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WORK THAT LEADS TO SUCCESS AND PROSPERITY

December 25, 1971

Each piece of work whether running a home or founding an institution has its status at many levels viz. its status in consciousness, in social existence, in personal psychology and finally in actual existence as it appears to the public view. Rather every piece of work can be considered as a being with life or presided over by a being - endowed with different personalities, social personality, psychological personality, professional personality, occult personality, work personality and spiritual personality. Each of these personalities works effectively at their level only when it is well knit, well defined, comprehensive, in one word, when integrated. Imperfection of the integration may lead to inefficiency but an absence of integration will result in failure of function. Effectiveness at one level means success in that aspect contributing in some measure to the general achievement. Harmony of all these personalities which are integrated at their own levels and areas alone can generate the climate for general efficiency tending to all round success. It is then the onlooker feels the work is well done, well organized.

The agriculture work on our farms here can now be looked at from this background: it is an area where man lives in perfect harmony with his neighbours, his ideas and feelings, with his physical environment, viz. the animals, plants and especially the soil and the climate. He has further preserved his harmony from being invaded by the urban life inspite of his daily contacts with it. He has so much to do with town people and town life but it is yet to enter his life stream as a viable factor. In no man's life is there any conflict as is understood in psychology. Seasons may fail, neighbours may cheat, animals may die, articles may be stolen, food may be unavailable for days, still he finds himself well entrenched in the center of LIFE that all of them live. Hundreds may be the outbursts between them, but the entire village has its own single ideal of life, the ideal of non-chalant existence, undisturbed all the time. Every ambition is active but is subordinated to the central theme; every code of life in money, women and power may be rudely violated but the central harmony remains untouched.

And he has struck this harmony at the level of a meal a day (or once in two days), uncleanliness and absence of shame in any act, social or personal, i.e. harmony that is made possible by utter poverty, filth and falsehood.

For us who work there on our farms that generate prosperity, the first essential task is to know we exist amidst this population and our progress cannot be divorced from theirs. All the time we have to square accounts with him. Our prosperity is possible only to the extent he permits, rather, for us to progress we have to persuade him to come out of his shell of security in poverty and falsehood and build fresh shells of truth and prosperity. There is only one exception to this: one builds a farm or factory, makes it successfully insular and keeps it within that shell and as such. That is difficult and in practice rare.

Now we think of a slogan, Rs.5,000/- per acre in a year. To accomplish this successfully certainly it is not enough to know the agriculture techniques and practise it on the farm. At the very first step the work will crumble to pieces. The person who conceives of this idea must be attracted by Work, not by the possibility of success; the latter has no life in itself, whereas the former is dynamic in its constitution and function. The idea of success is effervescent, has no reality of force behind it. It can scarcely withstand the touch of life-facts that are hard knocks.

There are a few layers of existence where smooth function is necessary, a function that is informed by energy of conception and living. One is the soil - climate - animal - plant layer. The second is the central organizer - his colleagues - team of workers. The last is the rendezvous of the ideal of the human complex on the farm and that of the social fabric wherein he lives. That is why we often hear that a good work well conceived and executed suddenly starts petering out into extinction. The real reason is the work would have overlooked certain essential but invisible factors. Hostility, daring hostile acts from the social environment, totally inexplicable by reason, suddenly crop up and maintain themselves with a vengeance.

To achieve a prosperity on the farm on a scale envisaged by Rs.5,000/- per acre the following preliminaries are to be considered.

  • a) The people in the area, or the person who initiates it on his own farm, must really have a felt need for it and it should be all absorbing for him in his life as a way of life. That is by feeling a deep need he should generate the requisite psychological energy to make the work possible and later a going concern. Taken to as a good idea, as a possible field of success, a field of employment, something to do with, it can be assured that it will never be begun.
  • b) The surroundings must in some measure approve of the idea, give a mental sanction, take to similar efforts however feebly. Otherwise a crack will develop between the farm and village and the existence of the farm cannot be long.
  • c) The central person must have a team of colleagues who have a similar felt need and the issuing prosperity must have a commensurate social utility and consequence. Money cannot for long be made for money's sake. Rather it will never be successfully made.
  • d) The working in tune with the needs of the soil, plant and animal complex is of paramount need without which absence of germination, disease, low yields and withering of plants can be witnessed.
  • e) The financial investment MUST be attracted by the force of the scheme - personality, i.e. money must by itself move towards work. To look for monetary assistance for a well conceived scheme is to announce the absence of life at its very center.



story | by Dr. Radut