A Christian attains the supreme knowledge through losing his own self, while an Indian preserves the immutable foundation of his nature through rigorous respect of its unity with the deity or the universal nature: “The heavens beyond are great and wonderful, but greater yet and more wonderful are the heavens within you’ (Sri Aurobindo
[18]
As the result, the western Christian culture sees man free but at the same time fully subordinated to the will of God. Or, at least, to the church – the only institute of salvation on earth authorized by God. Thus, a European wants to mollify this “authority’ with his fear, his vows, his prayers, with obedience, self-humiliation, good deeds, and glorification. And, from time to time, with indulgences. A western person is tortured by the belief in absolute gods that share human passions and weaknesses, but in fact are nothing else than a veil of illusions woven by the imperfect human mind.
Deep down the western man feels his insignificance before God and therefore does not dare protect his “I” against Him. On the contrary, in the East the man is the creator of his fate and the author of his self-perfection, as well as an integral part of God.
Suffice it to tweak this formula and substitute God with a different entity, for instance, with power, money or passion, to render a portrait of a European complete: a diligent, timorous, humble, and enterprising person who avidly clutches to the certain goods of the world he lives in, such as property, health, knowledge, money and material values. These are the founding elements of the liberal economic model forged by the Europeans. The western man is convinced that wealth comes from the outer world, that is why he avidly tries to fill his empty soul with it. He wants to seize the earthly comforts from other people to assure his own well-being at any price. “The western civilisation prefers having to being’ (A. Macchirgiani). And this should not come as a surprise, as “who holdeth not God as such an inner possession, but with every means must fetch Him from without’ (Meister Eckhart’s Schriften und Predigten)20.
While eastern philosophy and its perception of the world are directed inside the human being, western philosophy looks on the outside. It understands the dialectics of the opposites but cannot conceive their harmonious coexistence. That is why such philosophy is bound to run to extremes: it accepts fight and competition but is alien to cooperation of people, things or notions. As the two civilisations we have been dealing with so far understand the main questions of the world in strikingly different ways, the life within each of them is easily disconnected from the whole reality to become artificial and inhuman.
It is all logical then that the economic lifestyle and the production and distribution methods could not remain untouched by the profound differences between western and eastern civilisations. Thus, the eastern path consists in the subordination of the man by the state or by his own inner self. As opposed to the East, the West seeks to break the dead unity and give freedom to the individual forms of life. At the same time, it gets beyond harmony to encourage global egotism. This is why capitalism, based on the individualism cult, is alien to eastern mentality and ends up distorting it. The West does not admit other economic system than one driven by self-interest, the most shameful among the human qualities, and not by the desire to provide people with the means of existence, that is why unmercenary economics would not work as well in the West as in the East.
Selfish economics conforms more to western mentality, and, consequently, it is more beneficial for it, assuring prosperity of the West. However, people of other cultures feel uncomfortable within such economic system, and that is why they often lose to the West. Western economy is detrimental for the life of other cultures, and it does not correspond to their understanding of Truth and Justice.
The East admits that the common prosperity stands above personal well-being: “The manifestation of unity vanquishes even armies… The entire world is divided along a boundary line between individual and general welfare. If we act within the sphere of the general welfare with sincere intentions, then in support of us stands the entire reservoir of cosmic accumulations’ (Agni Yoga – The Living Ethics).21 The East is capable to “learn above all to separate Head-learning from Soul-Wisdom, the ‘Eye’ from the ‘Heart’ doctrine’ (Helena Blavatsky
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In the East, people understand that even though the accumulation of all the necessary things is indeed a source of well-being, no material goods would satisfy the inner world. That is why it is no surprise for the East that in the quest for pleasures humans are pestered by a growing hunger. And the greater the pleasures, the stronger the hunger. The man himself becomes the object of someone else’s craving, as well as a source of trouble and other unknown calamities. The multidimensionality and the duality of the world are to blame here.
The lack of spiritual orientation in the West borders on mental anarchy. By consequence, any religious or philosophic dogma contributes to setting up some kind of order, and becomes a source of new knowledge and of psychic duality. As dogmas can be assimilated with spiritual hygiene they contribute to the variety of knowledge. On the contrary, the East proves sufficient, peaceful, and composed. The West generates hundreds of world visions, none of which is complete or fully feasible. And there is no surprise in this, as all of such theories aim at resolving some local issues, instead of uncovering their nature and relation with other phenomena. The main tool such theories use is the analysis of circumstances and not their synthesis.
As the result, the multitude of doctrines produced in the West do not only fail to enrich the human beings, but even deprive people of the feeling of unity of the Universe, of self-confidence, and of the chance to get to know the World they live in. In the end, people are obliged to obey the element, instead of controlling it with the help of their reason. This is how competition and market are born, instead of a plan, of cooperation, harmony, and unity. At the same time, these developments cannot protect the man of the West from personal dissatisfaction. He ends up better protected from poor harvest and flood than from spiritual defects or psychic epidemics, as he is unfamiliar with any immutable principles. “The world wars have shown what a European is capable of when his intellect, having grown alienated from Nature, runs free’23 (C. G. Jung
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The East is different because it has always seen the mental reality as the main and the only condition of human existence. The East realizes that human soul is rich enough to avoid borrowing from the outside world. This vision of the world lets an Indian build a strong body, shaping the images of his mental state into specific real forms that replace the outer world to him. For this reason, despite not always understanding the reality, an Indian retains an inner order and harmony. As opposed to the multiple environment, in Indian can boast the integrity of his inner world.
As the two civilisations we have been dealing with so far understand the main questions of the world in strikingly different ways, the life within each of them is easily disconnected from the whole reality to become artificial and inhuman. This is exactly why “The ancient intellectual cultures of Europe ended in disruptive doubt and sceptical impotence, the pieties of Asia in stagnation and decline’ (Sri Aurobindo
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Thus, the differences between the civilisations that we have studied above turned out to be so profound that any convergence would lead to mutual destruction. The relation between the two cultures is that of the water and the fire. “East and West… have two ways of looking at life which are opposite sides of one reality. Between the pragmatic truth on which the vital thought of modern Europe enamoured of the vigour of life, all the dance of God in Nature, puts so vehement and exclusive a stress and the eternal immutable Truth to which the Indian mind enamoured of calm and poise loves to turn with an equal passion for an exclusive finding, there is no such divorce and quarrel as is now declared by the partisan mind, the separating reason, the absorbing passion of an exclusive will of realisation’ (Sri Aurobindo
[18]
The West is too intellectual, too much concentrated on the outer world to see the true state of things, while India is too deeply immersed in itself, so it lacks the determination necessary for balancing the principles it lives by with what it sees and understands. And although without unilaterality the human spirit could not develop in its complexity, due to their maximalism both the western and the eastern civilisation lose half of their total and become functionally incomplete.
On the other hand, civilisations shape people and their opportunities, and determine the most appropriate economic system for them. This is why in order to survive in this complex environment modelled by the quantitative-qualitative patterns of the Universe the human beings try to adapt to this world, making it cosy and comfortable for themselves. Hence the inevitable conflict of the unilaterality of human philosophic perception and lifestyle. Besides, the spread of a foreign civilisation into an inappropriate ground unavoidably gives birth to mutants instead of healthy and well-balanced individuals.
In the light of the foregoing, both civilisations need an intermediary capable of reconciling them. Someone who would bring together the opposites and match their values in order to shape a new attitude to culture, economy, spirituality, and quality of life. They need an incentive to unite their multiplicity rather than separate it, to compose a symphony that would replace the cacophony. The Russian mentality has been the one to come closest to this ideal. This is why Russia is the only candidate for the role of the intermediary, as no other global civilisation possesses the qualities required for the mission.
1.1.3. Russia and Europe, collision of civilisations
Ages for you, for us the briefest space,
We raised the shield up as your humble lieges
To shelter you, the European race
From the Mongolians’ savage raid and sieges.24
Alexander Blok, The Scythians
The meeting of the East and the West on the vast Russian territory sparked a tendency for mutual complement of the opposites reflected in their cultures. As the result, Russia emerged as a natural link between the western and the eastern civilisations, as it could become a successor for neither of them. “Russia is a bridge between the godless man of the West and the inhuman God of the East’ (Vladimir Solovyov). “It is in Russia that the West and the East collide and interact, not only as geographic entities but also as to two historic and cultural sources, as two flows of the world history – the western and the eastern’ (Nikolay Berdyaev). This encounter also brought about the unprecedented centuries-long confrontation between Europe and Russia. So, what are the main differences of these civilisations?
The western world came into existence on rather homogeneous territories – mostly rich and fertile, blessed with a favourable climate, connected to a number of seas and rivers that encouraged transportation of people and goods, as well as information exchange. Thanks to constant populations migration and wars the lifestyles of the European peoples could not diverge much. Instead, they mixed with each other to form similar tastes and culture, ideologic and religious dogmas, behavioural principles, and material and spiritual values.
However Russian mentality has been forged in quite different conditions: large swathes of land, flat country, and harsh climate. The severe environment acted as natural selection on human characters. As a consequence, the vast territories of Eastern Europe saw the formation of a peculiar world that grew to prosperity through labour and sweat, and sometimes – through blood. This skill of surviving the hardships and being content with little when the surrounding nature offered a lot, was at the origin of the generous and open Russian soul.
The strength of the Slavs resided in their tribal system that assured the unity of people and encourage kind attitude to each other. It was this system that forged the moral and combat qualities of the warriors, giving them solidarity and mutual assistance in fighting. The Slavic combat tactic did not reside in the invention of the combat order formations, as it was in the Roman Empire and other similar states, but in the variety of enemy attacking strategies during assault and defence. Hence, as the Arab writer Al-Bakri said, if the Slavs, “this powerful and fearsome people’, were not split into many groups and tribes, no one could have stood against them.
Many Byzantine writers remarked the bellicosity of the Slavic tribes. The politicians of the Eastern Roman Empire feared Slavic political entities. That is why Maurice, a sixth century strategist and writer from Constantinople, recommended to take advantage of the feud to fight the Slavic tribes by setting them against each other in order to weaken them. It should be noted that this strategy is still in use today, and it marks the specific attitude of Europe towards Russia.
When defending their habitat, the Russian could not count upon the poorly accessible natural barriers, so they had chosen between perishing under the onslaught of the neighbouring savage hordes and learning to fight them back. It is evident that military methods alone would not suffice here. That is why from the very beginning the Russians tried to come on terms with their neighbours, to reconcile with them in order to increase the area of their own influence. It was essential for the Russian people to avoid imposing their way of life, as well as infringing on that of the other peoples; instead they would seek to pacify the intertribal relationship. Thus, they have synthesized a new entity impregnated with the best customs and labour skills of their neighbours. As the result, a unique community of various peoples emerged; a community that always welcomed new knowledge, new cultural trends and economic tools; a community based on the principles of equality and democracy. As Procopius of Caesarea, a sixth-century Greek scientist, informed, “…the Sclaveni and the Antae, are not ruled by one man, but they have lived from of old under a democracy, and consequently everything which involves their welfare, whether for good or for ill, is referred to the people’
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All of the above contributed to the formation of an original and kind nation, bound, despite the large variety of the peoples that made it, by means of a common and synthetic culture. This culture is at the source of unprecedented adaptability, racial, religious and human tolerance, as well as an inherent strive for unification that allowed to stretch the borders of the country to encompass one sixth of the planet. That is why “Russia does not result from an accidental accumulation of territories and tribes, as it is not an artificially built ‘region’-based mechanism, but a living organism that has evolved historically and has been culturally justified and that cannot be split arbitrarily’ (Philosopher I. Iliyn).