Imbibing Satyuga (Age of Truth) values in Kaliyuga (Age of Sin)

Every-day we hear of rampaging mobs gruesomely killing in the name of politics, religion, caste, region, language, food choices, skin color or differing attire in this diverse world.

How can so many humans come together and become so evil, with not even one person standing up against the mob? Is it a lack of moral values or a lack of moral courage?

Or is this real human nature? Reminds one of lines from Tennyson:

For nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;
The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow spear’d by the shrike,
And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.

Shouldn't the basis of a civilized human society be “right is might” rather than “might is right”?

We cannot blame our falling values on Kaliyuga, the Age of Decadence and Decay. Just take one look at the faces of innocent wide-eyed children. They are ready sponges waiting to absorb what the world has on offer. Their values will be what we teach them at our homes and in our schools. More importantly their values will be what they learn through practice, through observed behaviors of elders and the values that they see society applauding and upholding.

Revered Dr. M B Lal Sahab in His gracious address at the Closing of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 1978 advised the gathered students, “It is not merely the study of books that is required of you, you have to assimilate what you read and more than that imbibe the values of humanism, secularism and democracy”.

Our post this week is on Students 

"Imbibing Satyuga (Age of Truth) values in Kaliyuga (Age of Sin)".

The post below is by Dr. Smita Sahgal, a top Academician who teaches History at Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi. She did her studies in History from St. Stephen’s, is an avid researcher and writer, has presented multiple papers and has been a recipient of prestigious honors including the Best Paper award from Indian History Congress.

Best,
Anurag
-------------------------

Dr. Smita writes…

As a young girl in school I would wait for our ‘moral science’ class because that meant freedom from travail of formal tutorial or lesson imparting and more of reflection time. We could discuss a range of issues and arrive at some broad parameters of what may be called as Value education. For many of us it simply meant a free period. As I grew up and moved on to become a teacher myself I realized that this compulsory lesson in ‘moral science’ where some of my friends took it as time to relax, was certainly a needed rumination routine. Today ‘value education’ is not a fashionable term amongst many students as it is taken as a regulation exercise. That’s the impression I got in my numerous interactions with students in the metropolis. They think of value education as something that counters freedom of thought. Is that really so, I often wondered till I interacted with students of Dayalbagh Educational Institute (DEI).

The curricular at DEI has built Value education as an integral aspect of its philosophy on education. It appears to be more than just a philosophy; students figure out mechanisms to apply it in their dealings with society at large. I grew fascinated with the concept of evolution of a ‘complete person’ one who is not only physically, mentally, intellectually strong but also acquires consciousness of outer environment and inner self. Let me elucidate my understanding with an example.

As a student of social history, I took caste system as a very discriminatory and divisive social contrivance, one that should be done away with. But one of the students did not decry it but postulated as, ‘a man can gradually evolve into a superman’ if he were to integrate the positive qualities of all four castes, that is of Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra in his persona. On further prodding I was enlightened that each of these castes is associated with at least one good quality; Brahmans are associated with education and reflection, Kshatriyas with self-defense, Vaishyas with provision of food and other goods to others and Shudras with service to all. If an individual were to assimilate all these qualities not only would he learn to respect everyone but the social differences which the ancient caste system has constructed over centuries would also get mitigated with time. The process would be slow, but an extremely pragmatic one and would address a fundamental social issue of discrimination.

Students at DEI are taught not just the courses that they have enrolled in but also to spend time in community work. Working in fields give them first- hand experience of tilling the soil, in dairy of seeing and participating in the process of milking and pasteurization, in Community kitchen of cooking and serving, in village camps of teaching and serving the village community. The practical experiences are balanced with consideration on other serious social issues and I was impressed to find many DEI students forming opinions on issues such as extravagant marriages and problem of dowry and gender inequities. This is done along with their rigorous academic schedule where many are trained to become engineers, technicians, teachers, researchers and academicians.  Ultimately this kind of education equips them to recognize dignity of labor and impacts their interactions with society at large. This is education for life, they summed up.

I was also keen to know about their views on religion and whether there should be dominance of one religion or whether religious issues should be discussed at all in social life. I encountered a variety of responses. One student was candid enough to state that he was uncomfortable discussing his religious affiliations and was therefore surprised to see a compulsory paper on Comparative Study of Religion. ‘But my views changed with time’, he stated as the course did not turn out to be promotion of religious values of a particular religion. Another of his class-fellow put in, ‘ma’am I have understood secularism better though am still unsure of its genuine political application’. ‘So many of us in the institution hail from varied religious and community backgrounds but we never get a sense of alienation. Comparative religious study gives us an insight into different religions and one is surprised to find such commonality in their principles. What I have learnt through my years at DEI, is to respect all religions and even if I am a firm believer in my own I need to remember that it does not give me the right to disregard another sect or tradition’.  ‘Is this not a secular approach to life?’, he mused. ‘Yes’, said another, ‘we did study about our constitution being secular, but for that to remain so we as students, citizens, statesmen etc. have to learn the principle of respecting each other’s cultural and religious affiliations’. A girl who had been quiet throughout the discussion opened her mind and chipped in, ‘that’s also my democratic right’.  ‘I agree that initially I, too, thought that religious studies of any kind may end up in imposing certain kind of views and came prepared to counter them but here I saw that the ideas promoted were of fundamental humanism; tolerance, inclusivity and according dignity to every human being and if these are reiterated through value education or by studying religious traditions around the world, let’s not be critical’.

My interaction with these young minds left me spell bound. I could not help revisiting my moral science classes as a young girl. Yes, those did help me to form opinions on many issues but what I saw at DEI was the application of ideas in a very practical way. I would not hesitate to advocate this model for other institutions as well. Students must move out of their self- growth/ individualistic modes and see themselves as a part of a larger community to which they need to give back as well. This sense of camaraderie comes when we frame a kind of value system for ourselves and institutions play a significant role in formulation of these.

Made-in-Heaven Marriages

Marriage is the legal or formal recognition of union of two people as partners in a personal relationship. In Asia, over time, the associated ceremony has overtaken the marriage and become a vulgar display of wealth and power, a display “worthy” of the so-called social standing of the two families, where typically the bride’s family gets harassed with demands of dowry and for putting up an ostentatious multi-day display worth the groom’s family social standing.

Further, in India, the institution of marriage perpetuates and feeds the caste system. As I edit this blog post, my thoughts go out to my own family coming from the hinterlands of India where the caste system is deeply rooted. From an Indian society perspective, my own marriage and that of my siblings and that of my parents (in 1961) are inter-caste marriages. You may ask how did that happen?

To answer this question, our post this week is on the 

“Made-in-Heaven” Marriages in Dayalbagh.

The word “marriage” brings to mind a coming together of two persons and their families mixed with festivities, rituals, lots of fun, meeting cousins! Sadly, marriages are more of a social “tamasha” (grand show), one-upmanship and a vulgar display of wealth highlighting class and social distinctions and differences thereby strengthening divisions of society based on economic status.

In Dayalbagh, the stress is on promoting social equality and brotherhood of man. Caste system is a strict “no”, rather it is expected that each person following the Dayalbagh Way of Life will develop the stated qualities and abilities of all the four varnas (castes) in themselves. So, depending on the need, I am a Sudra or a Kshatriya or a Vaisya or a Brahman or a combination thereof.

Marriages in Dayalbagh are simple and austere fostering social equality. They are conducted under the auspices of the Marriage Panchayat, Dayalbagh. The Marriage Panchayat arranges for three pre-marriage counselling sessions (over a six-month period) for the parents and the couple to enable a better understanding of each other’s expectations and backgrounds.

The rules are crystal clear. Total expenses permitted for the wedding are Rs. 18,000 (USD 280) each for the bride and for the groom. This amount is inclusive of the Rs. 1,200 (USD 19) for the post marriage lunch hosted by the Marriage Panchayat for 100 guests, 65 from the bride’s side and 35 from the groom’s. All expenses are auditable by the Marriage Panchayat and violations are unacceptable.

There is no dowry – no cash and nothing in kind. Even a whiff of this happening can lead to big trouble.

The girl, the boy and their parents are required to report in Dayalbagh seven days prior to the marriage date and immerse themselves in self-less service in the fields.

Typically, there are four to five marriages on a particular day (typically Sunday). All marriage groups get together for a joint prayer function with all guests two days prior to marriage.

The day of the marriage is simple and straight-forward. The ceremony starts with a Sagai-Samaroh (engagement ceremony) early in the morning during community service in the farms. This is solemnized by an exchange of garlands and prayers for well-being of the couple and all others. This is followed by the marriage rites performed in the presence of a designated marriage officer either by registration (preferred – but requires either the girl or the boy to have residency in Dayalbagh) or vedic rites. The bride and groom take a vow to uphold mutual respect and their duty towards their parents and for each other.

Everyone can bless and congratulate the couple, only blood relatives can give a token gift of Rs. 11 as Shagun (auspicious gift).

We have not touched on the fun and festivities in this post, because without the need to spend one’s full life’s savings, without the need for social one-upmanship, without the need for caste matches, without the need for angst on whether some other relative gave a bigger gift, without the need to arrange for marriage lunch or without the need to arrange for the marriage venue the fun and festivities increase dramatically.

And when two individuals come together there could be ups and downs. The marriage panchayat provides a counselling session six months after marriage to re-emphasize the importance of adjustment and empathy. Violence in marriage is totally unacceptable.

Is it “marriages made in heaven” or “marriages in heaven”? or maybe both…

The above post is by Ms. Juhi Singh and Anurag Singh.

Sigma Six Q: Does Planet Earth have a Future?

Your response to our Sigma Six Q blog, the Facebook and the Twitter posts has been overwhelming. Though it has only been a few weeks, many of our Facebook posts now reach an audience of thirty-forty thousand people and our twitter posts leave fifteen thousand impressions. This is a great start. This is our Way of Life that we are modeling and documenting. 
As our social media community multiplies and expands, we expect these posts to reach a million plus people in the short term and have a large positive effect in this world gasping for breath.

Recently, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking asserted that humans need to colonize a new planet within the next 100 years for the survival of our species. If we assume for a second that given the direction in which our world is hurtling (and without divine intervention) this is true, then there are two possible options that we have today:

1. We can behave like many a selfish individuals or communities or for that matter nations and remain content in our current non-sustainable all consuming ways as we would anyways be dead in the next hundred years!
2. Or we can align our thinking and energies towards a Sustainable and happier Sigma Six Q Dayalbagh Way of Life to make this world a better place for generations to come.

The choice is ours to make individually and together as a community, as a nation and as inhabitants of this planet.

In the previous posts, we have introduced the Sigma Six Q model and covered the Six Qualities for a Sustainable Way of Life.

The Six Qualities are:

1. Innovation: Changing, altering, evolving, progressing and adopting near state of the art processes and technologies for better outputs and outcomes.
2. Air Quality: Maintaining high Quality of Air, keeping it crisp and clean with minimal pollutants, greener surroundings, limiting increase of green-house gases and tending to a zero-carbon footprint.
3. Water Quality: Providing high quality drinkable water for human and animal consumption, quality water for agriculture, ensuring water conservation, harvesting and recycling.
4. Education and Healthcare: Making Education affordable, accessible and comprehensive leading to the evolution of a complete man with integration of intellectual abilities, physical strength, emotional stability and ethical values. Making Healthcare affordable, accessible and preventive.
5. Agriculture and Dairying: Continuing with the Green and White revolution and further innovating to make it sustainable.
6. Values: Application and practice of abstract values in our way of life; values of Duty, Beauty, Humility, Courage, Temperance, Wisdom, Loyalty and Justice imprinted early. Values of democracy, secularism and humanism leading to a lifestyle of Better Worldliness.

As stated by Revered Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi, “Sigma means that all these aspects or components have interaction amongst themselves and the cumulative effect of all these is many times more than their individual effect.”

The four Qualities of Air Quality, Water Quality, Education and Healthcare, Agriculture and Dairying need to necessarily sit on a bedrock of Innovation and then the five Qualities get bound together by Values.

This completes our introduction of the Sigma Six Q model. We will now delve into various facets of these Qualities and their implementation in subsequent blogs.

We want to most humbly thank Revered Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi for the Sigma Six Q Sustainability model and for providing us with an opportunity to blog this model to you all.

Look forward to your stories, your views, your implementations and experience with these Six Qualities. Drop us a mail at sigmasixq@gmail.com.

You can follow us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/sigmasixq) and/ or on twitter (https://twitter.com/SigmaSixQ). You can also subscribe to our posts via email (link on the right). You can like our posts on Facebook and Twitter and share them further with your friends/ followers.

The above post is by Anurag Singh, Editor of the Sigma Six Q Blogs.

References:

1. “The Dayalbagh Herald” dated Tuesday, June 21^st, 2016

Sigma Six Q: Values - The Sixth Quality necessary to bind it all together

Your response to the Sigma Six Q blog, the Facebook and Twitter posts has been awesome.

In the previous posts, we have introduced the Sigma Six Q model and covered the first five Qualities for a Sustainable Way of Life:  Innovation, Air Quality, Water Quality, Education and Healthcare, and Agriculture and Dairying.

The sixth and final Quality for a Sustainable Future is Values; a Quality that binds everything together.

As stated by Revered Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi, “Now what is the sixth excellence, i.e., Quality. That is a very great necessity for our country. You see how many scams are here in the country. How atrocities are committed against women. In order to stop all these, our value system should be refurnished. Our life style has this special emphasis on giving value based education. Thus, we give due place for application and practice of abstract values in our way of life. Only then is it possible to stop the different types of scams and atrocities. In the opinion of some people, we should have more money to spend to live good life. But in our life style of Better Worldliness, we require to awaken our inner spiritual consciousness where there is the kingdom of our Inner True Self, rather than the rule of and authority of mind, intelligence and matter alone.”¹

The underlying threads that ensure Dayalbagh’s success in its efforts is a common base of Values.   As summarized by Revered Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi, “Here again we try to pursue abstract human values that I learnt right since my primary schooling days such as Duty, Beauty, Humility, Courage, Temperance, Wisdom, Loyalty, Justice.”²

These values becoming part of every individual’s DNA is all the more important in a world moving towards automation and digitization, a world moving towards super-intelligent machines.

Dayalbagh’s education system inculcates these values in all students from pre-school onwards. Dayalbagh Education Institute’s Education Policy, as formulated by the Founder Director, Revered Dr. M. B. Lal Sahab aims “to bring about physical, intellectual, emotional and ethical integration of an individual with a view to evolving a complete man who possesses the basic values of humanism, secularism and democracy and who is capable of giving a fuller response to social and emotional challenges.”³

Further as explained by Revered Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi, “Such a man is called Superman. He will not come into existence in a day; he will evolve gradually as the human body evolved gradually according to Darwinian principle. As is the case of the body, mind and spirit will also evolve gradually, and the spirit and the mind will become so pure that a Superman will come into existence. This is a gradual development, a gradual evolution.”⁴

Revered Prof. Satsangi further explains, “Our object here (Dayalbagh) in creating the so-called superman who imbibes all the qualities of physical faculty, mental faculty and spiritual faculty would then be the true achievement of the goal of education, as enshrined, in Sanskrit, in the proverb, that is education which leads to complete emancipation.” ⁵

Dayalbagh aims to get these values of Duty, Beauty, Humility, Courage, Temperance, Wisdom, Loyalty and Justice imprinted into the subconscious from early childhood. The Sant-Su(perman) Evolutionary Scheme that is open to all children aims to create this race of Supermen, humans with ingrained values, values that all free, democratic, secular and humanist nations cherish. We will further explain the Sant-Su scheme and its implementation in future posts.

That completes the six Qualities required for a Sustainable Way of Life. In the next post, we plan to summarize the Sigma Six Q model.

We would love to hear your stories, your views, your implementations/ experience with these six Qualities and their implementation. You can drop us a mail at sigmasixq@gmail.com.

You can follow us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/sigmasixq) and/ or on twitter (@SigmaSixQ). You can also subscribe to our posts via email (link on the right). You can like our posts on Facebook and Twitter and share them further with your friends/ followers.

The above post is by Ms. Rima Mehta and Anurag Singh.

References:

1. “The Dayalbagh Herald” dated Tuesday, June 21^st, 2016
2. “The Dayalbagh Herald” dated Tuesday, May 17^st, 2016
3. “The Dayalbagh Herald” dated Tuesday, January 26^th, 2010
4. “The Dayalbagh Herald” dated Tuesday, January 08^th, 2008
5. “The Dayalbagh Herald” dated Tuesday, January 26^th, 2010

Sigma Six Q: Innovation - The First Quality

 

Sigma Six Q: Innovation - The First Quality

Firstly, we want to thank all of you for your comments and feedback. We welcome these and look forward to a healthy dialogue.

What is the first Quality for a Sustainable future?

In the words of Revered Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi (6^th July 2014), “First of all, there should be the quality of Innovation. The purport of Innovation is especially in adopting near state of the art and progressive technology and this too is being done here (Dayalbagh). For example, use of Renewable Energy is done to a great extent. Solar Energy is being utilized. It is being used also in other institutions associated with Dayalbagh. In DEI, nearly 1 Mega-watt power is generated by solar energy. And in Dayalbagh residential houses also its increase is in the third stage of development. Those who are utilizing it know how much qualitative increase is there in power supply as a result. This is an example of Innovation. When you use Innovative Technology, Industrial development is achieved by that and the country progresses and there is overall increase in the quality of life. Solar Energy is being used in Bhandar Ghar Community Kitchen also. Gassifier is also used there but it is not so successful as yet. If we can generate more power from Renewable Energy, it would be possible to do induction cooking in Bhandar Ghar (Community Kitchen), and there will be no necessity of the Gassifier. For this reason, Innovation in technology becomes an inseparable part of Dayalbagh way of life. If you give this the due priority, there are other things also connected with it e.g. creativity, excellence and initiative and novelty (modernity) are however there. And all these four together take you towards what is called Total Quality Management (TQM) which you can also call Complete Quality Management. Since it is our ideal goal to develop a complete human being through our Education Policy and way of life in Dayalbagh, similarly our aim of achieving excellence can also be achieved through innovation.”

Dayalbagh is honing innovation in its residents, its institutions, in its processes and practices and in its way of life. It is also being used to advance the Science of Consciousness, some of which is discussed in the following papers:

1.  Graph-theoretic quantum system modelling for information/computation processing circuits, Volume 40, 2011 - Issue 8. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03081079.2011.602016
2.  Graph-theoretic quantum system modelling for neuronal microtubules as hierarchical clustered quantum Hopfield networks, Volume 43, 2014 - Issue 6. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03081079.2014.893298
3.  Modelling microtubules in the brain as n-qudit quantum Hopfield network and beyond, Volume 45, 2016 - Issue 1. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03081079.2015.1076405

Innovation also leads to social transformation of the community. Literacy among boys and girls in Dayalbagh is complete. There is no caste system. Marriages are simple. Various innovative programmes are in place for social upliftment, keeping in mind the livelihood, health and empowerment aspects of the community and surrounding villages. In the Dayalbagh way of life, change is evolutionary and not revolutionary, taking everyone along.

In the next post, we will cover the Second Quality needed for a Sustainable Way of Life.

The above post is by Anurag Singh, Editor of the Sigma Six Q blog.

Sigma Six Q: Six Qualities for a Sustainable Future

Sigma Six Q: Six Qualities for a

Sustainable Future

“This is the Dayalbagh way of life - Sigma Six Q.

Sigma means that all these aspects or components have

interaction amongst themselves and the cumulative

effect of all these is many times more than their

individual effect”

-Revered Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi

Dayalbagh is a self-contained colony renowned for its serene environment and secular establishments, in which its inhabitants lead an active, disciplined and co-operative community life dedicated to service, conforming to the high spiritual ideals of their faith. On the outskirts of the historic city of Agra, the campus is situated in garden settings, away from the din and noise of the city. Nestled between lush green fields, it provides an excellent ambience and academic setting which is in harmony with nature.

In the words of Revered Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi, “Here people are not advised to renounce the world. They are advised to live a life of better worldliness performing their duties in this world.”1 Success is achieved by cooperation and unity. As propounded by Revered Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi, “In the present times in modern context, there is a trend to simulate reality by different kinds of models. Accordingly, what is the Dayalbagh Model? I have been thinking about the Dayalbagh Model and in the modern context, we can call it “Sigma Six Q” Model. ‘Q’ stands for Quality. Quality is of six kinds which we want to develop in Dayalbagh. Sigma means that all these aspects or components have interaction amongst themselves and the cumulative effect of all these is many times more than their individual effect.”

What are these six Qualities that simulate the Dayalbagh way of life and would lead to a sustainable future for our planet? In the following six posts, we will define these qualities and give examples of their implementation within Dayalbagh and its institutions.

The above post is by Anurag Singh, Editor of the Sigma Six Q blogs.

1. Quotes of Revered Prof. Prem Saran Satsangi are taken from
“The Dayalbagh Herald” dated Tuesday, June 21st, 2016.