THE MILLENNIUM TRUST

MATERIAL PROGRESS AND THE IMPOVERISHMENT OF BEING

THE SYMPOSIUM

21^st November to 23^rd November 2008

with  Professors Indra Nath and Usha Choudhuri

 

In November 2007 The Millennium Trust organised with the Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad, a conference in Kolkata, India called 'Material Progress and the Impoverishment of Being – Can the Spiritual Traditions meet the Challenge?' Over three hundred people attended and papers were read by the Chief Justice of India and many other distinguished speakers. The title was intended to be provocative by focusing upon the assertion that our culture for the past 200 years has progressed in the material, technological and scientific fields at the expense of humankind's spiritual consciousness and aspirations. We were asking whether our cultural world, with its beliefs in a truth bounded by physicality and literal understanding, so mesmerized our thinking that it denied any dimension beyond that perceived by our senses.  

The Kolkata Conference produced much evidence that communities across the world feel spiritually threatened by materialism but what was not clear was whether this threat 'Impoverished our 'Being'. In our Symposium to be held 21^st to 23^rd  November 2008 at Grove House near Canterbury we intend to look more closely at what is meant by 'Being' and what if anything, can 'impoverish' it or develop and evolve it?  And does such impoverishment or evolution affect the individual and the greater world around them as well?      

The great Bengali poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore wrote in his Sadhana essays that:

'The man who aims at his own aggrandisement underrates everything else. Compared to his ego the rest of the world is unreal. Thus in order to be fully conscious of the reality of all, one has to free himself from the bonds of personal desires. This discipline we have to go through to prepare ourselves for our social duties – for sharing the burdens of our fellow-beings.  Every endeavour to attain a larger life requires of man "to gain by giving away, and not to be greedy," and thus to expand gradually the consciousness of one's unity with all is the striving of humanity'.    .    

Tagore posits the ego, not as part of our 'Being' but as alien to it. He suggests that if we are to understand how our Being relates to the world around and within us, 'to be fully conscious of the reality of all' we must first free ourselves from the ego's insistent tyranny in a small and limited egocentric world of its own. Only then, in a state of freedom, can we attend to our social duties and share the burdens of our fellow-beings.  

How this may be done, whether it leads to a revelation of Being, and what guidance the spiritual traditions give to inspire us to this realisation today will be central to our Symposium.

Surely nothing could be more relevant to the dilemmas imposed by the world upon us today. On the one hand we might plunge into the forest of today's ideas, theories and beliefs, today's materialistic competence; this road takes us to a place at once nurturing and threatening. We are sheltered and fed for now but we know that to be lost in it as darkness falls is one of our deepest fears. On the other hand, taking the road to unity brings its own fears, mainly to do with the loss of our supposed ego-dominated identity and "the objects of our desire" that accompany it.  Yet this road promises greater justice, greater understanding and greater happiness. So what are the practical steps for us to follow?

Our Symposium will address the pivotal choice of direction which Tagore eloquently points out. We intend to explore, with the help of all the great teachings and traditions, the spiritual nature of human beings and how spirituality may be nurtured in an overwhelmingly material world that appears to be spinning out of control.

We are fortunate to have Professors Indra Nath and Usha Choudhuri from Delhi to lead our discussions. Both are closely associated with the work of Millennium Trust.  Indra Nath was, until retiring, a diplomat scholar and was the Cultural Attaché at the High Commission of India in London. Usha until recently retiring was Professor of Sanscrit at the University of Delhi. They have been specially honoured for their contributions to the understanding of Bengali and the Sanscrit languages and literature.

For further information please contact Ronald and Angela Lello on

01303 813 140

or email

Ronald@millenniumtrust.co.uk