February 2002
DIALOGUE WITH NANDI
The resilience of ancient civilisations such as that of Indiaճ has fascinated many Western observers. In the face of Western decline will the third millennium belong to Eastern cultures? What is the source of Indiaճ steadfastness despite economic and social pressures? Can Nandi provide an answer?
BEING PUZZLED BY INDIA
India is a fabulous country. And a continually surprising one. While the economies of all countries around it have been crashing, India has held steadfast. What business did it have to stand aloof from the present turmoil? What insolence indeed, while her neighbours, considered so much Better managed have crashed one after another. Curiously enough, the learned gurus of the economic gospel of the West have kept silent on India in recent months. Somehow they did not have anything to say, especially, why it survived so well.
I have always felt that there is more to India than meets the economic eye. I have been an eager scholar of past civilisations and strange to say of future civilisations. I anticipate with a great eagerness the arrival of the Third Millennium. I believe it will be much better than the one we are in the process of ending. I am convinced that the turn for the better will not come from the treasury of Western wisdom. It will come from the East. India will play a major part in shaping the Third Millennium.
In the course of this essay I will explain some of the circumstances that have led me to this opinion. But first, let me share with the reader some of my background. I was born in Poland and spent the first thirty years there, living through the World War II and the Marxist debacle (until the early sixties). The next thirty years I spent in the West: five years in Britain (mainly at Oxford) and twenty seven years in the USA, mainly teaching at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. I am a western man. Yet, the fact of my being born and brought up in Poland, in rather difficult times, made my perceptions and thinking different from the standard western man.
While in the USA, I observed and experienced the so-called melting pot, the wonderful cauldron in which all nationalities were supposed to melt into standard, honest-to-goodness America. In the early 1960s, Asians were still at the bottom of this melting pot, treated with some disdain as a slightly inferior race. The situation started to change dramatically in the 1980s when it was discovered that the top five per cent of graduating students of the best American universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Stanford, and others, were mainly Asian students. This caused consternation amidst almost inaudible murmurs of how can these coolies do so well? The trend has continued. In around 2020 many of these outstanding students of Asian background will be national leaders. Will they continue the same line of business as usual favouring mainly big business at the expense of the people? Or will they per chance embark on new visions and perspectives, rooted in their Asian values and their profound cultures? I have got my answer to this question.
In 1994 I visited a friend in Southern California, whose wife is a piano teacher. Well, not just a piano teacher but an outstanding piano teacher. Year after year her students have been invariably winning important piano competitions to the disbelief and envy of other teachers. I visited her studio in Pasadena. She had about 25 students in her classes at the time, the overwhelming percentage of which were Asian. It is precisely these Asian students who have been winning the competitions.
What is the secret? I asked. There is no secret, was the response. These are very talented people who work very hard. They revel in being at the top. They love submerging themselves in culture, especially high culture. What about American students from the mainstream? I continued asking. Are they not talented? They are talented, she responded. Otherwise they would not have been here. But they have a different attitude to practice and art. They do not take culture so seriously. Somehow the dominant American culture makes them excel in other things rather than high culture.
I thought it was a bit odd. These Asian students coming from poor immigrant families could excel in Western music, which they did not have in their bones and in their cultural roots, while white Americans, coming from well-to-do homes, in which they floated in Western culture (even if it was a bit superficial) were unable to do so. The achievement of these Asian kids puzzled me, particularly as they were not only musically gifted, but many of them so bright that they went to top US universities on special scholarships for brilliant students.
What was it in the Asian values that enabled them to do so? What was it in the Asian spirit that motivated them to do so? Why are so many Indians (with degrees from Indian universities) in the Silicon Valley in California, excelling in the very Western games of computer programming? The obvious answers were quite unsatisfactory. I kept searching, hoping that there were deeper answers to these questions somewhere.
I also remember a moment of astonishment, when in India in 1995, I learnt that the graduating students from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, were largely hired by foreign countries upon graduation, and employed abroad. It is generally known that the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), of which Madras IIT is one, are the best and most prestigious universities in India, and admit only the very best Indian students. Education is heavily subsidised by the state.
After I learnt that the graduates got their jobs abroad, mainly in the West, I thought to myself: What a success! But immediately another idea struck my mind: What a phenomenal waste! How can a country as poor as India afford to educate their best for almost free, and then let them go to foreign countries without any compensation? There was something not right in this whole process. The Indians cannot be so bright, on the one hand, and so dumb at the same time. I was puzzled by this dilemma.
THE UNEXPECTED EMERGENCE OF NANDI
In the late 1990s I was in India again. In the precincts of a Shiva Temple,
I saw a big standing Shiva. In front of the statue there was a bull carved in stone, in the sitting position, facing Lord Shiva. The bull in front of Lord Shiva, in all temples, is called Nandi. He is a protector of Shiva, a servant, a messenger, and a symbol of Shiva in many ways. While his master bristles with restless energy and is full of creative tension, Nandi, is passive, forever watching, and ever present.
Upon leaving the temple, I looked again at Nandi. He smiled passively, as usual. Yet, when I cast my last glance, his eyes were as if animated, as if he wanted to tell me something. I was in motion, actually passing him. When I did pass him, I thought to myself, how extraordinary was his last glance. I decided to return and stood in front of him again. The same passive smile, carved in stone. The stone is stone, it cannot tell you anything. As I was leaving again, I looked from a corner of my eye. Again there was something animated and revealing in his eyes. I am a tough rationalist. I do not hallucinate. I kept walking. But inside me there was this funny feeling, the realization that Nandi’s glance was really revealing.
The days and weeks passed by. Occasionally the mysterious smile of Nandi would come back. What does it mean, I asked myself. Then I changed the question: Does he want to tell me something? The idea struck me as rather preposterous. Yet from time to time Nandi would appear with a hint of urgency. But I was in no great hurry. Then I changed the question again: Does my sub-consciousness want to tell me something through the agency of Nandi? We all know that statues of either gods or animals do not talk. Yet we are also aware of the power of symbols and myths which work through our sub-conscious mind. We are aware that much more is going on in our sub-conscious mind than we can grasp and express. Thus my imagination and sub-consciousness were watching. I was also cognizant of Karl Popperճ methodology: it does not matter where the answers come from, as long as they are good. After you have got your answers, test them, see how explanatory they are, how much more they explain beyond what we have known already.
All the time, sometimes consciously, sometimes sub-consciously, I was looking for a solution to the dilemma of Western civilisation: why has our great technological prowess led us to a consumptive quagmire and the smallness of thinking which subverts our very being? Nandiճ appearances and disappearances were in the context of this larger search. Actually I got used to Nandi visiting me. He usually did so when I was in meditative spaces.
After a time, in my meditations or when my mind was not busy with immediate concerns, I started imaginary conversations with Nandi. I found it surprising, to say the least, that he was so forthcoming with his answers. Although these answers came from imaginary dialogues, they should not be dispensed with too easily as futile imagination. These answers struck me as very penetrating and illuminating.
Thus in my meditative state, I called on Nandi to respond to my queries about India, about its curious paradoxes; also about the world at large. One of my questions was: why is India so stupid, well, at least so impractical as to educate its best minds at its best universities and then let them go out to be employed by other nations which can well afford to train their own minds? Would it not be simpler and more reasonable to keep these bright and sparkling minds at home and improve the common lot of India?
It is not as simple as that, Nandi responded. We need to take a much broader perspective and employ a much deeper and far-reaching rationality. These young people from the IITs (let us take this as a classic example) go to America and get reasonably good jobs there. Soon enough they bring their families whomever they can. As a matter of fact India is exporting a lot of people, with good minds and good genes. These exports are heavily subsidised by India. Imagine that! A poor country like India is subsidising these exports to rich countries. These good minds and good genes are thrust in cultures which are denuded by materialism, bogged down by a very lowly conception of life. You see, Nandi would continue in a philosophical vein Western cultures are slowly withering. They need to be renewed somehow. They cannot renew themselves.
I would intervene with more questions: are you telling me that these bright Indians who are going abroad to greener pastures are going there not only for jobs but for a larger mission? Are you proposing to save Western civilisation by injecting fresh Indian blood into its tired veins?
Nandi would ignore the sarcasm of my questions and would reply simply. And why not? Except that the mission is not so much to save Western civilisation but perhaps replace it with something else.
But you don’t have enough people! Our strength is in numbers. We can send 100 million people abroad without being pinched in the slightest in India, whereas 100 million Indians in Europe or in America, would alter the whole continent and the entire culture.
But why are you sending your best, I would insist. Because, he would reply, the world needs the best to renew itself. I would press: and you are just doing that? Sending people with good minds and good genes? What is this business about good genes?
Nandi was very patient in responding. You are still not grasping the larger perspective. For centuries, ruthless and barbarous armies invaded India and dismembered it, while also exploiting it to the hilt. India has survived it. Because it had spiritual strength. The materialist and savage giants are still tramping all over the world. But it is their twilight. They are exhausted. The glimpse of a new dawn is on the horizon.
The world must renew itself Рhumanly, socially, ecologically and spiritually. Otherwise, it will not survive. It will not survive in the Third Millennium. We are not talking about the next ten years, but about a whole millennium. The old empires sent their marauding armies to suppress our people and to retard our quest for light. We are doing exactly the opposite. We are sending our best not to conquer and suppress but to bring more light and good energy. You have probably noticed how much energy there is in India Рradiant, bumptious energy of all kinds; in all kinds of places, among all kinds of people, including the poor. I am not talking about the poverty-stricken, but ordinary Indians who are poor by Western standards.
I was now intrigued and began to be fascinated by Nandi’s story. Yet I kept inquiring. Are you implying, I said, that the Indian mission is colonisation in reverse? Instead of going to other lands to exploit and plunder, you are going there to be good Samaritans, to sacrifice yourself for some greater good? You have got it right, said Nandi.
I interjected: but isn’t it too much, too naive and perhaps stupid to do that kind of thing in our selfish world? Besides, you seem to be casting yourself in some kind of messianic role. Is not it old-fashion and perhaps again, a bit stupid?
Nandi was patient again as he responded. You are still operating within the same cynical and limited mind-set. This mind-set is one of the problems of the whole western civilisation. From the standpoint of narrow selfishness, any sacrifice is nonsense. But looking deeper into the matter, we are bound to conclude that this narrow selfishness is nonsense. Just look at the entire history of humanity. Look at the whole evolutionary history, in broad outlines, that is. It is the history of cooperation, participation, give and take; and yes, of sacrifice. Prometheus is so much cherished in Western culture because he showed how through the sacrifice of one individual, so many benefits can be brought to others. Without genuine sacrifice, there is no true progress. I will not belabour the story of the sacrifice as exemplified by Jesus. You should know the meaning of this story well. It is a beautiful story which you Western people should remember.
In Hindu culture, Shiva is the god of creation and destruction. But he is also a guardian, the god of continuous vigilance. He cannot rest even for one second because then, in this very second, terrible things might happen to the people on earth whom he is protecting. We may say without much exaggeration that in every culture right sacrifice is appreciated.
Besides, he continued, we are not going to the West to sacrifice ourselves for merely your benefit. Our mission is to renew the world, to redress the balance, to straighten injustices. After centuries of being a whipping boy, destiny is calling us to help to create a new civilisation, a new world. Thus, we don’t go to America to be exploited and discarded as so many emigrants have been. The Indic culture is wiser than that. We go because the historic moment is right to implant the decaying culture with new seeds. Just think. How does a superior culture respond to the butchery of a crude materialist culture which thinks that it is the greatest because it has more war toys than anybody else? Obviously, we do not want to be engaged in any military conflict. Besides, this is not our way. Our way is ahimsa, non-violence. Violence never resolves anything. So we need to respond in a subtle way, as befits a superior culture. We send our best as a gift to humanity so that they start new enclaves of new light. These enclaves will grow. We have a lot of people to send. Ours is a rich culture. We have bright minds. We have good energy.
OUTRAGEOUS CLAIMS OF NANDI
And so Nandi continued. Reflect on this. In Western Europe, the most prosperous and so-called successful countries have a negative demographic growth. They are slowly de-populating by their own will. There is no vitality and no life-energy in these people. By the end of the 21st century there will be only 10 per cent of white people in the world. By the end of the 23rd century, the white race, as such, will more or less disappear. There will be pockets of white people here and there; and maybe some reservations populated with white people. We need to start preparing now for the end of the 23rd century, and for the Fourth Millennium. We, the Indic people, want this transition to be peaceful, not violent. We want it to be a transition into light, not a bloody upheaval ending in another journey into darkness. This is why we send our best to prepare the way.
I listened to Nandi with disbelief, fascination and dismay. Could he be right I asked myself? After a while I recovered my wits and started asking. Are you saying that because of your genes and superior energy you are going to renew the world? What you are saying is outrageous! Are you serious when you call India a superior culture? Isn’t it an expression of megalomania, of outright racism? Do you think that any intelligent person can accept this arrogance, megalomania, crypto-racism?
Hm, responded Nandi. You are using big words which in effect attempt to intimidate me. I have to tell you again that the picture is much larger than you are allowing for megalomania, racism, intolerance. Very charged words. Look at the American civilisation, nay the American empire. Don’t you see how megalomaniac and puffed up they have been. At every junction they have been telling everybody, either implicitly or explicitly, how great and superior they are. Asian people especially have been treated as third rate pulp. The Americans don’t even realize how contemptuous and smug their attitudes have been, particularly to people of colour. This is true racism.
And what did this superior American civilisation bring to the world, in addition to various gadgets? Violence! Violence on the screen. Violence in the media. Violence in the family. Violence among children whereby teenagers are killing without reason, as if possessed by a demon of violence. And finally, globalisation as a new world order. Globalism is a new form of violence. It is old-fashioned imperialism carried out through economic and electronic means.
We, non-violent people of various colours, want to do it differently. Because, finally all of us must do it differently. You cry that our quest is a form of racism. But I beseech you to understand that it is not. Racism is this attitude of the mind (and of the heart) which tries to diminish others for your own sake. Racism is full of hatred and venom. We, in turn, bring love, compassion. We are trying to ameliorate the human lot not by diminishing others but by upgrading the entire human race. We do not benefit from the process. We sacrifice ourselves. This is not racism. When Jesus opposed the corrupt ways of the Pharisees and advocated love as superior and the best way for all, this was not racism. Let us remember this example which should be dear to the Western heart.
I found myself short of breath and out of balance. I said, you are using strange analogies. Besides, do you think that America will ever allow what you are postulating to happen even if it had a remote chance of happening? Don’t you see that what you are preaching is going against the grain of history? Don’t you see that dominant thinking outlines an altogether different model of the future? Don’t you see that your ideas clash with democracy as it is presently envisaged?
And Nandi responded. I am not going against the grain of history. I am merely pointing out the superficiality of history pursued and promoted by the West. Will America allow developments which do not favour its present ideology? By bullying and intimidation, America will try to stop these developments. The big club is not the best instrument for creating a new world order. Violence is a poor substitute for wisdom. America is not as strong as it thinks and pretends to be. The inner fabric is weak and fractured. For this reason alone it needs the new Asian immigrants. In its sub-conscious mind it welcomes them. The USA should actually be grateful for this new blood coming from India. They are very bright and versatile as has been shown by their excellence at the top American universities and by winning all kinds of trophies in musical compositions. This Indian blood comes from a culture which is tolerant. Indian culture has shown that it can accommodate so much and tolerate so much. When the time of transition comes, from the white mind-set to the non-white mind-set, the Indians will not harbour any grudges, they will seek no revenge. They will be ready for a peaceful transition.
And Nandi continued. This question of democracy would worry me if it were true that my proposals and arguments upset or undermine democracy in its true meaning. On the contrary, my schemes favour universal democracy. When new ideas about society and a new world order are proposed and when they happen to be at variance with the American dominant ideology, invariably the shouts are heard from the American camp: It is against democracy, it is against our freedom Ѡeven if this freedom signifies exploitation of others.
American democracy has worked for America. But even this proposition is open to doubt. The American democratic system has not worked for the whole society; it has not benefited a majority of the people. It really has worked well for the top 10 per cent of American society, the stratum which controls America, its media, its ideology; and of course, its business and its finance sector. Let us face it, the vested interests of 10 per cent of the people of any country, which manipulate the rest of the country and which try to manipulate the rest of the world, cannot be deemed as a paragon of democracy.
Now the population of the USA consists of 5.5 per cent of the world population. The top 10 per cent of the people who guide, manoeuvre and adjust the course of American democracy translates to only 0.5 per cent of the global population. A rather modest figure Рdonմ you think? Universal democracy is a system which represents the wishes, needs and aspirations of the world population. Would we wish to consider a world model as truly democratic which is governed by and for the benefit of 0.5 per cent of the world population? This is not an expression but a denial of democracy. Yet this is what America tries to do.
I got overwhelmed by this global talk of Nandi. So I tried to bring him down to more tangible questions. You have mentioned that the future belongs to the Asian mind-set, I said. Yet you have studiously avoided mentioning other Asian nations. What about China?
Yes, China is important, said Nandi, very important. However to become a true leader, it will have to overcome its bad karma of the last 50 years. China is a proud, great and spiritually important country. The last 50 years (for all its historical necessity) represent a fall into an abyss. A kind of partial amnesia has occurred. The mind and especially the soul have been blunted and denuded. China will need to recover its soul. Then, together with India it will be a true leader of people. Incidentally, China is not fully aware of how important the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism could have become for the restoration of the Chinese psyche and soul. Granting a form of autonomy to Tibet would be, at this time, an act of political wisdom. This could signify the beginning of a big wave of spiritual re-awakening for China. Even as it is, China will play an increasingly significant role in the world. By the year 2035, it will be the most significant nation in the world. But we are talking about the 23rd century and beyond. In centuries to come, an altogether different mind-set and values must prevail.
I interjected, you say so Nandi. But why? What is the reason for it all? You spin out your idealistic dreaming and you expect us to believe it. Do you?
Nandi took quite a while before he responded. You people of excessively rational minds, you have lost the capacity for larger comprehension. Your thinking is so narrow. You think that because things have been so yesterday and today, that they will be so tomorrow and 50 years from now, and 500 years from now. It is just foolish to think so. Things were quite different 500 years ago. You forgot this too. This idiotic pragmatic yardstick which we apply to everything past, present and future is lamentable. It is truly a sign of mental deficiency. You see, Western civilisation is stuck. The whole Western culture developed in the last millennium is stuck. It has nowhere to go. It has no other visions, perspectives, alternatives. It is stuck in its consumptive quagmire. Its imagination is denuded, its spiritual substance depleted.
But evolution must go on. And it is not going to be only the evolution of electronic chips or potato chips. There are much greater evolutionary forces than those which can be accommodated within the present pragmatic schemes. Evolution is at a new turning point. After it has experimented, during the last four centuries, with the mechanistic instrumentation of the cosmos and of human life, it is now searching for new ways. It wants to go forward and upward. Evolution is not a trivial thing whose purpose is to evolve more efficient gadgets. Evolution is this tremendous magnificent force which helps to unfold what is hidden in our evolutionary potential, which helps to bring to fruition our evolution, our destiny. It is this evolution, the mighty Maker of new forms of life, the subtle sculptor chiseling within us new sensitivities and new powers of becoming, which is now directing the flow of Asian energy to quietly replace the Western decaying world.
A bit shaken and dejected, I said to Nandi, I hope you are not right. For if you are, this spells a lot of trouble for the world, especially for the Western world and America in particular; a lot of trauma, pain, fracturing of existing structures.
I thought you were going to say, he responded, I hope you are right Nandi. For if I am not, the Western world is in really deep trouble. You are completely stuck. In agony. You are already in pain and sufficiently traumatised. You are a culture without visions and perspectives. A civilisation unworthy to continue, let alone to lead others.
I interrupted. What you are saying is completely crazy. The West is still very powerful and it has the best minds.
It would seem so on the surface, he responded, but it is not so. The West is not powerful. Look at these disempowered people all around. Look at the economic chaos created by the West. Furthermore, the West does not have the best minds. If it did, it would not have found itself in a sea of intractable problems. Yes, your minds are efficient, purposeful, manipulative. But these are the blind minds. They do not see any larger picture. They are spiritually dead.
I protested. Still, what you are saying is crazy or at least unacceptable from the Western point of view.
This may be so, he agreed. I have come here to deliver the West from its curse, not to listen to your sobbing arguments that you are still so great.
There is so much arrogance in your attitude I retorted.
Listen, it is not so, he said. I have come here to redress the balance. I don’t talk to people who cannot understand. I just do my thing, which means to bring a thorough renewal to the human race. If you have any complaints, talk to my master, Shiva.
Shiva? Where is he?
He is in your heart. He is in the cosmic mind.
Here we go again. The cosmic mind and the truth of the heart. This is what we call irrational.
Look, what have you accomplished with your rationality? Hell on earth. Without the cosmic mind and the truth of the heart, you cannot go anywhere; not in the evolutionary sense. This I know. This, my master has taught me well.
And he disappeared, refusing to talk any further. I shouted at him while he was disappearing: How do we join your Millennium of Light and Meaning if we don’t want to be left out?
He whispered from a distance hardly audible: The human condition is capable of extraordinary new departures if there is the will, wisdom and vision to guide us.
Henryk Skolimowski
