Orientation Camp @ IIITA Prayagraj, U.P. Bharat

 

Prof. T. Lahiri

     IIIT- Allahabad, Prayagraj     

" Seldom we focus our attention towards our own self and to check what is its condition. We all know that our own mind and its control can make our surrounding world a great place for us to live but rarely we look back to focus our attention towards our own individual nature. It is surprising that we all know about the relationship of our individual mind to our “feeling good”, “satisfied in every sense”, yet we have least intention to do something for its improvement and control. In this regard, especially in India, and throughout the whole world, time and again, philosophers, sages have been engaged in this quest and came up with very interesting and attractive solutions in the form of their sayings, quotes etc. In modern days, although there are many developments to provide us a great extent of living comforts, yet we are not happy, rather we are intolerant to our slight distress or ups and downs of our life processes. We are always in a hurry, in race, in the quest of achieving everything of our interest, in our desire to eat so much that is beyond our capability to digest. In light of these problems, like time immemorial, we always need to make a study of our own mind. Like study of any system, study of mind also requires two primary aspects to know. First, its root-source from where the system of mind came and, second, the scope of further engineering of this mind (i.e., improvement of mind as a system). In this regard, the field of science and engineering gives a very good method of study for any such systems that is referred as Systems Engineering. The main objectives of the subject Systems Engineering are:

1. to select the system of interest for our study (it is mind, in our case);
2. to study or observe the system minutely to find the main systems sub-components (i.e., sub-systems) and their interrelationships to accomplish a task as a whole – called systems modelling (these are, “interest”, “desire”, “love”, “hatred”, “irritation”, “fear” and many environmental stimulating features in case of mind-system);
3. to have some trials or test runs of inter-activities of our sub-systems to know their effect on holistic system performance, which is called systems simulation (the game of life gives lots of opportunity for these trials to see these effects on our mind);
4. to perform this simulation to know about systems nature of performance at various situations or cases – called systems classification (various life situations demand various different types performances of mind);
5. to find best activity conditions of different sub-systems for best holistic performance of system against various cases – called systems optimization (we need to have the ability to identify the specific situation for providing specific best performance of mind);
6. to further improve the system – called systems design (our mind can be further improved)

Looking at mind as a system of our interest, we find that nature creates everything from a template which is the recurrent source for it. A human has been created from a human only and so our mind. However, we can create a new system from nature’s many sub-systems the template of which was apparently not there – like, house, mobile phone, car etc. Therefore it is not so much illogical to think that we can redesign our mind to get a new mind from our old one that is much better than our old one. The obvious question is: How do we improve our mind? To initiate this discussion, first let us start with the question and its answer that is already known to us. Question: What is that substance that gets increased after giving away? Answer: Vidya, i.e., knowledge that we gain from experience. This question-answer pair is my inspiration to dare to share my thoughts in this matter, otherwise, my situation is like “fools rush in where angels fear to trade”. Therefore, in search of a good method to improve my mind, my idea was like – why not to explore the supervised method of learning. Regarding learning, our common sense tends to rely on a belief mechanism – i.e., to believe on a teacher (i.e., Guru) who can guide us through this darkness towards the light. We all know that there are many benefits of taking the help of a guide if available rather than searching anything from scratch. This is like, after reaching a multiple road crossing we should better ask a well-informed person: which road should we take up to reach our destination? If I am a new student, I should rely on good teachers or an already launched portal displaying all the knowledge repositories (e.g., ordinance, programs, syllabuses, facilities, codes of conducts etc.). The whole paradigm of religions, spiritual worlds and its leaders actually mean for this area of mind-engineering whereas, the formal psychology is still the weakest state of science.

Following this belief system, I hereby grab the ideology described and shown (“shown” means practiced, implemented and displayed in his life) by leader of the pioneers of the today’s world of psychology – Swami Vivekananda, whose assimilation of ancient wisdoms with the modern scientific developments is an astounding task achieved in every sense and still attracts the people of the whole world to explore it more for their own wholesome benefits. That said, I am cutting short to his some of the famous quotes and its implication in our mind-engineering for our own benefits. First selected one is: “I am a voice without a form” It is echoed in my mind to realize that the very word “voice” means his “sayings” and the very word “form” means without any bias or shape of prejudice attached to it. Following the belief mechanism for our progress we may follow his “voice” by implementing it as work by declaring that: “I am a work without any voice”. The subsequent natural question is: how long should we practice the above method? The answer to my view is again follows from the next saying of Swamiji as given below. The second selected quote of Swamiji is: “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached”. This means wherever we are currently, let us relentlessly move forward towards accomplishment of our goal and should not stop till the goal is achieved. In this regard, we already know that this goal is nothing but to do the mind-engineering to conquer our own mind towards its control and its refinement to achieve a very happy, satisfied mind that is rich in all the good knowledges and devoid of any bad practices. Formally these target attributes can be defined as:

• Good judgmental intelligence (Sadbuddhi)
• Respect or serious adherence to our methodology (Sharddha)
• Knowledge gained from experience or practicing of the methodology (Gyan)
• Devotion to our task however smaller it is considering this is the task placed before us by the God or nature whatever we want to refer (Bhakti)
• Conscience about right and wrong through permanent impression of experience or knowledge (Vivek)
• Renouncement of wrongs (Bairagya)
• Compassion for all considering all are the creatures or sons of Nature i.e., God (Daya)

The famous proverb, “God helps those who help themselves” (Saday-bhav of Ishwar) inspires us to take up this path of mind-engineering under a great flexible but effective attributes as described above. Here comes the next saying of Swamiji. Third selected quote of Swamiji is: “Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvellous work. The moment you fear, you are nobody. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the cause of all our woes and it is fearlessness that brings heaven even in a moment”. It appears quite natural that for moving forward or playing through this game of mind-engineering we should have ample courage to do this. It is as if, following the belief system we are trying to come out from a dark labyrinth (bhool bhulaiya) following a candle-light guidance of our teacher. If we are afraid, nervous, we cannot proceed. Most of our worry, our fear, tension are the fallout of our egocentric inferiority complex only. But practically nobody among us has ever created his own brain or physique, nor it is a permanent gift of nature. Just recall what happened to Karna, one among the bravest warriors in Mahabharata. At a special instant of time, he could not even lift the wheel of his chariot that was trapped within a mud-hole. Therefore we should neither be egoistic nor be scared or having a feeling of inferiority to take up our job is the message of Swamiji. In this regard, we get very good guidance from Swamiji’s next message as given below:

Fourth selected quote of Swamiji is: “You will be nearer to heaven playing football than studying the Bhagavad-Gita”.

The above quote of Swamiji does not perturb us so much these days because of the long time criticism of the "so-called progressives" (socialists/atheists) against the ancient wisdom including Gita. However Swamiji’s intention was totally different. Through this quote he did not intend to criticise Gita but meant to lash us to follow Gita in its true spirit, i.e., Karma Yoga that is also evident from his lines next to this quote. Playing football means practicing and putting emphasis in playing this game of life or mind-engineering where as mind is nothing but a psychosomatic manifestation only like the game of football. Also, towards this path, we need to be in a simplistic state of mind to understand all the complexities of mind. This means we need to keep ourselves in an absolute frame of reference for this purpose. Why do we need it can be well understood from the following examples. Example 1: Can we hear the voice of our friend properly being in a place where the background sound or noise is too much? Obviously the answer is “no”. To hear "the words being said by our friend" (i.e., the talking system) properly, myself or my surrounding should be in a calm or noise-free position. Similarly, as for the second example, I may also ask, can we understand that the earth is moving just by standing on earth? Now again, the answer is "no" because being on earth both we and earth are moving at the same speed which means there is no relative speed between us. Therefore, we need to be in a standstill position which is referred to in Physics as "Absolute frame of reference" that every good observer in the universe should be at rest at all times. For our problem "we", the observer and the observed system i.e., the mind should be physically disconnected to each other. This is the main motto of meditation. In this regard, we should be simple means we should leave all the unnecessary extravaganzas, glamorous life, desire for any sort of heroism etc. from our life and be a simple character to play the toughest but the most beneficial game of life – mind-engineering. Surprisingly Swamiji caught us right there by narrating the following event that is the crux of this game. Fifth selected narration of Swamiji is: Once a British person questioned an Indian that “Can’t you wear some proper clothes and be a gentleman?” The Indian humbly responded that “In your country, clothes make Gentleman but in our country, the Character makes a Gentleman.”

Therefore we should be proud of our this national legacy and try our best to orient ourselves towards this goal for our own benefits.".

 

( Prof. T. Lahiri), IIIT-Allahabad, Prayagraj