Academic Institutions and Spiritual Organisations

Among all things that influence a human's life, the most important one is perhaps education. And, broadly speaking, education has two roles to play. One is to empower humans to earn his/her living and live in a respectful manner in the society. And another is to help humans in the process of spiritual evolution. These two roles are not disconnected from each other and, for most people, actually go hand-in-hand. It is not an either-or situation. Most human beings need to sustain themselves respectfully in the society as well as make spiritual progress. And in ancient India, both these roles of education were played by the same centres of learning (called gurukul). The teacher who taught economics also taught the art of inner well-being. And in fact, all the branches of learning, be it economics or music or sword fighting or anything else, had spiritual progress as their end goal. As Aurobindo once said, "Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it & use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use."

Preventing Student Suicides

Youth is supposed to be a time of maximal exuberance. When a person reaches late teens, s/he starts breaking off the limitations of childhood but is yet to form the barriers of adulthood. It is a time to enjoy life in multiple dimensions and also acquire the skills that will be useful for later life. This is also a time when a human being is supposed to enjoy the best health conditions, both physically and mentally. But unfortunately, over the last decade or so, the problems of adulthood have started plaguing human beings during their days of youth. Diabetes and heart attacks are no longer the problems of old age and have taken hold over many people in their 30s and 40s. And so is the case with mental ailments. Stress and depression have become almost as common as cough and cold. And these problems have also led many students to take the extreme step of committing suicide. And this is not just at ordinary colleges but at the most premier of our institutions. Many of our best and brightest are suffering from these problems at very acute levels. 

Sound and Vibration in Vedanta

Recitation of mantras plays such an important role in Vedanta that the path of realisation prescribed by it can also be called Mantra Yoga or Nada Yoga. Even the Sanskrit language, in which all the Vedic verses were composed, bears a clear testimony to this deep connection between Yoga and sound. In the Vedic tradition, a lot of emphasis is given on the rote learning of the hymns with the main purpose of making the students properly learn the phonetics of each mantra. It is often said that the sounds produced by properly chanting the mantras are much more important than the meaning one may associate with it. Meaning is a mental construct which may vary from person to person, but sounds have an objective reality to them. It is even said that this whole world is created out of sound. As Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev says, "When unmanifest existence - often referred to as space or silence - began to reverberate, the first manifestation was sound". This thought also finds mention in some of the western philosophical traditions. For example, the Bible says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God".

Some scientific questions for mystics

1. It is often said in Indian mysticism that the universe is created out of sound. Physicists believe that the universe is created out of vibrations. Accordingly to mystics, what is the difference between sound and vibration? In physics, propagation of sound requires a material medium to exist whereas vibration is a lot more subtle. 

2. Several mystics have claimed that Indians knew about the value of speed of light long before its discovery by modern scientists. Though this could be true, modern physics goes much further and says that nothing in this universe can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum. In fact, all theories of modern physics are based on this key assumption. What does mysticism have to say about this? In the physical dimensions, can something travel faster than light? 

3. String theory predicts that our space has many more dimensions than the 3 that we normally perceive. How are non-physical dimensions, that mysticism often refers to, different from these additional physical ones? Are non-physical dimensions also governed by objective laws? 

4. The process of consecration is said to be about a certain kind of energisation of mundane objects. But the physical energy of the mundane object does not seem to increase in the process as it neither starts traveling faster nor does it get hotter. This means that, according to mysticism, non-physical energy can be bound to physical dimensions without any net transfer of energy. But is it also possible for energy to be transferred from non-physical to physical dimensions? If yes, this would violate the physical principle of conservation of energy. 

5. Is there any physical basis for the origin of the primordial sound AUM (or, OM) or does it originate in the non-physical dimensions? Does the sound AUM have any physical properties that make it so special and unique? In other words, if we record the sound AUM uttered by a perfect being, will we get an audio signal with some unique statistical properties?

Summaries of Discussion Group Meetings : 2016-17

Free-will and Destiny

1. Is it necessary that at a fundamental level reality is either about 'free will' or 'destiny'? Can't both be equally valid concepts? May be we have free-will to take individual decisions but there is perhaps a cosmic intelligence that guides us towards certain outcomes taking the role of destiny.

Does suffering cease after self-realisation?

In a very interesting TED dialogue on Nationalism vs. Globalism, the historian Yuval Noah Harari said, "I think we don't need to find our role in the universe. The really important thing is to liberate ourselves from suffering. What characterises sentient beings in contrast to robots, to stones, to whatever, is that sentient beings suffer, can suffer, and what they should focus on is not finding their place in some mysterious cosmic drama. They should focus on understanding what suffering is, what causes it and how to be liberated from it." That is a very powerful thought and, in some sense, has been the central theme of almost all spiritual teachings across the world. Many of these spiritual teachings, specially those that originated in India, offer great philosophical insights into this fundamental question and also show the path that eventually leads to end of suffering. The most iconic story in this regard is perhaps that of Buddha who was so moved by the suffering of other people that he gave up all his royal pleasures to search for an answer and eventually propounded an eightfold path to liberate people from their suffering. The final step in this process is an experience of samadhi or self-realisation after which the individual is claimed to be finally free from all suffering. Whether it is humanly possible to reach such a state of meditation is a deep question in itself, but even if a person is able to achieve that state, does it really lead to an end of all suffering?

Experiments in Engineering Education

There are many developments which make one think that our engineering education system is either broken or headed towards that. Many students no longer like to attend classes and most of what we teach is perceived to be irrelevant to the job market. Even at several leading educational institutes around the world, only about 25% of the students end up in a job relevant to their core engineering discipline. Several problem areas have been identified and several measures have been proposed to remedy the situation, but frankly speaking nothing so far seems to be making much difference. Several institutes even brought about an overhaul of their entire curriculum over the last few years, but again with little impact. One of the reasons is that very few of these steps taken were bold enough but most were merely minor tweaks here and there. But of course, taking bold steps merely for the sake of displaying bravery is not a good idea and can lead to large instabilities. Also, bold steps need not be taken with a stamp of lived-happily-ever-after. We need to be open to the fact that some of our best decisions may also fail due to a myriad of reasons. Bold steps need to also have a carefully planned exit option in case they don't help in improving the situation. We need more of a start-up culture in decision making.

Doesn't science need its conscience keepers?

The strongest aspect of humans is perhaps that their intelligence is multifaceted. There is so much diversity in human activity that sometimes it becomes hard to believe that all humans are actually of the same species! Humans are good at dance, music, painting, computer programs and many other fields. Among all these fields of human activity, one that stands truly apart and in a unique position is the pursuit of science. Science is undoubtedly one of the biggest contributors to the progress of human civilisation right from the very start. The discovery of the wheel and ancient metallurgy was no less a scientific achievement compared to modern day rockets and smartphones. Despite all these immense achievements, science is facing a huge problem today. Science has provided immensely useful tools to study almost all the material aspects of nature. We can very accurately measure temperature of an object, the length of even tiny bacteria, and even the distance to stars many light years away. But science is finding it increasingly difficult to measure its own worth. There is so much new science being produced everyday by thousands of scientists around the world that it has become a real problem to assess which of these contributions are worthy of praise and which are not. And those that are worthy, how much praise do they really deserve? 

What does it mean to surrender?

The concept of surrender is one of the few things that is given the highest respect in all religious traditions. And it is also one of the most elusive concepts in spirituality, almost as elusive as the concept of Maya. Though the concept of Maya has been dealt with in lot of detail by several great Indian philosophers, the concept of surrender has not been so fortunate. This is also because surrender is more important in the tradition of Bhakti (path of emotion) whereas most of the philosophers are more inclined towards Jnana (path of knowledge). Many of the great philosophers in India have also been equally great bhaktas, but for some reason they choose not to show their emotional side in public. 

A Physics Perspective Of Free Will

The debate between fate and free will is perhaps as old as human thought. Till the 19th century, this question was mainly of interest to philosophers. But with the advent of modern physics in the 20th century with all its uncertainties in the form of quantum mechanics, this question has now taken a whole new direction and is an active topic of discussion even amongst physicists and neuroscientists. In this webinar, we will discuss what quantum mechanics can say about free will and what it cannot. In particular, we will see that quantum mechanics actually throws up a third possibility which is very different from both fate and free will, and perhaps much closer to the human condition:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42AGGGp8mmI

How can we manage our anger and use it for spiritual growth?

Anger is one of the emotions we all experience on a daily basis, much more frequently than many other emotions. Uncontrolled anger is also one of the primary causes of broken relationships, be it personal or professional. As Aristotle once said, "Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." Though it is certainly very difficult to master the art of anger management, it is necessary to make sincere efforts towards this goal. In this webinar, we will discuss some simple techniques using which we can become good at managing our anger and use it effectively for our spiritual growth:

https://youtu.be/QCnF1OXx4CU

What should we build at Ayodhya?

A temple was demolished and so was a mosque. Rama would have perhaps never imagined in the wildest of his dreams that his legacy would someday become the cause of so much disharmony. A lot has been written about the events and the motives. The violence of words has started giving tough competition to the violence of the body. The land has been divided but a court case still goes on. But in all this, has anyone ever asked this simple question : how would Rama actually like to be remembered? Would the construction of a temple at his birthplace really please him?

How to make spirituality an interesting process?

The spiritual process is often considered to be quite boring by many people in our society. This is primarily due to two misconceptions. Firstly, it is usually believed that one must give up all pleasures of life in order to pursue spirituality. And secondly, the spiritual process is usually believed to mainly consist of sitting with closed eyes for many hours. In this webinar, we will try to clear these misconceptions and also discuss various ways by which we can make the spiritual process a truly exciting and interesting journey:

https://youtu.be/8KiIuBaRLq0