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THE DYNAMICS OF INDIAN CULTURE
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literature; (13) arts; and (14) expression of human emotions and impulses. However, culture exists as a whole. When we ponder over its development and impact on human society, we cannot divide culture.
Indian ideas of mind and consciousness have permeated the rest of the world through music, yoga, mind-body medicine, and spirituality. Recently, Indians have excelled in information technology. Besides, India has demonstrated that democracy is a feasible ambition even for cultures and societies that are not familiar with it and that a large, multireligious, multicultural society can live together as a single political unit.
We conclude this chapter with the premise that much of our culture is a basket of accumulated beliefs and conditioned or acquired behaviour. Every generation is conditioned from before their times. It then learns its behaviour without thinking. It has codes of conduct and behaviour projected on it without even being aware that it is unconsciously performing to the expectations of others and reacting when its needs and expectations are not met.
Without even being aware of what is going on, we have been and we continue to be unconsciously manipulated. We are supporting extras in a play of consciousness that has been written and directed by other people, the society and the system. How do we become the directors of that play? The baggage of life that youths carry is fairly empty. But, buried in the genetic memory, waiting for the right environment, the right moment, are the patterns, the memories of our ancestors and the whole history of who we already are.
If life is seen as a spiritual pilgrimage, it is intellectually unknowable, because to journey is to do, and to know is to separate yourself from that which you already are. You are the dream, the dreamer, and the act of dreaming. Your pain
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