Self Awareness & Glocal Educare: SAGE

By Venkat Srivatsan

Dear Prospective Reader,

This booklet will to be of interest to everyone who wants to be higher educated for the 21st century, since it addresses a fundamental lacuna in today’s higher education worldwide. It's also likely to be a necessity for anyone associated with any multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-faith, multi-national organisation.The Unity of Faiths is an underlying theme, the necessary practice of the Gloriously Divine Name is the central message and the compatibility of the Supreme Knowledge with modernity and the sciences is the main focus of the content.Policy implications for global governance, that follow from this framework, are also discussed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: VRS
• Release date: Feb 18, 2018
• ISBN: 9781622741199

Book preview

RAMA’S APPEAL

Rama, the Emperor’s first-born, seemed to be in the throes of an existential crisis. He had recently been on a pilgrimage from the capital city of Ayodhya and this seemed to have brought about a major transformation. He had started contemplating on His role as the current crown prince and the future emperor. This contemplation had lead to the realisation of the full significance of accepting the profound responsibility of ruling a kingdom of human beings.  Just as Siddhartha Gautama would do an eon later, Rama too seemed to have observed the inevitability of disease, old age and death, and the inescapable loss and grief therein. Man seemed to be a Tragic being with insatiable individual appetites, who was living in a social context of competition over scarce resources. The consequent inequities seemed to lead to cruelty and vileness in human behaviour. Rama seemed overwhelmed with Man’s Great Existential Questions – What is this Universe and Where did it come from? ‘Who am I?’ and above all ‘How should I live?’ Following this contemplation that young and tender mind also seemed to have sunk emotionally deep, into the ‘tragic sense of life’. His search for answers, to all his torturing questions, seemed to be leading to a bottomless abyss.

Young Rama’s new mental disposition had been quickly noticed by the palace attendants, who then communicated it to the royal chamberlain, who in turn apprised Rama’s father – Emperor Dasharatha - of the state of affairs.

"Lord, since his return from the pilgrimage, a great change has come over the prince…..He does not enjoy the company of the people in the inner apartments…..Even when offered charming and pleasing objects, he looks at them with sad eyes, uninterested……He goes through the motions of eating, walking, resting, bathing and sitting like an automaton, like one who is deaf and dumb……..He is silent most of the time and is not amused by entertainment. He relishes only solitude. He is all the time immersed in his own thought………Day by day, he gets more and more emaciated. Lord, only you can find the appropriate remedy for this condition of the prince.¹"

The Emperor Dasharatha immediately recognised the potential disaster this meant for the royal family and more importantly the kingdom, and sent word for Rama to be brought to the royal court at once.  Fortunately, the royal sage Vasishtha was already in the court and through a sublime coincidence, the great sage Viswamithra had also come to the court and was at that very moment encouraging the emperor to send Rama with him to the forest on a royal mission. When Rama reached the court:

He saluted the king, who embraced him and said: What makes you so sad, my son? Dejection is an open invitation to a host of miseries. The sages concurred with the king.

In return Rama replied:

Holy Sir, I shall duly answer your question. I grew up happily…; I was instructed by worthy teachers. Recently I went on a pilgrimage. During this period a trend of thought has taken hold of me, robbing me of all hope in this world. My heart begins to question: what do people call happiness and can it be had in the ever-changing objects of this world? All beings in this world take birth but to die,…. I do not perceive any meaning in all these transient phenomena, which are the roots of suffering and sin….. Everything in this world is dependent upon the mind, upon one’s mental attitude. On examination, the mind itself appears to be unreal! But, we are bewitched by it. We seem to be running after a mirage in the desert to slake our thirst!                                                                                                                                                                                  Sir, surely we are not bond slaves sold to a master; yet we live a life of slavery, without any freedom whatever….. What is this world? What comes into being, grows and dies? How does this suffering come to an end? My heart bleeds with sorrow, though I do not shed tears, in deference to the feeling of my friends.

Rama then went on to a lengthy and extended lamentation on how each of wealth [and poverty], limited life-span, egotism, craving, the pitiable human body, helpless dependent and constrained childhood, lustful frenzied youth, the travails of adult and family responsibility, diseased old age and the changes wrought by time - are all sources of endless sorrow and concluded as follows:

By reflecting on the pitiable fate of living beings, fallen into this dreadful pit of sorrow, I am filled with grief. Hence, pray tell me: what is that condition or state in which one does not experience any grief? How can one who is involved in the world and its activities, as I am, reach the supreme state of peace and bliss? What is that attitude that enables one not to be influenced by various kinds of activities and experiences?  How should one live in this world?                                                                                  Obviously this world is full of pain and death; how does it become a source of joy, without befuddling one’s mind? [Is there] a secret that enables one to remain unaffected by the grief and suffering in the world. What is that secret? What is the secret that counteracts the habit of the mind that is spread out in the form of the universe? Who are those heroes who have freed themselves from delusion? And what methods did they adopt to free themselves. If you consider that I am neither fit nor capable of understanding this, I shall fast unto death.               

Having said so, Rama remained silent.         

SELF AWARENESS & GLOCAL EDUCARE²

THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY OF                            THE GLORIOUSLY DIVINE NAME FOR                        THE GLOCAL CITIZEN

VENKAT R. SRIVATSAN³

OM

"O’ Truth Supernal!

Ever established in the Vow of Truth

True in all three phases

Womb of all relative Truths - Thereby sustaining them!

Unto that Truth’s Transcendental Essence -

That’s the hidden but True Eye of this manifestation,

And the Source of these partial truths

-  I offer myself and seek protection.⁴" 



pasted_image.png

A Joyous Embrace of the above Embodiment of OM!⁵

Symbol of the Pure Delight that is my Faith!   

Granter of the Bliss of my Beloved Name  - SaiRam!⁶

Unto that Absolute manifest as the Goddess Supreme Who Saves Her distressed refugees, Grants their desires and Removes their sufferings I offer myself⁷. 

O’ Causeless Ocean of Compassion; Adored by Dhruva & Prahalaadhaa 

First among the teachers of Devotion; O’ Naaradhaa - bless me!!⁸

‘Anna’ - Sri Krishna Premi Maharaj⁹  - in his Hari Bhakthi Manjusha

DEDICATION

For my Mother

Of whom Our Dear Lord Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba said:                                                                    She was a very good devotee. She was a very good devotee

For having particularly blessed me, as an exemplary, on the                                                                                Power of the Written Name¹⁰

And the Divine Chancellor  Himself

Above all else

For the Blessed thought

To address our Dear Students

© VENKAT R SRIVATSAN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author/publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

PREFACE

Truth is one; the wise express it in many ways.¹¹                                    The Rig Veda

The motivations, dear student, for this document are three-fold. The first is that you need to be cross-culturally literate. Irrespective of where you’re going to high school or college or where you live and work, and irrespective of what you’re majoring/majored in and the kind of profession or career you [hope to] practice, it is certain that in this 21st century you will be forced to interact with people from foreign nations and cultures.  As many generations of international migrants and multinational company executives have discovered, inter-cultural interactions are an exceptionally challenging feature to life and are not to be taken lightly. Even in the 20th and early 21st century world, tens of millions of people who have migrated out of their culture of origin have experienced the painful effects of ‘culture shock’ and spent their lives with varying degrees of adjustment to its impact.

In the academic literature we talk of multi-cultural mastery; however I don’t think it really exists or if it does exist, it does so very rarely. What we have mainly are human beings who have varying degrees of adjustment to and acceptance of their changed life circumstances, when they’re forced to interact across cultures. This challenge of inter-cultural interaction is of course a monumental one for the international migrant. But as the history of populations that have a significant immigrant group demonstrates, including in the early 21st century, this is a challenge to the resident, long-standing cultures as well.  And these cross-cultural differences, given the limitations of human nature, lead increasingly to stereotyping, then disagreements, followed by acrimony, inter-group conflicts, acts of violence, systematic persecution and more rarely ethnic cleansing and eventually even genocide.

While there are many reasons for these inter-cultural conflicts and the lack of multi-cultural mastery - such as differences in language, food, dress, social structures etc - we are trying to address one main cause in this document. And that is to focus, as are young Rama’s poignant questions in the preamble, on existential issues – Where did this Universe come from? How is it sustained? How will it all end? Who am I? How should I live?, etc.   

Clearly, over the last five thousand years or so, mankind has come up with a set of amazingly profound and wide variety of answers to these questions. The world’s philosophical and religious traditions have both a rich history and a bewildering diversity of approaches on these issues. This diversity of approaches to the existential questions, as many have rued, has been the source of disunity, discord and division amongst mankind and has throughout our human history led to horrific consequences as well. And more specifically for our times, it has made the lives of global executives and international migrants much more challenging. This is because existential questions, and their answers, call forth some of man’s deepest commitments and our most passionate behaviours. Equally importantly, most human beings find it particularly challenging to empathise, relate and cooperate appropriately with people having a different existential perspective than their own, making the everyday intercultural interaction much more challenging. 

These existential questions also address core issues that define an individual’s character and are also at the heart of all religions/practical philosophies.  Therefore, a globe-trotting individual who can help solve problems and execute plans from a transnational perspective or one who has multiple multi-ethnic, multi-cultural interactions and on a frequent basis, needs to personally work out answers to these existential questions, and at a deeper level and in a far more integrative fashion than her mono-cultural counterpart, so that she can interact successfully with people of diverse faiths and beliefs. For example, an ability to personally harmonise Zen Buddhism, Devotional Catholicism, Tibetan Tantrism, Ascetic Vedantism, Orthodox Judaism and Ecstatic Sufism can be very useful when understanding and inter-acting with fellow citizens, who come from a wide variety of existential persuasions.

So what we’re trying to do here is to take you, the college-going/educated student, on a walk through various academic disciplines such as philosophy, mathematics, physics, biology, economics, sociology, etc., and thereby build a basic intellectual framework for approaching the world’s existential traditions. Obviously this is not the first attempt at something like this and there are various versions in the world of this unifying perspective - generically called the  ‘perennial philosophy’. But we think that ours is perhaps the first attempt, from the ‘perennial philosophical’ perspective, that is specifically directed at the student who is aiming to be a global worker/executive/citizen. We also believe that the combination of ideas and themes that we’re bringing together here are unique even in this genre and they’re complete in providing, both an intellectual framework as well as a basis for practice.¹²

My second reason for writing the book is more personal. I wish someone had written a book like this and that I had read it when I was in my undergraduate engineering program in Chennai, India or at least in my graduate program at Columbia Business School in NYC. It would have saved me considerable heartache, existential angst and resulted in a more happy personal life.  And recent research and opinion backs up my belief that there are many of you who have been, and or are, in the same boat that I was in, in my young adulthood. I’m talking about being cast adrift from the existential moorings that we were brought up in, and being forced to chart a path of our own, in a world of bewildering variety and overwhelming complexity. And many of you, in deciding on your lifestyle choice, professional career and academic majors as well as particular courses that you want to take as a part of your higher educational experience, want these decisions to be informed by your existential quest. I understand and empathise with you as you make your determination about what this world is, who you are and how you want to live. One of my main goals in writing this book is to get you to think about these existentialist issues as part of your higher educational experience, discuss it with others as a way to clarify your thinking, before you make long- term life commitments.

THE NEED FOR UNIVERSITIES TO EDUCATE STUDENTS AS EXISTENTIALLY GROUNDED GLOCAL CITIZENS 

The first reason for writing the book is targeted towards you, the individual student-reader, and the second one was more personal and based on my life-experience; but the third reason for our writing this document is more institutional in nature. One question that needs to be explored in the institutional context is whether the current educational system in which we've been trained in, is sufficient for our development as global citizens - and particularly so from the ‘existential questions’ perspective. Or is it that, we need a significant modification to our current educational practices to accomplish this in the future?

On this issue, let us state our position unequivocally - we believe that there is a fundamental lacuna in the education and development of individuals from the ‘existential questions’ perspective. You, dear student, are not being educated for an effective participation in the emerging global civil society. Kindly bear with us as we develop our rationale for this strong assertion.

Now, as almost everyone knows, globalisation has been one of the dominant forces shaping human life from the latter half of the 20th century onwards and is fully expected to continue its dominating role in the 21st century [in spite of Brexit, anti-trade movements, immigration backlash, etc.] We know that international inter-dependence is only going to increase, because we know that more and more issues will have to be dealt with at the transnational or global level. Climate change, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, the spread of diseases and epidemics, the global effects of volatility in international financial markets and the need for their regulation, global trade and its regulation, the preservation of life in the sea, etc., are just some of the issues for which the solutions will be have to be arrived at from a global perspective.  And, just as national problems and national solutions needed the formation of a national perspective and a national civil society, so does it logically follow that global solutions to global problems need a global perspective and therefore a global civil society to formulate, implement and enforce these solutions.

Nevertheless, there is absolutely no one who believes that the incumbent early 21st century institutions and frameworks are capable of handling the evolving challenges of the 21st century. While many concerned citizens have been lamenting this fact for a while, there has been scant consistent and coherent work to tackle and solve this central challenge facing humanity.  We need a new set of institutions and solutions to the challenges that we face in the 21st century, and a functioning global civil society to evolve them. However a billion years of evolutionary forces [territorial-tribalism], 5000 years of civilisational conflicts [ethnic-communitarianism] and the last few centuries of political history that have ended in the formation of nation-states [leading most humans to being jingoistic – while falsely believing it to be patriotism], all militate against the ready formation of this global civil society. 

In a related note, most interested and knowledgeable observers also agree that the 21st century is going to be a multi-polar world geo-politically. There will be many global/regional powers rising and declining and we should continue to see the decline of the relative power of the United States. Most international relations experts will also agree that, given human behaviour and history, this situation of multi-polarity is highly unstable. This is because a rising or declining power can and will over-react to any random issue, leading to reactions from the others, which then leaves the entire system unsettled and precarious [examples in 2016 include China’s belligerence in the South China Sea or the English vote for Brexit]. And history points out unequivocally that political instability leads inevitability to social chaos. And of course, social chaos in a world of WMDs is a cause for unceasing terror.

In our view, and we’re not going to go into detail in articulating this, the ONLY viable sustainable long- term solution to this geo-political reality lies through the hope that all people in all countries, and especially the higher educated elite, realise this fundamental instability at the core - of humanity’s 21st century political life - and therefore start thinking and behaving as global citizens. And educating these future global citizens should therefore become higher education’s main and fundamental goal in the 21st century.

While we will be elaborating on the following idea in greater detail in the body of the text, we just wanted to point out here that we believe that it’s impossible to