Species of Knowledge and the Transmission Authority. The PlanetShifter.com Magazine Interview with Baba Rampuri.

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"The world looked very different when I entered an ancient order of yogis and shamans in 1970. Anyone even suggesting that yoga would be mainstream one day, would have been sent to the funny farm. And yet, the very fact of yoga becoming mainstream, and taking on a life and an identity of its own, has tended to obscure the very traditions from which it arose.

The advance of modern civilization, cutting down the wilderness to build towns and cities and the farms that feed them has resulted in endangering numerous plant and animal species. In the same way, species of Knowledge are threatened when their means of transmission loses authority." - Baba Rampuri.

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What are species of Knowledge? Are they in the West?

When I speak about species of knowledge disappearing, I am using the analogy of species of animals and plants disappearing. Since I tend to see the world in terms of resemblances and reflections, and see all things as interconnected, the greater analogy of species of anything disappearing speaks of our contracting universe. Orwell addressed this in the thirties.

I am not measuring the contracting universe in terms of distances, size of measurable space, but in our perception and knowledge of it. Our Speech is contracting, even our languages are shrinking, which can be measured in our vocabularies.

Until the so-called “Green Revolution” of the 60’s in India, 42,000 folk landraces of rice were known to exist there. Since that time when high yield varieties of rice were introduced and aggressively marketed, agriculture became an industry, and competitive national and international markets matured, more than 95% of these landraces have disappeared and only 23 varieties of rice dominate the entire market. Farmers can no longer afford to grow what their ancestors grew and have abandoned these varieties their families developed over the millennia, adapted to local circumstances and needs. The same is true with many food stuffs in India and around the world.

The historical root of our environmental crisis and our loss of wisdom traditions lies in the European Enlightenment that nurtured a conceptual dichotomy between the Natural World and the Human World. We have detached ourselves from the Natural World and gambled our entire existence on the somewhat fickle ideas and ideologies of man.

Like our extinct (local) folk landraces of rice, our wisdom traditions, our species of knowledge are also local. There are no universal truths, no perennial philosophies, and no ideologies to proselytize. If it’s local, there is no one to convince. Local species of knowledge are well diversified encompassing all areas of human endeavor, and in fact most of our modern technology and pharmacology was plundered from the storehouse of local knowledge.

The authority of the voice of local knowledge was lost to the authority of the mass printed text, the school (so that you could read the mass printed text), then the television, and now the computer screen and mobile telephone. And as we progress through this, our new information (that replaces knowledge) has less and less a connection to the Natural World and more to the fallible ideas of man.

Can you teach ancient ways (Traditional Knowledge?) and heal people via the Internet?

Personally, I feel that the disadvantages of the computer and Internet for mankind far outweigh the advantages. Nevertheless, it is the reality of our times and in many ways is defining our times, so we have as little choice to adapt to it, and adapt well to it, as we did to post-Gutenberg literacy. In the same way the printing press was the beginning of the end of Oral Tradition, i.e., Traditional Knowledge, the Internet will do the same for Literary Knowledge. Each time this kind of quantum change takes places, there is a contraction of Speech.

The Internet is not the place for traditional knowledge, but for information that very often lacks context. Traditional knowledge requires the sound and authority of a voice and its supporting chorus.

Healing, however, can be done at a distance, and I would imagine that the networking of social media could bring to healers those seeking their help, and possibly heal them. I have done some of this, and recognize that there are many unexploited resources on internet that could work very well.

I think we are going through a major change in Speech right at this moment, parallel with growth of Internet literacy. Twitterspeak, which for most people is a contracted language, can also be used as a compressed language. Patanjali, well known for his Yoga Sutras, composed in a highly compressed style of Sanskrit, millennia before zip files, allowing for decompression by his lineage and wisdom tradition. For others, they must be satisfied with interpretation. More than 2000 years after it was composed, several editions are in the top couple thousand best sellers on Amazon.

To try to do old things with this new medium is missing the point. Despite their loss of meaning, words have suddenly obtained great power for gaining audiences and giving power and authority to their articulators. The power and utility of the internet will continue to grow alongside our new Speech.

What is the green movement like in your part of India?

We have a very different situation here in India than in the West. Most of India was completely green until fairly recently. Western multinationals came in very big in the 60’s with their “Green Revolution” based on chemical fertilizers, high yield seed varieties, and lots of hype, but even until 20 years ago, the vast majority of farmers still used cow manure.

With the exception of Claude Alvares and Vandana Shiva, two brilliant individuals, the green movement has been somewhat lackluster in India, largely because they are too ideological, and not really prepared to deal with ground realities.

What are some of your favorite children’s stories? Are they still relevant to you?

My favorite children’s story is Salman Rushdie’s novel, “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” which, I admit, is a postmodern allegory disguised as a children’s book.

Because the Water Genie, Iff, has cancelled his famous Storyteller father’s subscription to the supply of imagination, the Journey of this Hero, Haroun, is to the hidden Story Moon where the Sea of the Streams of Stories is being polluted by the Prince of Silence. Haroun leads the way in a brave attempt to save the Ocean, and then returns to his city, bringing back the gift of storytelling to his father, and thus brings back happiness to his city, because now the citizens can remember its name.

It takes a theme we all relate to, pollution and polluters, that has enormous relevance today in the wake of the BP disaster, and yet moves past the facts and information, which are the manipulated resources for political narrative, and into allegory and analogy by means of masterful use of Speech to create compelling entertainment. We can come to our own conclusion that there is something greater than the event of the BP disaster itself, which is the cause, itself. There is an even greater pollution taking place which is the cause of the individual events of pollution that we witness.

The book was published in 1990, while Rushdie was in hiding from the Fatwah to kill him because of his book, “Satanic Verses.” Yet, we can see that good storytelling, such as this, easily applies to events occurring many years later.

How can we produce new mythologies? What are the ingredients?
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There is a large difference between spinning a narrative, and storytelling. Storytelling exists because it entertains, and when it entertains, it commands an audience. Even Samuel Goldwyn told his screenwriters that if they had a message, then send a telegram (email), it’s a lot cheaper. Storytelling, Mythology is about analogy, which gives a story its entertainment value. The old woman on the edge of the forest didn’t tell her stories because she had a point to make, an ideology to market, she told them because she knew them, and that’s what she did. She didn’t make them up - she found them, in the voice of her grandmother, in the voice of the forest.
Narratives are an attempt to give political context to information, this is not mythology. We call this “The News.” The Authority of this voice comes from its volume and the size of its audience. Narratives use the paradigm of the myth, good guys, bad guys, the quest, bringing balance into the world, the final showdown, and the return home. But where Mythology is connected to the Sky, to the Earth, to the hearts and blood of man, a Narrative is connected to the ideas, ideologies, and strategies of man. Whereas conflicting facts tend to destroy a narrative, they grow a myth. Facts and information are central to the narrative, but have considerably less importance in a myth. Narratives are located in the discourse of a particular place at a particular time, Mythology crosses time and space.

What is your Creative Source? Can I experience it?

You can experience your own creative source. My creative source is a witches’ cauldron of my blood, my lineage, and the relationships I have with the Spirits of the Natural World who whisper things in my ears. If you listen carefully, they will speak to you as well.

Are you using and/or refining alchemy?

Actually, alchemy is a interesting connection point between East and West, because it gives us an opportunity to consider a different kind of vocabulary when thinking about India, and especially Oral Tradition. Spiritual India is normally represented in the West with a human sciences’ vocabulary of Comparative Religion or Psychology, which gives a very distorted result. But, if we should use the vocabulary of Hermeticism, with its focus on connecting with the Natural World, as opposed to mapping things according to the categories of discourse & connecting with only fickle ideas of the time, I find a convenient bridge to allow sharper commentary and interpretation.

I use Indian Alchemy, which I don’t think of as a science, but a knowledge that must be gleaned from Nature and one’s lineage, not on the basis of a rational methodology and discursive reasoning, but through experience, exposure, intimacy, and invocation. So, the task is an ongoing one of knowing oneself and knowing the Natural World, and seeing the mirror reflection between the two; there is no issue of refining Alchemy, as such. That being said, I have been slowly converting to more modern apparatus, and adapting to the technology that is readily available.

How do you define sustainability? Is this a new religion?

Sustainability only becomes an issue when human greed crosses a line, unbalancing the world. We’ve obviously arrived there. I don’t think sustainability is possible until somehow we come to grips with our greatest myth (sic) that consumption makes happiness. As long as that myth is the foundation of our connection to the world and its inhabitants, there will be no sustainability, no matter how sustainable it seems at the time.

There is no sustainability in the ideas and strategies of man, even the dreams of man, but the Natural World which includes man, provides the means to reach the limits of sustainability.

When you think about integration, what are the key tools for human organizing?

The easiest way of human organizing is along the lines of ideology, so that one is empowered to protect, defend, and promote what one believes. The weaker the substance of the belief, the stronger the need to defend or promote it. It’s always been very difficult to organize conscious people for this reason.

I think back to May ’68 in France, when the students and workers organized perhaps one of the greatest displays of civil disobedience, stopping the entire country for several days to cause the public to think about some wrongs in society. It was a time of incredible hope for a more conscious future, and a surge of confidence in the power of the people to change things. If we look at those who organized this great event, we discover that many of them are now part of the very bureaucracy they opposed and fought to defeat.

Ideology is the expedient way to organize humans, but is not sustainable. Ideology is fickle, and almost always changes with the times. Let’s not forget that the architects of neo-Imperialism, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., were 60’s radicals. One of Bush’s top speechwriters wrote for one of America’s most radical magazines of the 60’s.

What do humans need to learn to evolve to a higher consciousness?

We require no further evolution, if there is indeed any evolution of consciousness, to reach a higher state of consciousness, as it is already within us, at least its potential. In fact, just to take another shot at consumerism, we don’t need to acquire, consume, or “learn” anything. It’s the “learning” that is the problem in a nutshell. If we don’t “un-learn” what we have learned in the past couple hundred years, our humankind will become extinct. For that, we must each take responsibility for our individual consciousness.

What do we not know… We have forgotten how to connect to the Natural World, to the earth, the sky, the plants, the topography, the family blood, and all that makes it very difficult for us to connect with our selves. We are evolving, if you can call it that, to a virtual consciousness, in which our Speech, instead of connecting to the world, connects with networks of words.

We have to learn that consumption does not lead towards happiness. Our lives are about doing and making, not taking. We have to learn how to give back all the stuff we have taken in the last couple hundred years. It requires a great deal of self de-construction to rediscover who we are and what is our relationship to this planet.

Connections –

Baba Rampuri
Baba at rampuri.com
rampuri.com/