Swami Vijnananand: Efforts for the new generation..

A famous quote says ‘if you want one year of prosperity, grow grain. If you want ten years of prosperity grow trees; but, if you want hundreds of years of prosperity, nurture the youths’. Efficient and morality practicing young generation is important and necessary aspect in nation building. 

Statistics reveal that presently; India has 50% of its total population below the age of 20 years and about 70% or more below the age of 35 years. Therefore India is known as nation of youths in the world. India is predicted to be a world superpower in next 10 to 15 years. Realization of this dream is largely based on the assumed success and accomplishment of young generation. Thus, we can conclude that if India or any nation for that matter, wants to gain and maintain top position in the world in coming years, it is necessary to start and continue the process of creating capable, virtuous and patriotic young generation.  

 

Educational institutions, office bearers, principals, teachers, parents, government officials, politicians responsible for educational policy making – all should consider this fact before planning and implementing a strategy. Manashakti Research Centre particularly and especially is working with this purpose. Its objective is to help parents, teachers and others concerned in nurturing young generation. With this objective, it is busy organizing many study camps and related activities regularly for past many years. Recently a three days conference was organized at Lonavla on the subject “Efforts required to bring up the new generation with right character.”

Pursuit of happiness

Each one of us mostly strives for happiness and happiness is the major objective. Parents attempt to fill their child’s world with happiness. They always try hard to raise their child properly and keep his or her life on correct track. But mostly they are ignorant about the exact course of action to achieve their aim and often their efforts result   not yielding desired results; end-up into failure. To some extent; this is applicable to schools and teachers also.

If we review the condition and status of children – from infants to teenagers - the overall state of affairs we see is quite worrying.  9^th June 2010 edition of English daily published from Mumbai displayed following headlines on front page:

-         Two and half year old child suffers from depression.

-         A rich Kid steals……just for the craze of thrill

We see quite often the news related to the stress, depression and  resulting ill effects due to the erratic behavior in younger generation.

Today we can easily hear about depression among six to ten years old children. High blood pressure, diabetes is common in school and college students, at least during the pre-exam period of high tension, as revealed in some social surveys published. Another published survey revealed that 50% school students in a metropolitan city were of aggressive nature and show tendency to become a gang member of bad boys operating in school campus.

Tough competition; tension of study; increasing struggle due to ambition of getting maximum marks; addiction of TV, mobile phones, social media and Internet games; excessive / untimely eating and sleeping; exam fear; getting confused at the time of exam; anger;  unwillingness to attend school; self-centered nature; lack of definite pre-set goal – 

complaints coming from parents are many and never-ending. 

On one side tensed parents are worried about future of children, on the other side; children are getting depressed and aggressive due to various external factors. Dynamic lifestyle has provided us many conveniences that we had never seen before. But it has also given birth to worries and sorrows that were never present in our life in the past.

Where Is Happiness?

Matthieu Ricard is a French scientist turned Buddhist monk. He has reputation of being ‘happiest person in the world’. He has published a book on ‘happiness’. He says that our mind is flexible and constantly changing. We can dramatically change our life, if we slightly change our attitude toward world and our perception of external things.

How to execute these changes? What exactly we should repair? To find the answers we must entirely review the concept of happiness.

Happy Personality

In some of the earlier blog-articles; we have seen how the concept of happiness has been treated by Swamiji in terms of laws of motion and second law of thermodynamics, Entropy. Here we shall try to see this in another rational way.

Anybody who really wants to be happy in life needs three things. They are:

1.     Capacity to earn money for material comforts – This requires Success in examinations.

2.     Physical fitness – This requires maintaining sound health.

3.     Peace and satisfaction – This requires appropriate behavior, nature or character.

It is always beneficial to strive for them since the onset. Let’s try to understand it in brief:

1.     Success in Examination: One has to pass many exams with flying colors since childhood to young age and even later in life. Syllabus, Passing criteria and competition is part and parcel of every examination. We need to study various things with devotion, honesty, concentration and persistence. You have to prove your worth gradually by passing examination. Our financial and other gains are determined according to this. Currently this process continues from two and half / three years to twenty five years of age. Many career options are present as per one’s interests and caliber. We can choose from them. Even after completing academic studies, one has to face many examinations and competition such as in job interview, promotion or while starting new business. At each stage one has to ensure correct efforts and decisions for further progress. One can earn wealth after all these efforts. In short,  success in the examination is most necessary.

Health: A person cannot be happy without excellent physical health because only healthy and sound person is capable of enjoying all the pleasure we get from wealth. For instance, a person might have financial capacity to eat tasty sweets every day. But if he has diabetes, he is absolutely forbidden to do so. We cannot enjoy any pleasure without health. Our body is made of many organs, cells and various systems (such as digestive system, respiratory system, etc.). Their complicated functioning needs proper balance and sound health of each body component which is important for day to day activities. So a person must include well-planned and controlled diet, recreation, rest and exercise in his lifestyle. Parents must consciously take care and lay foundation of child’s health since childhood. Today health care is a matter of big concern. Many physical and psychological illnesses of adult age are arriving early at young age on large scale due to faulty lifestyle and food habits.

3       Nature or Character: These two factors mentioned above, i.e. success in examination and health might be favorable to a person, but no one can be happy without appropriate nature (behavior). Negative, unsatisfied, egoistic, vain person remains unsatisfied and unhappy in spite of favorable conditions. On the other hand, person having appropriate character, nature can reduce his unhappiness by remaining balanced even during adverse health and wealth conditions. Nature of a person means attitude, motivation, tendencies, behavior and character. All these things are important and essential for happiness. Therefore cultivating, nurturing proper nature, building character plays very important role in creating new young generation to face life challenges in the years to come. In fact it may not be wrong to conclude that while the first two factors are important, this third factor is vitally more important.

Character building

Character building by increasing emotional quotient is a hot topic of discussion among thinkers in the world today. An international conference on ‘Educating world citizens for the 21^st century’ was held in October 2009 at Washington, USA, under leadership of Dalai Lama. This important issue is at the center of discussion amongst thinkers all over world. The process of developing nature and character mainly takes place in childhood, i.e. up till age of 12 to 14 years. To accomplish proper things in this process, parents and teachers can contribute on large scale and media and government can also play their proper role. It is necessary to create awareness and give training in this regard. Many experts have presented their viewpoint on this aspect in the recently held Manashakti conference also. 
(The conference details at link 'http://educon.manashakti.org/20-Jan17.html')

In prevailing education system emphasize is put on scoring the marks and grades in examination. Curriculum and training regarding focus on health and character building attracts very less attention or is completely ignored. This aspect assumes high importance in MANASHAKTI efforts in nurturing youth. We shall see more on this in the articles to follow.

With due emphasis on Character Development, we have to prepare the revised-new rational education policy to nurture the overall personality (i.e. success in examination, health and character) of the child during the journey form prenatal stage to youth.We should take into account advantages and disadvantages of current education system to find out appropriate solutions and plug the loopholes. For doing this we need co-operation from all concerned. While determining these details of action; we should first objectively review when, where, how and by what means the learning process takes place in the life of child. So we could understand how to make that process more favorable and appropriate. The subject was discussed in its basics by Swamiji in his book “Save Your Child from Yourself”.

We shall review this; in the article to follow.

 

Vijay R. Joshi.

Swami Vijnananand, the founder of Manashakti Research Centre

Swami Vijnananand, the thinker, saint of modern age.

When Saint Ramdas was still a young kid, he sat in an attic, contemplating about the betterment of world. Saint Dnyaneshwar endured excessive persecution from the people. But he prayed to God ‘Let everybody get whatever they wish’. Saints who devoted their life for service of others were present everywhere in the world, in every age. They left imprints of their selfless work in society for long period. Their guidance and direction benefited many generations in the past and continue to benefit the present and future. Name of Swami Vijnananand, the founder and first thinker of Manashakti Research Centre belongs to the same rich tradition. He can be regarded as the thinker, saint of modern age.

“The welfare of the universe is my constant thought.

Self-examination is my tool.

I have no enemies outside of me.

I may have some enemy inside me for sure.

Day by day, as my knowledge based work will grow.

One day the entire world will be mine.

Science and beliefs are in my skin.

Gratitude is my righteous path.

Insulting others is forbidden to me.

Peace and equality are my actions”.

In words Swamiji did not only pray for the welfare of universe, he literally lived the prayer for his entire life. He combined science and spiritual knowledge to offer various solutions for people to apply and make their life happy. Lonavala’s famous Manashakti Research Centre is using these solutions for people since 50 years through various useful activities.

Happiness in life seems like a tiny barley seed, but sorrow is felt like mountain, big and overwhelming. Howsoever we try, we do not get the happiness to the extent we desire. Whatever little happiness we get is not long lasting. Unhappiness clings to us forever even if we do not try for it. Tension accompanies success. Boon of wealth comes with the curse of jealousy. Many such questions keep badgering us. Parents worry about study, nature and health related problems of young generation. Many of us are fed up with the corruption in society. Health and tension related problems are equally troublesome for young and adults. Number of temples, mosques and churches are growing, but real religious, tolerant and virtuous tendency is diminishing. Virtues like sanskars, benevolence, neighborliness, humanity, nationalism, honesty are getting obscure.

To find basic answers for all these worries, Swami Vijnananand studied concepts of happiness and unhappiness of human mind in depth. He took the help of scientific laws and interpreted independent solutions to problems.

In his study, research and experiments, Swamiji found that a person can solve his problems by bringing change in his lifestyle by his own efforts based on laws of nature. When human efforts are combined with spiritual knowledge and science, we get results that last longer. He wrote many books on his research. He also consulted and verified his research and results with experts in various subjects. Around 1960, he published a series of 16 books on “New Way Philosophy” in English. Later he wrote approximately 250 books in five different languages. He also wrote articles in many leading Indian newspapers.

His work took off in many forms such as establishing Manashakti Research Centre, organizing study camps, designing mind test machines, conducting novel body-mind machine tests. Various pujas including Yajna puja suitable for modern times are associated with organizing social work activities or shramananda, knowledge rallies, etc. Gradually with such activities conducted over last fifty years, Manashakti Research Centre has acquired present status.

Today the main center is at Lonavala (Pune ) and many sub-centers are spread across mainly in state of Maharashtra, India. There are approximately 100 life devotees at Lonavala who work full time for the institution.   There are thousands of devotees all around Maharashtra who selflessly contribute in the form of time, i.e. one hour a day or money donation (Dhananand). This work is now spreading beyond  Maharashtra and India as well.

“Manashakti”, magazine, a Marathi monthly published by M.R.C has celebrated silver jubilee recently.  It is a magazine published from Lonavala ‘for lasting happiness and reducing unhappiness’ – which is its motto. This magazine has become popular in no time as it provides knowledge based amusement and motivation to each and every person in the family through its various columns.  It reaches 4 to 5 lakh people every month.

The activities of Manashakti Research Centre include various special study courses, machine tests and other solutions for every stage in life, i.e. from prenatal to post-death. 50 years ago, Manashakti Research Centre presented the idea of educating and giving sanskar to fetus at prenatal stage.  It also started scientific programs to educate people in this regard.   This initiative can be considered unique not only at local level but also at the global level. Currently other individuals / institutions do conduct such prenatal education programs, but prenatal education conducted by Manashakti Research Centre is extremely popular due to its distinctive noble purpose and methodology. Seminars on prenatal education are organized all over Maharashtra and are in great demand. These seminars are conducted in Marathi and English. There is also a three days study course to give extensive guidance on the subject. This study course is available at Lonavala, scheduled throughout year.

Diverse programs on personality development for children and youths have been proven useful for children-parents-teachers and are very popular. Solutions  based on scientific study of mind-brain-body trio; independent, logical and rational guidance to accomplish ambitious mission within specific period; devotees working within laid principles; team work without any materialistic or  financial gain or donations; democratic decision making process without personality cult; selfless extensive work for all; that goes beyond cast, creed and religion based on no profit no loss principle – are some of the characteristics of this institution.  

Manashakti Research Centre is conducting various activities to create well mannered, patriotic and humanitarian young generation for building nation. Many activities useful for educational institutions, schools, colleges, parents, teachers, administrators of such institutions are available. Activities available for adults include guidance on health, behavior, success, satisfaction, etc. In the article to follow we shall see the center’s initiative for youth welfare.

While Swamiji has setup activities from prenatal stage to the whole life span till the moment of death, the major emphasis is for the new generation. In the articles to follow, we shall see more on this subject.

Vijay R. Joshi.