India's Ancient Culture

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 1: The Definition of Culture

India has always been considered as the repository of one of the earliest of cultures. Cultures are there in every country, but Indian culture is said to be one of the most ancient, historically speaking. So there is some point in trying to go a little deep into the ancient circumstance that gave rise to the kind of culture which we call Indian culture.

The word 'culture' is something which requires to be defined in an adequate manner. It is a process of purification. Culturing a thing implies analysis and purification. Indian culture or any culture—human culture, so to say—is the theme connected with the efflorescence, the development, the onward progress, the extent to which perfection has been attained by a group of people or an individual, and there has been purification of the inner nature. Culture is connected with the inner life of a person, and whatever the inner life of a person is will decide their outer behaviour because we cannot conduct ourselves outwardly in a manner different from what we are inside. The way in which we speak to people, our physical gestures, our demeanour, our deportment and our social concourse with people outside are a manifestation of what we are within. In our social relations, which are culturally oriented, we express outwardly what we are inside.

Therefore, the culture of a people, the culture of a nation, the culture of a country is the cumulative product, so to say, of the culture of the individuals constituting that particular nation or country, broadly speaking. It does not mean that every individual thinks identically with every other person. Every individual has his own or her own pattern of a general outlook of life, taken independently. Yet, apart from there being a difference in the minor details of the outlook of life by individuals, there is a general consensus of opinion, a broad-based outlook which determines a community, a large group of people, and so apart from individual differences which are practically negligible, we may say, there is a general consciousness which brings people together into a nationality, into a cultural background—that is to say, into a general outlook of life.

Culture, therefore, is a product of a general outlook of life. What do we think about ourselves? What do we think about other people around us? What do we think about this world into which we were born? What is our general idea about things—the world and the individual included? Our reaction to the outer atmosphere of the world and people outside is our culture. We react in a particular manner in respect of conditions prevailing outside, and our reaction will show what kind of culture it is that we are endowed with or that we are born into. Something is happening in the world outside, in nature. Something is happening among people outwardly. There is a large country. There is a large world. There are people. Something is happening to them or they are doing something, and we react in a particular manner to these events taking place in society or in the world in general. How do we react? That reaction is the product of our culture. We react in a particular manner in respect of natural history, as well as social history. This is a very subtle point because though individual reactions in respect of particular events may vary from moment to moment, from person to person, general reactions are common, and they lay the very foundation of a community. Thus, cultures can be individual and also collective.

India is a country with millions of people inhabiting it, and each person has his own or her own way of thinking due to individual differences in his or her evolutionary stage, but commonly an Indian is supposed to think in a general and a collective manner. There is some common background on which an Indian thinks, in spite of there being so many differences among individuals. That commonness of thought that we find in India, among its citizens, is the culture thereof. This is what we call Indian culture.

Before I go further into this subject, I request you to read two books thoroughly, from cover to cover. The first book is The Foundations of Indian Culture written by Sri Aurobindo. The second book is The Human Cycle, also by Aurobindo. The book was originally called The Psychology of Social Development, and now it has been reprinted under a different title, The Human Cycle, and is clubbed together with another book that he wrote. The entire book now goes under the title of The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, War and Self-Determination. But this book must be read after the first book, The Foundations of Indian Culture. This is a standard work which will inspire you not only by the elevated style of English literature, but also by the profundity of thought. It is a classic. There is another book which is also very inspiring and interesting: Eastern Religions and Western Thought by S. Radhakrishnan. There are many other books, but as you have no time to read too many books, I suggested only the basic fundamentals.

I mentioned that culture is basically an outlook of life. What do you think about life? You would have noticed that generally when you think, you think in three ways. First of all, you think of your own self. You look within and think about yourself. Every day you think about yourself for some reason or the other, because you are very important to yourself. You cannot ignore your existence. Right from morning onwards you think of yourself. That is the first thought. Then you think about other people. You look within at your own self, and you look without at the world outside. This without includes not only the world of nature, but also the world of people. Subjectively you think of yourself, and objectively you think of nature and history, as we may put it. By 'history' I mean the movement and performance of people. You look at yourself and you look at others, the others including nature as well as people outside.

Then there is a third way of thinking, which generally is not a concomitant of your normal way of thinking. The mind gets so much occupied with one's own self and with other people outside, due to its having to deal with the external atmosphere from one's own point of view, that there is very little time left to think of the third item, though the third item will also come up for insistent consideration one day or the other, especially when you are totally dissatisfied with both your own way of living and the way in which people outside live. You are somehow or other not satisfied. You feel that there is something wrong somewhere. Something is wrong with you, and something is wrong with other people also. The world itself does not seem to be satisfying.

As long as you feel there is some point in being satisfied with the conditions prevailing in the world, the third outlook will not arise in your mind. Why should there be any necessity to think of a third thing when you are perfectly all right, there is nothing wrong with you, and people in the world are also perfectly all right? They are all getting on well. What is wrong with them? The world is fine. If this is so, you will have only two ways of thinking: the within and the without—the subject and the object, as they are called philosophically. The subjective side and the objective side constitute the whole of human thought. But there is something which is neither a subject nor an object, which will speak in its own language one day or the other when neither the subjective side nor the objective side are going to satisfy.

In youth, when you are little boys and girls, budding adolescents, you are not quite acquainted with either the components of your inner psychological world or with the world outside. Even your own ways of thinking are new to you. Young boys and girls are not good psychologists. They are mostly carried away by instincts, emotions, and a kind of enthusiasm which spurts up not by the application of reason but by a combination of instinct and emotion. That is why young people are difficult to control. They do not want any kind of discipline because discipline is a rational application of certain principles, and rationality is set aside to a large extent when instinct and emotion become predominant. Students in schools and colleges are turbulent and very disobedient, and do not always subject themselves to the rules and conduct of study or education because of their rationality not yet having properly manifested itself into a state of maturity, and their natural instincts and emotions taking an upper hand.

But you will not be always students. As you progress and have a better experience of the world, something will tell you that this kind of life is not fully satisfying. You will feel that it is something like a drudgery which you have been passing through, that there is some problem every day with you, and with others also. Something is not at all satisfying.

Something should be satisfying, but nothing in the world is going to be satisfying. You cannot complain against anything unless you have a solution for it. You have an idea that things should be a certain way; therefore, you say things are not all right. So when you do not feel satisfied with your own self or with the world outside, it is because there is something which you have placed before yourself as a standard, in comparison with which you complain against the world or against your own self. You have set a standard. That standard cannot be yourself because you are dissatisfied with yourself, and that standard cannot be the world outside because that also is not satisfying. You have got a peculiar, nebulous, unarticulated ideal which seems to be calling you and telling you that it exists. This is the third way of looking, and is what is called 'looking above'. Looking within, looking without and looking above, these are the three ways of looking by the mind of a human individual.

Philosophical thoughts, religious ideals or a spiritual encounter with life are connected with looking above. This 'above' is not actually looking to the skies. It is a logical aboveness. It is a circumstance which pulls you and attracts your attention. The words 'within', 'without' and 'above' that I used should not be taken literally as physical locations. It is not that something is here, something is there, and something else is somewhere else. The terms have to be taken and understood in their proper spirit, and not merely in their letter. The withinness is a conditioned limitation of the psyche, and the withoutness is a condition under which you look at the world of people. Both these conditions, being only conditions, do not satisfy you because of the fact they are conditions, and you want to be unconditioned. You feel that limitations are abhorrent, and you do not like any kind of limitation. The world is limiting you, and you are limiting the world. You do not like the world, and the world will not agree with you; therefore, you are always at loggerheads. You want to find a solution for this state of affairs by resorting to some principle which will not be partisan, either on your side or on the side of the world. This principle will stand like an umpire in a game, not belonging to either party.

Cultural values are not subjective values. It is not just what you think because you want to think it. Cultural values also do not mean just what other people think. It is something which people in general are expected to think for a harmonious way of existing. It is not my thought or your thought; it is the thought of human beings in general which they have to entertain for their common welfare. Otherwise, if I have my own thoughts and you have your own thoughts, we cannot have a life of community, and there cannot be the integration of a national spirit. There cannot be a country, as we call it. The whole country thinks in only one way: “This is my country.” So Italians say, Germans say, French say, Indians say, everybody says “this is my country”. The person who says “this is my country” does not think merely from his or her point of view. He somehow or other transports himself into a way of thinking which is in consonance with the general pattern of the life of the whole nation. It is a kind of universal, generalised form of thinking. Cultural thinking, or cultured thinking, as we may like to put it, is a thought that rises above both pure subjectivity and pure objectivity. Neither are we connected purely with what is happening outside, nor are we limiting our thoughts to ourselves only, individually.

To be a cultured person, therefore, is not an easy thing. You may study books in a school or a college, you may be educated, but you need not be cultured. Education is not the same as culture. Education gives you information about things, but culture refines your personality. That is the difference. You may have a degree, but you may not be a refined person. You may have a degree in physics or chemistry or history, you may be well informed as to what history is, physics is, chemistry is, but if you do not know anything about yourself, you are not a refined person, not a polished person, not a smooth-going person. You do not attract; you repel, rather. That would be an uncultured person's attitude. Therefore, education need not be considered as the same as culture.

But education is supposed to be a medium for making a person cultured, and if today's educational system does not make a person cultured, so much the worse for it. We have job-oriented education, technological education; we have the arts and sciences, humanities and so on, but they are all connected with limited areas of thought. A person who is proficient in physics knows nothing of history, a well learned man of history knows nothing of chemistry, etc. They are aliens in their own psychological world. To be cultured is to be human, and to be cultured is to be able to rise above the purely subjective way of thinking or the purely externalised way of thinking. You should not condition your thought either to your own personality or to some group of people outside—a communal way of thinking, as they call it, a fundamentalist way of thinking. All these have to be transcended. A cultured person is not an ordinary individual; a kind of super-individual is that person, super-individual because of the fact that this person has risen above the ordinary limitations of human individuality.

What are the limitations of human individuality? Physical instincts such as hunger and thirst, and psychological pressures such as egoism play a dominant role in our lives. We have to eat every day. A very important point it is. We have to get a good meal at least once every day. This is a very basic need, physically unavoidable, and it cannot be ignored under any circumstances. Whatever be the conditions prevailing in the world, that we require a meal every day is first and foremost, and we are always keeping an eye on it. Secondly, we require to be recognised. An unrecognised person is not a happy person. Otherwise, we will feel we are nothing. There is what is called self-regard. We always feel that we are something, and we would not like to be treated as nothing. We are somebody, and we would not like to be told that we are nobody. We require to be respected. That is the ego working, and this instinct is stronger than even hunger. For some reason we may starve without food for three days, but we would not like to be starved of our self-respect. Rather, we would starve for days together for the sake of gaining self-respect if we feel that our respectability is going to be enhanced under certain conditions which require us to be without food. We may have to work very hard to see that our self-respect is taken to its pitches, that we are socially respectable to the highest point. If the highest respectability can be gained by working hard, involving a little bit of starving, we would not mind it. When political electioneering takes place, for instance, people who stand for election and who wish that they be lifted up to a high position of respectability in social circles may have to run about here and there, sometimes without being able to eat or sleep. Without sleeping, without eating, we can exist for some time, but without self-respect we cannot exist for even a day. The ego is a stronger instinct than other instincts. But a cultured person rises above this basic, crude, limiting condition to which he is subjected by the ego and by physical conditions.

A human being is a person who can recognise humanity in another person also. It is not that we want everything and others do not want anything. The meal that we require and the respect that we are asking for are also craved by other people. A human being is an unselfish individual in the sense that he or she is capable of recognising the same human characteristics in other people also. We love others as we love ourselves, and we would be able to treat others in the same way as we would like to treat ourselves.

The basic factor behind a cultured person's behaviour is that person is able to look at others, treat others, behave with others in the same way as one would behave with one's own self, or one would wish others to behave with one's own self. In what manner would we like others to behave with us? We have some idea, a standard set of the manner in which we wish that others treat us. That very manner is the way in which we have to treat other people. In a way, there is a give-and-take policy between us and the world. The world will give us exactly what we give to it. We cannot expect from the world what we are not prepared to give to it. If we ill-treat the world psychologically or socially, it will ill-treat us in the same way.

Why does this happen? It happens because we are part and parcel of the world, both from the point of view of nature and of society. The physical body is constituted of five elements: earth, water, fire, air and ether. In that sense, we are a part of nature because nature is constituted of the same five elements: earth, water, fire, air and ether. The same are the constituents of our physical personality, this anatomical physiological personality. We are one with nature as far as the basic building bricks of our personality are concerned—the same physiology, the same anatomy. Socially also, we are one with people. Some people say that man is a social animal. Maybe he is an animal, that is a different matter, but he is social. Sociality means the capacity to come in contact with people in a harmonious manner. Disharmonious relationships cannot be called social relations. That would be antisocial relations. The harmony that is necessary for the survival of people is the sociability thereof. Why is it necessary to be social with other people? It is because in order to survive, we require the collaboration and cooperation of other people. We want other people to cooperate with us and help us whenever necessary. But why should they help us if there is no connection between ourselves and other people? The necessary connection between ourselves and other people for the purpose of a reasonably comfortable existence, and even survival, is the sociability that we are speaking of.

All these are a part and parcel of cultural behaviour, and whatever words I spoke to you today form a kind of base which is partly psychological, partly sociological, and perhaps to some extent it is even philosophical. Culture, therefore, is partly psychological, partly sociological, partly philosophical. Why is it so? It is psychological because we are involved in it, it is sociological because other people are involved in it, and it is philosophical because life is involved in something which is more than ourselves and other people. A transcendent element controls the destiny of the whole world. That comes under the theme of philosophy. Therefore, cultural studies generally include psychological studies, sociological studies and philosophical studies.

In this course regarding India's ancient heritage, the scheme that I will follow is something like this. Firstly, I have mentioned a basic factor: how we have to start thinking at all before we start thinking of culture. And I have also said something about what culture is in its essentiality. Now, inasmuch as we have used the words 'India's ancient culture', it will also have something historical about it. So apart from the three factors I mentioned—psychology, sociology and philosophy—we may have to add a fourth factor now, called history. In connection with this particular subject, there will be India's ancient history over and above psychology, sociology and philosophy. It is a very vast subject.