If non-Western people regain a position of equality and recover their own deepest values, they may contribute to the solution

“Look at where you want to go and put all your efforts into it”
Staff Reporter The Hindu Saturday, Feb 16, 2008 Other States - Puducherry
Meet on Sri Aurobindo conducted at Auroville
Photo: T. Singaravelou ON TRUTH: Michael Murphy, member of the International Advisory Council, Auroville Foundation and chairman of the Esalen Institute, speaking at the inauguration of a three-day meet at Auroville on Friday. —

PUDUCHERRY: Michael Murphy, member of the International Advisory Council, Auroville Foundation, who is also co-founder of the Esalen Institute, said transformation of matter was just a matter of time. It was better not to think of how far have we gone and how far we still had to go.
“Its better to think only of running and nothing else… you look at where you want to go and put all your efforts into it. Sri Aurobindo has said that transformation of matter will be the final stage and before that happens, you have supermental methods of finding the truth.”

Mr. Murphy was speaking at a meet, ‘Sri Aurobindo… the new dynamism of the material and the spiritual,’ organised by the Centre of Indian Studies, Bharat Nivas in Auroville on Friday.
Sri Aurobindo had discussed various methods by which the final transformation may take place. But there is no question that such a transformation will take place. The question now was perhaps whether the beginnings of this transformation of matter could be detected.
When evolution has taken place the lower consciousness does not know about it, he said and added that it was simply not possible for us using merely mental processes to detect the workings of the supermental consciousness.

Richard Hartz, who has studied philosophy and Indian languages at Yale and the University of Washington, in his paper titled ‘This Little Whirling Globe’ said globalisation was the culmination of a process that has been going on for millennia.
It is now entering a new phase. If non-Western people regain a position of equality and recover their own deepest values, they may contribute to the solution of problems that have been created largely by Western domination and exploitation of the earth and its inhabitants.

Ram Sehgal, Group Advisor, Rediffusion DYR, in his paper on ‘Can technology lead us to our goal - divine, the explorer, the innovator,’ said globalisation, knowledge explosion and its democratisation and technology were converging in a manner as never before.
Man, he said, would continue to resist change as it is part of his nature. Till a few decades ago, things happened at much slower pace and time for absorption was granted. Today the speed of change and the turmoil it was creating is testimony to the new force and consciousness that is forcing the issue. Man was being thrown into situations meant to wake him up and sooner or later he had to wake up to the fact.

Kittu Reddy, who teaches at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education and is a founding member of the Academic Advisory of the Army Welfare Education Society, presented some points on organisational structures.
If man could realise a perfect spiritual unity, no sort of uniformity would be necessary; for the utmost play of diversity would be securely possible on that foundation. In order to realise a spiritual unity in a group, it is indispensable that there are at first a few individuals who have spiritualised themselves. If and when such a thing takes place, then the organisation may be securely centred on these spiritualised individuals.

Jean-Yves Lung, who has been in Auroville since 1993 and is a teacher there, spoke about a psychological approach to global warming. Global warming is mainly addressed as a technical problem to be solved. Only a few dare to think that it questions our psychology, what we have chosen to become and embody in our consciousness.
The technical approach, he said was an easy one and was based on the belief that science and technology would always save us from our psychological mistakes and erase the consequences of our unfortunate choices.

Aster Patel, member of the Governing Body, Auroville Foundation, said we live increasingly in a world where the material borders on the immaterial, where the objective loses its domain to a widening expanse of the subjective. And a new seeking for the spiritual rises up in us.