Acharya Mahaprajna
Daily Excelsior
Every man's consciousness needs two dimensions. Anuvrat is the principle of the development of individual consciousness. Fraud and deceit prevail and many problems arise where group consciousness is sought to be developed without first developing individual consciousness.
Political ideologues tried to develop socialism and communism. The motive was not bad; in fact it was sublime and compassionate. But one thing was forgotten. They tried to develop collective or group consciousness and forgot to look after individual consciousness. As a result, the noble aim sought was defeated, purity was lost, fraudulence and deceit went on flourishing and the rot spread to the whole society.
Development of individual consciousness is vitally important. Anuvrat's code of conduct is a code to develop individual consciousness. It is said that anuvrat does not address itself to the development of group or social consciousness. Particularly people in western countries keep telling that while they are working for the good of society, we are doing it for the good of individuals. They wonder how the entire world can improve in a finite period of time if attention is directed to individuals. According to them, individuals would reform in one stroke once social consciousness is developed. It is a nice thought but impossible to translate into reality. Social consciousness will not awaken without being based on the purity of individual consciousness
Let us recall the well-known story of a ruler who ordered that each individual subject had to drop a jug full of milk in the town's empty pond that night so that the pond could be full of milk by next morning. The ruler visited the site in the morning and found the pond full of water. The reason was that each man had thought that after all his one jug of water would make no visible difference to the filling of the pond by milk. The result was that the pond got filled with water instead of milk.
The lesson to be drawn is that the level of thinking depends upon the level of individual consciousness.
The making of a good man and of a good world cannot be conceived until collective consciousness gets the basic support of individual consciousness. The basic principle of anuvrat has been to make individual consciousness so pure that the edifice of social consciousness may be erected on its basis. For any mansion to be big and strong there has to be a strong foundation. Anuvrat is the basic support on which a pure social consciousness can be developed.
No society can function that does not have a tradition of nonviolence. If we glance at social history we find that society was formed only on the basis of nonviolence. Primitive man who lived in the jungle was uncultured. He lived in isolation. But once man came out of the jungle and began forming groups in villages or small towns, he had to enter into a social contract. It was based on reciprocity. No one shall trouble anyone else. All shall live together, cooperate with one another and shall not harm one another. Society was formed on the basis of the above contract.
The basis of collective consciousness is reciprocity and that of individual consciousness is self-restraint. We should concentrate our attention on these two elements. There is no alternative to self-restraint if we want to purify individual consciousness, and self-restraint means restraint on desires, natural dispositions, the mind, the senses, the body and the food. This restraint shows individual purity. If collective consciousness is built on the basis of restraint, it will develop reciprocity. Society breaks down if reciprocity is sought to be built in the absence of restraint. Fratricidal crimes and bureaucratic corruption breed precisely because of lack of restraint. All scams can be traced to it. It is obvious that without developing purity and individual consciousness, a society cannot remain healthy.