved victim was guilty of another crime and was to be shot by Lawrance himself. Lawrance was sorry to see how trigger happy he was in shooting the Arab. Lawrance was a legend, fair minded, supporter of Arabs. The joy of wielding a revolver in him indicates that 'War is alive'.
Man is physical and brutal. He enjoys indiscriminate destruction for destruction sake. Pugnacity is inborn. Instead of two groups annihilating each other , killing women and children, a civilised arrangement is made that the groups would fight by their representatives - army. Thus war was a civilised, symbolic, structured arrangement. War develops leadership, heroism, submission, loyalty, discipline order, patriotism. The highest value that emerges out of war is not so much courage as honour. Organisation develops in the army and is passed on to the civil administration from there. Most of the innovations of the society are from the military.
Army looting the territory of the enemy even when it is not necessary is common. An army that does not loot announces that it has outgrown that brutal instinct. It is one symptom that army psychologically outlived itself.
The American women would have had their voting rights even in 1850 had they organised and agitated for it. They had it finally 70 years after in 1920. Can we say War could have been abolished anytime after 1950, had humanity awakened to that necessity? To enjoy the rights, facilities a society has developed in potential takes sometime. Once the potentials are there all that is required is awakening and organisation. League of Nations could have had a clearer document before it, had the Americans been allowed to draft it. The potential was there, but not the awareness.
Marshall, Eisenhower were Generals but never commanded an army in the battle field. Surely this is a symptom of the Army moving to the Mind. At the level of the Mind No army exists.
Paul Kennedy speaks of the Empire crashing if the economy of the mother country cannot sustain the expansion. The outgoing force needs the nourishment of the internal resources. This is more true of the existence of the army economically and more so psychologically. Conscription is the danger signal for the psychological existence of the Army. In the First WW England actively considered conscription, but volunteers met the personnel needs of the military. As long as volunteers fill up the army, the army has a psychological existence in the subtle plane. Conscription announces the death of the army in the subtle plane.
Trade led Britain to found an empire. Excessive productive capacity gave the USA world leadership. Both were in the line of social evolution. As 18th and 19th century needed trade and the 20th needed mass production, the 21st century needs rise in the standard of living. The existence of national armies will not serve that purpose while abolishing them will bring the skill and discipline of the Army into civilian life which is in the line of social progress.
Shaw said flogging could not be abolished as long as men are available for that. Even in the Vietnam War US citizens protested against their children dying on alien soil, for an alien cause. Let us study the extent of the willingness of the population to send their children for the army. In the Catholic Church, young men do not opt for priesthood. The average age of priests is 80, a clear signal of the church's natural death.
King Asoka renounced war 2500 years ago. That was the first sounding of the death knell to Wars. No law and order maintenance was necessary in such a country. If Asoka renounced wars, these kings dispensed with police or removed the basis for the existence of police. Our present endeavour has its subtle origins thousands of years ago.
Srinivasa Ramanujam was a genius. For lack of outer content of a degree which is really a disqualification he met with mortifying humiliation for long. World Army has content not form.
Baldwin and chamberlain suffered from perverse superstition. They believed they should build prosperity. Perverse or superstitious, they anticipated the abolition of wars.
The holocaust conclusively removes any argument in favour of War or national armies. The holocaust was the expression of the desire to destroy human beings physically for the joy of destruction as if the deaths in the war front were not enough. Once the overdoing arises, it is the final phase.
After Hitler, Stalin stood for expansionism. The Soviet system was destroyed from within, a unique event in history. The sources of war impulse committed suicide. Their one demand is higher standard of living. War is abolished in its origins.
War symbolises rigidity. It expresses in the smallness of the mind. Smallness of the mind insists on its petty desires refusing the wider ideal. Instances of MAN choosing the ideal is one more argument for us. In India a job is favoured, entrepreneurship is eschewed. Recent IT surveys say there is an exodus of IT professionals in USA returning to India for a venture of their own. This is the reversal of that trend. A thaw is seen at the roots of rigidity.
September 11 attack is the negative symbol of terrorism announcing its death, compelling the world to abolish it.
Nations should be shy of selling arms to terrorists and governments at war. As long as France, U.S.A, UK do that - as long as that greed for profit is there - war will survive.
Abolition of slavery had several stages. Every possibility undergoes those stages.
Civil War - emancipation - segregation - mass migration - race riots - Blacks took the offensive - hippie movement - Civil Rights Movement - Psychological arrears.

Let us trace the sequence of the concept and reality of War and examine whether the movement is backward or forward.

Race riots died down largely after 1919. First WW removed the best part of that impulse. In 1943 Blacks were on the offensive. Recently in LA the whites were so. The impulse alternates, the penultimate stage of a vibration.

Army loots. Supplies maintain it. Population sustains the army. These are stages of the nation overcoming War.
Released energy cannot contain itself. Genghis Khan did not stop on his own. The atom bombs were mentally controlled by the nuclear nations, a sign of Mind controlling the vital. Emergence of Mind is the end of wars
Poverty and privation is a reminder to stop wars.
To foster the poor man's greed is to defuse the war vibration. Rajaji did it with the DMK.
Indian independence dissolved War and its violence in the subtle plane
Aid perpetuates the roots of War.
Many looked forward to WW I anxiously to burn off the tension of 40 years of peace.
Tension is the intense negative enjoyment of living fully in the vital, perhaps in No.6 drawing upon the whole value of physicality. Sri Aurobindo examined the situation before the War and found a dark being rising. He understood War was inevitable. Whether it was before the First or Second war is not known. Therefore he decided to win the war. He was not able to avoid it. After the death of Hitler, He was able to avoid the war which brought the World to the brink of catastrophe in Vietnam, Korea and Cuba. Now the Lord of Nations that started the wars and fought them was no more alive. It was the unformed, unorganised forces of darkness without a central thrust which He was able to ward off.
In the issue of women's suffrage we see several stages and several events.

- Protesting women outside the white hall were pardoned. The women refused to accept the pardon.

- Only 35 out of the required 38 states ratified the Bill. Even among them 5 rescinded.

- A top law graduate was refused position in any law firm. She was refused a clerkship of the Supreme Court. Later she became a Judge of the Supreme Court.

- States were forbidden from disenfranchising the blacks, but were given the discretionary power. Political exclusion was reinforced by terror.

The defying spirit is not yet in the collective. It is in the individual spirited women who refuses to be pardoned. It means the time has not yet come for their rights to be won. When the general opinion is favourable the particular exercise of it may be vague and unformed. That is why 5 states that originally endorsed rescinded their endorsement. To shout on the street is the first outburst. The respect the woman in heart is the final desideratum. Legal sanction is in between. The collective had not matured in their opinion even to endorse legally. Top student being refused for the lowest position shows that the transition from a wide positive atmosphere of a sense of equality to a particular event of granting a job, the sociological distance is great. It is well to trace each step meticulously and see how it expresses the Theory. In a violently hostile atmosphere legal compliance is not enough as the emotions have not changed. One little chink in the armour is enough to undo the whole effort. In the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Duryodhana these principles are well brought out. The chink not only cancels the legal intention but allows scope for the intensified opposite effort of terror and torture. One incident of the opposite category will show the subtle plane is ready for the abolition of war.

- Mafiais most successful when they faithfully follow the rules of business.

Bootleggers operated with public approval.
Dissipation is a necessary stage society has to pass through. It is inevitable for future honesty.
Los Angels was built on the book Lenin read.
What Lenin saw of electricity is true of every new discovery. Now it is the computer.
The growth of USA explains that God recedes as prosperity rises.

Sri Aurobindo postulates that the Omnipresent Reality became the Universe. Out of that hypothesis a few truths arise.

- All is One.

- The microcosm is the same in structure as the macrocosm.

- An ACT is the unit of universal life as the atom is the unit of Matter.

- No evil was created by God.

- The rules of existence, function, survival and success for all are the same, particularly for the evil and the good; mafia and business.

- Man cannot become the whole without experiencing the evil fully.

- Dissipation and enjoyment have Experience in common.

- For the totalitarian state and the birth place of freedom resources - electricity - are the same.

- God for Man is the Power that raises him to the next level.

American life in many parts of the country was led by mafia. In a sense the life in America in general is a life built by mafia. To us mafia means lawlessness, corruption, brutality, rowdyism, law breaking etc. Life in its origin was all there. American life had before it the call to explore fresh region on earth for fresh habitation. They were to found a nation, discovering a continent. They stood face to face with Nature unconditioned. Their early life, no wonder, was mafia like. It was a life before any government came into existence, even before a society took shape. Man found himself grappling with his new energies, but was successful. He found in his success that he was following the rules of successful business. It would be more logical and precise, if we say that the rules of today's business were evolved by human life struggling to survive which in their cruder form is known today as mafia. Law disowned bootleggers before the public had outlived their use for them. It means the East had organised itself into a civilised society and was trying to extend to the rest of America which had not found its feet of survival. Man working all his waking hours needs something that relaxes him while he was out of work. From time immemorial Man had found that scope in intoxication. Intoxication is the bliss of the over worked physical. Discipline is a mental endowment. Mind exercising its control over the vital and physical is discipline. We now talk of a stage where no mind was born. He works hard for survival. He goes to sleep. Next morning he needed to go back to work. His sleep needs to be relaxed enough to restore his energies. Sleep is a period Man reaches Sachchidananda. That Sachchidananda can be either Super conscient or inconscient. He needs both to become full, a whole. Soma was the Vedic drink. Liquor is Man's Soma. People do not disapprove of liquor or bootlegging as they understood its necessity for their survival. Business of today started as mafia of yesterday and acquired habits of civilised behaviour. Mafia changing into business, hard liquor giving place to soft drinks and beverage is the fashion in which human life evolves.

Man exists biologically, survives economically, progresses educationally. Spirit and religion always remains a staple and a sheet anchor all through these stages. Biological man survives as long as his health is not vulnerable. His health establishes itself in his environment that is it attunes to it. When that environment shows marked changes a good part of the population becomes vulnerable. Those capable of resistance survive. In the field of economics the centre piece is the process of production. When it changes for the better the society booms. Even if one input - e.g. electricity - changes the progress is marked. It spreads all over the world. Wheel, fire, stone tool in the early ages, electricity, knowledge of smelting ore into metal, agriculture, car, telephone, oil have played that role in different periods.

The German scientist Karl Ballod wrote a book advocating "all electricity state".
It is this book that made Lenin say electricity + Soviet = Socialism.
An engineering genius came to California to recover his health and was caught up in creating the biggest municipal power system in the world.
The waters of the Colorado River were converted into a system of power available for more than one state.
He made electricity cheap and available in abundant quantities all over California, making California next only to New York.
California had 83% homes with electricity at a time the national average was 35%
While national cost of electricity was $2.17 KWH California had it for $ 1.42
This one state generated 10% of U.S electric power.
90% American farms had no electricity. In California farms were all-electric units, cows were milked by electricity, pumps were irrigating the fields. They had a full range farm appliances.
Los Angels had an all-electric transport system.
Harriman, a railroad owner, had a passion to provide all California the most efficient inter urban transport at the cheapest rates. It ran for 1164 miles. Southern California became a prime growth area mainly because of this transport system.

Growth can be absolute when you stumble upon a new process or a new source of power. But it is comparative growth that matters for Man. A little better than the neighbour makes all the difference and ministers to his self-confidence. Today IT offers generally jobs around Rs.16,000 a month. It is not much but it is far better than a 8000/- rupee job elsewhere. The whole population is activated. Such a difference spreads all over the nation soon. Success inspires as nothing succeeds like success. Greater success than the neighbour intoxicates. Success inspires work, a slightly greater success inspires MAN. At the bottom of US success lies the 10 times higher wages in the 16th and 17th century. It started with a rebellion against class system, precipitated as physical freedom in America, revealed as higher level production, expressed as scarcity of labour, higher wages, labour saving machinery, practical organisation and ended as a culture of scientific enquiry into higher work possibilities.

When you read the American politicians' declarations God begins it, God ends it. It is about God. Lincoln who always spoke like that also noted that the South too similarly invoked god. In saying so, Lincoln touched a chord of human nature. By God Man means his own self-righteous will, aspiration, atleast his understanding of God's will in him. In a philosophic sense, Man's invocation of God is right, even if he meant himself. What else can man do except invoking the very highest in him? Whatever Man may say to himself his God is, every man has his God. And to all it is the same God.

People who live in different phases of social growth - chaotic scattered existence, animal life, animal life of man, social survival, growth in that survival, development to the next stage, evolving out of that developed stage, ascetic withdrawal, yogic concentration, artistic bliss, intellectual inspiration - have as their God that social instrument which best serves their present purpose.
To the pre-independence day's Indian it was the merest survival.
To the rural people who could receive education in the pre-war days, it was urban employment.
Today it is an aspiration to the American citizenship.
To the American around 1900, it was to catch up with the rising standard of living - It was his GOD then.

Quote for the Day

History of USA - Part 1

Offering / காணிக்கை

Ky.net Forum Registrations

Search Karmayogi.net

Search Daily Messages(only)