“Those living on earth rank, in fact, after the dead. The living belong in turn to a hierarchy, not simply following legal status, but as ordered by their own being in accordance with primogeniture and their vital rank: that is to say, according to their vital power.”
- Principle #14 of the 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors
From the Balanta worldview or perspective, all behavior is centered around a single value called “vital force”. The purpose of human existence or life is to increase this vital force and assure that force shall remain perpetually in one’s posterity. According to principle #6, “Supreme happiness, the only kind of blessing, is, to possess the greatest vital force: the worst misfortune and, in very truth, the only misfortune, is, he thinks, the diminution of this power.” All behavior, all prayers, invocations to God, to the spirits, and to the dead, as well as of all that is usually called magic, sorcery or magical remedies are aimed at increasing one’s vital force. Binham B’rassa (Balanta people) will go to the diviner or spirit man or mystic to learn the words of life, so that he or she can teach them the way of making life stronger.
According to our ancient ancestors great belief, all beings in the universe possess vital force of their own: human, animal, vegetable, or inanimate. Each being has been endowed with a certain force, capable of strengthening the vital energy of the strongest being of all creation: man. More than any other creature on earth, man has the ability to direct its behavior in such a way as to have the greatest impact on the environment. Principle #15 states,
“Man lives on his land, where he finds himself to be the sovereign vital force, ruling the land and all that lives on it: man, animal or plant.”
The concept of separate beings, of substance (to use a scholastic term) which find themselves side by side, entirely independent one of another, is foreign to our ancestors. Created beings preserve a bond one with another, an intimate ontological relationship, comparable with the causal tie which binds creature and Creator. For our ancient ancestors, there is interaction of being with being, that is to say, of force with force. Transcending the mechanical, chemical and psychological interactions, they see a relationship of forces which we modern scholarship calls “ontological.”
Principle #13 states,
“Above all force is God, Spirit and Creator, the N’ghala N’dang ,It is he who has force, power, in himself. He gives existence, power of survival and of increase, to other forces. In relation to other forces, he is “He who increases force”.
The quality of a person is determined by his or her vital force and its ability to strengthen and maintain everything which falls ontologically within his or her domain. A general principle of Balanta spirituality and ontology is that “every man can be influenced by a wiser one.” Such a man possesses a clearer than usual vision of natural forces and their interaction, the man who has the power of selecting these forces and of directing them towards a determinist usage in particular cases.
Principle #23 states,
“Study and the personal search for knowledge does not give wisdom. One can learn to read, to write, to count: to manage a motor car, or learn a trade: but all that has nothing in common with ‘wisdom’. It gives no ontological knowledge of the nature of beings. There are many talents and clever skills that remain far short of wisdom. “
Thus, the goal of Balanta education is NOT the accumulation of knowledge from reading books or from going to school. The goal of Balanta education is to produce wisdom.
This is expressed in by the ancient Balanta Ancestors’ Principle #24:
“The moral conscience, the consciousness of being good or bad, of acting rightly or wrongly, likewise conforms to their philosophical views, to their wisdom. The idea of a universal moral order, of the ordering of forces, of a vital hierarchy, is very clear. They are aware that, by divine decree, this order of forces, this mechanism of interaction among beings, ought to be respected. They know that the action of forces follows immanent laws, that these rules are not to be played with, that the influences of forces cannot be employed arbitrarily. They distinguish use from abuse. They have a notion of what we may call immanent justice, which they would translate to mean that to violate nature incurs her vengeance and that misfortune springs from her. They know that he who does not respect the laws of nature becomes a man whose inmost being is pregnant with misfortune and whose vital power is vitiated as a result, while his influence on others is therefore equally injurious. This ethical conscience of theirs is at once philosophical, moral and juridical. “
Such and education will give the future generation of Balanta children their notion of duty, expressed in Principle #25:
“The notion of duty: The individual knows what his moral and legal obligations are and that they are to be honored on pain of losing his vital force. He knows that to carry out his duty will enhance the quality of his being. As a member of the clan, the person knows that by living in accordance with his vital rank in the clan, he can and should contribute to the maintenance and increase of the clan by the normal exercise of his favorable vital influence. He knows his clan duties He knows, too, his duties towards other clans. However hostile in practice inter tribal relations may be, he or she knows and says that it is forbidden to kill an outsider without a reason. Outsiders, in fact, are equally God’s people and their vital force has a right to be respected. The diminution and destruction of an outsider’s life involves disturbance of the ontological order and will be visited upon him who disturbs it.”
Currently, the human being with one of the highest or greatest amount of vital force energy consistent with the 26 Principles of the Great Belief of the Balanta Ancient Ancestors as objectively observed is Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, founder of Isha Foundation. He is neither a buisness leader or a political leader. He is not an athlete or movie star. However, in every field of human activity, Sadhguru is respected as among the highest men of wisdom on the planet. He has written over 100 books translated into eight different languages. He has spoken at the the United Nations Millennium World Peace Summit and has addressed the ‘World Economic Forum’ in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. His public talks frequently draw crowds of over 300,000 people. Any search of Sadhguru on Youtube will result in keynote addresses given at the world’s most prestigious colleges and universities, business schools, professional and social forums, and spiritual centers from around the world. Nine million people serve as volunteers of of his Isha Foundation. Since 2004, his positive impact on the environment includes planting over 35 million trees. Such are the objective standards of Sadhguru’s vital force and wisdom. It is, therefore, worthwhile to listen to such a man on the future of humanity and education:
“Any intelligence is good. If you do not have natural intelligence, then artificial; if you do not have organic intelligence, then synthetic. But any intelligence is good if it is intelligence. . . . Without intelligence, there is no truth. Lies have not always happened because of deceit. Lies have also happened because of ignorance. Intelligence, intelligence and intelligence is the only solution to make truth mainstream.
Especially, as external technologies grow, suppose robots start doing all the work you are doing now, what are human beings going to do?
Technology is moving in a direction where artificially, a computer will be able to think a million times better than human beings, because thought is fundamentally computing. Data is assimilated and then it comes out with something sensible from that. As computers evolve, a computer will be able to do this far better than a human being. This evolution is not even going to take a very long time. It will happen in a short time. Then there will be no value for human thought. All the thinkers will be out of business!
But that is only intelligence. That is not consciousness.
Our thought, our emotion, these have nothing to do with consciousness. Once everything is well, what are human beings supposed to do? Human beings are supposed to be joyful, blissful and do something that no mechanical thing can do. A robot can do everything that you can do – except it cannot meditate because there is no consciousness. So, ultimately, only meditators will be employed!
Emphasis should not be only on factual learning. These days information accumulation is considered equivalent to intelligence and therefore there is a greater thrust on data accumulation, assimilation and use. However, this kind of knowledge or scholarship is going to become defunct in near future. What will have a greater value and premium is human intelligence — the ability to handle human emotions. The choice to have the highest level of pleasantness is within oneself. . . .
Man’s experiences should be the way he wants it to be. A human being cannot unfold oneself in an ambiance of unpleasantness. As human beings we tend to suffer because of our enhanced memory and imagination. . . Hence, educational institutions should come forward to shift the present learning process to enhance human perception which is blessed with different faculties so as to explore human intelligence for a better handling of human emotions.
Educational institutions should make a paradigm shift from information loading to exploring human intelligence. . . . Memory is not intelligence... Having more information does not make one more intelligent.
Alertness and consciousness are what will make a person superior, as artificial intelligence takes up the task of remembering and carrying information.
In the era of technology, man has become a slave to machine . . . Artificial intelligence and robots doing most work on earth is the golden age of consciousness. This is the time human beings can focus on consciousness. Everything that human beings are doing right now by gathering data, analyzing and processing will become irrelevant. . . .10 years down the line humanity will be at its best time, because
a person with greater consciousness will be valued over a person with knowledge.
People who read and accumulate memory are going to fall . . .”
Now we can put in context the words of Amilcar Cabral:
“But for a struggle really to go forward, it must be organized and it can only really be organized by a vanguard leadership. . . . Leadership must go to the most aware men and women, whatever their origin, and wherever they come from: that is, to those who have the clearest concept of our reality and of the reality that our Party wants to create. We are not going to look to see where they come from, who they are and who their parents are. We are looking only at the following: do they know who we are, do they know what our land is, do they know what our Party wants to do in our land? Do they really want to do this, under the banner of our Party? So they should come to the fore and lead. Whoever is most aware of this should lead. We might be deceived today, or deceived tomorrow, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating, it is practical experience which shows who is worthy and who is not. . . . Our struggle demands enlightened leadership and we have said that the best sons and daughters of our land must lead. . . .So far as we are able to think of our common problem, the problems of our people, of our own folk, putting in their right place our personal problems, and, if necessary, sacrificing our personal interests, we can achieve miracles. . . .
Balanta do not need university trained men and women. They only need men and women that “know who we are, do they know what our land is, do they know what our Party wants to do in our land”. Thus, Balanta children need to be taught agriculture and how to access faculties other than their intellect to access gnosis or knowledge of the universe contained in the inner intelligence in every atom and cell that is superior to human intellect.
Remember, the intelligence, knowledge and wisdom contained within the human body is smart enough and capable enough to build the human being from the inside out from one cell, and manages trillions of functions that occur every instant within the body, including the contraction and expansion of heart muscles which keep the blood circulating, and the inhale and exhale of the lungs, which keeps you breathing, along with all metabolic processes, immune system functioning, all sensory perception, brain functions, etc., ALL WITHOUT THE INVOLVEMENT OF HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. Hence, it is obvious that learning from the intelligence inside of one’s body is the basis of the future education and evolution of humanity.
In this sense, then, the lack of Balanta formal education and literacy since Guinea Bissau independence can be viewed as a blessing in disguise. The lack of such formal educational infrastructure in rural Balanta village means that less dismantling and deprogramming of outdated pedagogy and curriculums need to take place. More than most, Balanta children can operate from a “clean slate” having been less indoctrinated, programmed, and dumbed down by the current western-dominated educational system. As a result, the native intelligence and native faculties have been less damaged by intellect-dominated education. This is a case where “the last shall become the first, and the first shall become the last.”
The future of Balanta education will center around developing inner consciousness, agroforestry, and ecological wisdom. What will that look like? Take a peek:
MORE SADHGURU
“Consciousness is an intelligence beyond your physiological and psychological structure. So, when we sit here, your body is your body, my body is my body. There is no way these two things can be one. . . . Only when we are buried we become one. . . . But as long as you and me exist here, that’s your body , this is my body. Let’s be very clear – that’s your mind, this is my mind. Let’s be clear. These things can never be one. We can agree on a few things, but my mind is my mind, your mind is your mind. Isn’t it?
But there is no such thing as my life and your life. This is a living cosmos. You have captured some, I have captured some. . . . If you are depending upon how much you capture, that will be the scale and scope of your life. . . .
See, thought is happening only from the limited data that you have gathered in your head, isn’t it so? But there is something more phenomenal happening all across, isn’t it? The intelligence of the creation is functioning right now here [in the body], is it or not? If you can transform a piece of bread into a human being that means the very intelligence of the source of creation is traveling within you right now. Instead of identifying with THAT, we unfortunately are identified with what we accumulate, with the car we have, with the house we have, with the relationships we have, with the body we have, the accumulated knowledge that we have. We have gotten identified with the things we have acquired rather than being identified with the source of who we are. So, this is what consciousness means. But this will not come by thinking differently. YOU MUST TOUCH THE DIMENSION BEYOND PHYSIOLOGICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL PROCESS. THIS IS SOMETHING THAT MUST HAPPEN. . . .
What a vision means is . . . . Say everyone has desires. Desire is an incremental way of enhancing our life. Today you desire “I must have a home.” Tomorrow you desire “I must have this money.” Tomorrow you desire I must have something else. These are incremental ways of arranging and rearranging our lives because I need it to do a few things.
When you say I am a VISIONARY what you are saying is, I HAVE A LARGER DESIRE which is not about just incremental improvement of MY LIFE . . . Desire is about “me” always. VISION is an ALL-INCLUSIVE PROCESS. So, this itself is a phenomenal thing if people, instead of having desires, if they have a VISION. Vision is always all-inclusive. Desire is personal. Desire leads to incremental changes and improvements. VISION CAN TRANSFORM THE WHOLE SITUATION. . . .”