Life was negative with a vengeance until 1900, maybe until the end of World War II. It made survival difficult. Most people struggled to hold on to what they had. The question of opportunity was unheard of.  When Benjamin Disraeli became the Prime Minister of England, he described his rise as, "At last I have reached the top of the greasy pole." In an expressive proverb it is said here that if we rise 6 inches, there is a slide down of 12 inches awaiting us around the corner. It was so because Mind was not sufficiently organised in those days. Life is a lower force.

There are serious occasions in life. When a man's debts rise to double the level of his worth, or a poor girl at the age of 36 wishes for marriage, or many other such things coming under that category happen, normally we dwell on the misfortune. The problem has a refractory character. When you think of it, it draws your energy through that attention -- maybe we can call it negative attention - and starts growing in strength. Man is not made to forget his misfortune.

Religious worship is for all. Spirituality is for those who have the call.  There was a time when bicycle was for all and car was meant for the wealthy elite. This is not longer so. At least in America, everyone owns a car which was as much a rarity there as it was here fifty years ago. Again, those who needed a car were expected to deposit the full amount months in advance and wait for the delivery. It is again no longer so. Even loans are liberally advanced to salaried employees to buy a car.

We Indians believe that our life is fixed. When the appointed hour arrives, no power is there to put it off. It is true for all men, but not for Rishis who can choose their hour of departure. A man dies when his own soul and the Superconscient together sanction it and never otherwise. Philosophically that is true of all small events. Sri Aurobindo divides knowledge into four types. 1. Egoistic knowledge 2. Non-egoistic, subliminal knowledge 3. Intuition 4. Knowledge by identity. Moksha is knowledge by identity. Man dissolves in the Spirit and achieves identification.

The impulse of help makes one human. The phrase Good Samaritan is age-old. One offers to help another because the impulse of Selflessness is active. Society exists because of such help, which is often mutual help. Before the society created a government and its departments like police, justice and fire service, society existed as a collective because of the individual and collective impulse to help one another. If help is not there, there will be no society, no family and nothing worth living for. As everything else, helping tendency has its other side.

Nirupama, age 16, is the only child of idealistic parents who gave up their profession of auditing and teaching to found a school. They never sent their child to school. They taught her at home. It meant that both of them spent all their thoughts on how to teach a child at home and having that as the only mission in life, gave their all to her mental growth. At the age of 16 she excels those who have taught at the university level for ten years or even twenty years. The child is not a prodigy. She is an ordinary child.

Over the ages societies have grown. The growth has been in population, wealth, lifestyle, comfort, convenience, education, welfare and well-being. Historians have offered various explanations for such growth and they are all valid partially. In India we witness visible growth in the recent decades. The question is where does this growth come from? Why has such a growth not been witnessed since 1947? Today we see the vegetable vendor on the road having a Rs.500/- currency note. This is not a question pertaining to India.

It is a job for the mother to compel her child to sit down and do the homework. It is equivalent to punishment. There are schools which give no homework. They help children to learn reading at the age of 4 or even 3. Such a child, as soon as she wakes up, takes a book and starts reading. All day long that child is found reading. The job of the parent is to continue to supply books. This is not only true in learning. Teach workers the right skill of doing their work, and they won't go home until their work is perfectly done.

"All is in each, each in all" is an Upanishadic formula. When a house is on fire, everyone in the village rushes to put out the fire. Village life is based on our spiritual principle that one man's misfortune is really the misfortune of all. Insurance is based on this principle. A man who owns a godown with 1 lakh worth of goods pays a fire insurance premium of Rs. 500/-. Hundreds and thousands of traders do it. The premium collects in the company. In case of an accident, he who paid Rs.500/- receives a compensation of one lakh.

A very intelligent person, often, does not think of himself as an intelligent one. He who often thinks he is intelligent or sometimes proclaims that he is, is one who is not really intelligent but tries to be so. It is true with wealth. Newly rich people are conscious of their wealth and never speak to others without mentioning how much they are worth. Strength, when it is real, is not conscious. Only during the period when you are trying to acquire something new, it occupies the mind. The occupation continues for one or two generations.