Chapter 8: Harmony in the Family –

Understanding Values in Human-Human

Relationships

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Recap
In the previous three chapters, we investigated into the harmony in human being
through the process of self-exploration. We tried to understand the human being
as the co-existence of the Self and the Body. The Self is the domain of
consciousness and the Body is the domain of material. We discussed the
difference between needs and activities of the two entities, and how the Self is the
seer, doer and enjoyer (experiencer), while the Body is used as an instrument in
this process. Next, we explored into the activities of the Self, and the process to
ensure harmony among all the activities of the Self. This leads to a state of
harmony in the Self and paves the way for ensuring continuity of happiness in the
Self. Having discussed this, we saw how the Self can be responsible towards the
Body.

The programme for continuous happiness is to ensure right understanding, i.e.,

understanding of the harmony in human being, family, society and
nature/existence and to live in harmony at all these levels. On the basis of
understanding the human being, particularly the Self, we can now proceed to
understand relationship between one Self and the other Self which is the essential
part of relationship and of harmony in the family. We want to explore into it in this
chapter.

Family as the Basic Unit of Human Interaction

Every human being is born in a family and is part of a family, in which there are
parents, grandparents, children, youth, uncles and aunts, cousins, so many
relatives and friends. It is the family where we are nurtured and developed from
childhood, cared for in sickness and in old age. It is where we start learning to
interact with other human beings, to share and to care. It is the place where we
start becoming aware of relationship. The moment we hear the word mother, there
is a whole lot of feeling. Similarly, every relationship name has an associated
feeling which becomes more and more enriched as we interact. Our basic
grooming for living in relationship starts in the family. The first few years, what we
call the formative years, are spent in the family. It is where we pick up a very
significant part of our sanskar in living with our family elders and siblings,
neighbours and friends. It also provides us the platform to verify our understanding.

The family is the basic unit or building block of human organisation. It is a practice
ground for living in relationship and harmony (order).

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Feeling of Relationship as the Basis for Harmony in the Family
The harmony in the family has primarily to do with the fulfilment of relationship
between one human being and the other human being. In order to fulfil relationship,
it is necessary to understand relationship.

Understanding Relationship
We will now explore into the four important aspects of relationship:
1. Relationship is – between one Self (I1) and another Self (I2)
2. There are feelings in relationship – in one Self (I1) for the other Self (I2)
3. These feelings can be recognized – they are definite
4. The fulfilment of these feelings and their right evaluation lead to mutual
happiness

Let us explore these four aspects one by one.

1. Relationship is – between one Self (I1) and another Self (I2)

When we talk about relationship, we can make two important observations.

The first is that the relationship is already there, we are in fact embedded in
relationship. We are already related to each other – whether we recognize it or not.
We do not have to construct or create relationship. All we need to do is to
understand relationship.

We are part of a family, with the parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters. We
have neighbours, relatives and friends. We are connected to the people who are
producing, processing, packaging, marketing, delivering, repairing all the things we
use. We are dependent on the people who provide services to us. There are a lot
of people who depend on us – for the goods and services that we produce or
provide. It is interesting to find out how many people are involved even in the
smallest thing we may be consuming, like a glass of milk that we may be having in
the morning. There is the milkman who delivered the bottle of milk, the people
involved in making the glass bottle, the people in the dairy, the farmers growing,
harvesting and making the fodder available and so on. You will find this list is pretty
long! Like that we are embedded in relationship with other human beings.

When we recognize the relationship and see that it is there, we think in terms of
accepting it and fulfilling it. We have asked many times if it is naturally acceptable
to live in relationship or opposition and every time, we can see that it is naturally
acceptable to live in relationship. It indicates that relationship is already there, it is
a part and parcel of human existence and existence as a whole. We only need to
understand it to fulfil relationship.

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When we don’t understand it, the relationship is still there but we are not able to
see it, we are not able to accept it and therefore, we don't think in terms of ensuring
the fulfilment in the relationship; and we have to face the consequences of lack of
fulfilment of relationship. That is a major crisis we are facing today.

The second observation is that relationship is between one Self and the other Self.
Of course, the relationship exists between one human being and the other human
being. However, understanding human being, we can easily see that it is the Self
which is recognizing the relationship, and not the Body. It is the Self which has
feelings in relationship, and not the Body. Also, these feelings are recognized by
the other Self and not the Body. In that sense, the relationship is between one Self
and the other Self. It is the Self that is able to see or understand relationship, accept
relationship and fulfil relationship. The Body may be used as an instrument in the
process of fulfilling the relationship by both human beings.

Needless to say, while we all do want to fulfil relationship, we are not able to do it
until we understand the human being. As long as we consider human being to be
just the Body, it is not possible to understand relationship; and without
understanding relationship, it is not possible to fulfil relationship. The clarity that
human being is co-existence of Self and Body, is essential for understanding
relationship and fulfilling it.

2. There are feelings in relationship – in one Self (I1) for the other Self
(I2)
The important issue in human relationship is that of the feelings. We can see that
feelings are in the Self, not in the Body. It is the Self which has the feelings and
which recognises the feelings. To understand relationship, one has to understand
the Self and the feelings in the Self.

Feelings like respect and affection are more important rather than merely the
exchange of physical facility. For example, you are happy with your mother’s
cooking even if it is very simple, because of the feelings in that relationship. You
may complain about very similar hostel mess food, if you haven’t realised the
feelings in the relationship with the mess staff.

The major crisis we are facing in relationship today is because of the failure to
understand the Self. We are trying to assume relationship on the basis of body,
trying to fulfil relationship on the basis of body and it does not work. If we don't
understand the Self, we don't understand the feelings and therefore, we are not
able to ensure the fulfilment of the feelings in relationship. We end up trying to
ensure the fulfilment of the relationship through physical facility.

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Feelings are central to human relationship. No amount of physical facility can
ensure the fulfilment of feelings and therefore, no amount of physical facility alone
can ensure fulfilment in relationship.

3. These feelings can be recognized – they are definite

The third important issue is that these feelings can be recognised, they are definite.
There are nine feelings in relationship. These are the feelings which we can
understand which we can ensure within ourselves which we can share with others
and thus ensure mutual fulfilment in relationship. These are the feelings which are
naturally acceptable to us in the relationship with the other human being.

Feelings (values) in relationship – nine feelings

1. Trust (foundation value)
2. Respect
3. Affection
4. Care
5. Guidance
6. Reverence
7. Glory
8. Gratitude
9. Love (complete value)

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First of all, let us investigate if these feelings are naturally acceptable to us or not.
For example, we can ask ourselves what is naturally acceptable to us:
• Feeling of trust or mistrust
• Feeling of respect or disrespect
• Feeling of affection or jealousy
• Feeling of care or exploitation
• Feeling of guidance or misguidance
• Feeling of reverence or irreverence
• Feeling of glory or inglorious feelings
• Feeling of gratitude or ingratitude
• Feeling of love or hatred

It will be quite obvious which feelings are naturally acceptable to us. Then we can
explore if these feelings are naturally acceptable just to us or they are naturally
acceptable to others, and ultimately, to everyone.

You will see that these feelings are naturally acceptable to you, therefore, having
these feelings in yourself leads to your happiness. When you have a feeling of
respect within you, you are comfortable within, you are in harmony within –
because this feeling of respect is naturally acceptable to you. When you are in
harmony within, you are in a state of happiness.

On the other hand, if you have a feeling of disrespect for the other, you are
uncomfortable within because you are in contradiction within – the feeling of
disrespect is not naturally acceptable to you. Just by having this feeling of
disrespect, it leads to contradiction within yourself and therefore, leads to a state
of unhappiness within. This is the case even if you have not shared it with the
other, even if you have not expressed it to the other. This disharmony within is
making you uncomfortable and therefore, unhappy. Are you able to see that? Also,
you can find out if the complaints regarding the lack of fulfilment in relationship
have to do with the absence of these feelings.

4. Fulfilment of feelings in relationship and their evaluation leads to

mutual happiness
When we have naturally acceptable feelings in the Self, we share them with the
other and when we are both able to evaluate the feelings rightly, it leads to mutual
happiness, i.e., the happiness of oneself as well as the happiness of the other.

The important observation is that these feelings are naturally acceptable to us

therefore, having these feelings in us leads to our happiness. Similarly, these
feelings are naturally acceptable to the other, so when we share these feelings
with the other, it leads to happiness of the other as well. Evaluation is required to
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verify whether we have these feelings or not, whether we have expressed these
feelings to the other or not, whether the same feeling has reached to the other or
not and ultimately evaluation is required to see if the result is mutual happiness or
not.

For example, if I have a feeling of respect, it leads to harmony within, therefore,

happiness within. This feeling of respect within myself leads to my happiness.
When I share this feeling of respect with you, it leads to your happiness – that is
how it leads to mutual happiness. This can be verified for all other feelings – trust,
affection care, gratitude, etc.

The harmony in family has to do with relationship and relationship has to do with
these four aspects. Only when we understand these four aspects, we understand
the relationship, we are able to accept relationship and we are able to ensure the
feelings in relationship leading to the fulfilment in relationship. Therefore, having
right understanding or clarity about relationship is at the base of fulfilment in
relationship.

Appraisal of the Current Status

Today, we have much more physical facility than ever before; yet a significant
percentage of people don’t get enough to eat and don’t have enough clothes to
protect their body. It is certainly not a problem of production, but of distribution.
You see, within your family, you have an acceptance for the others – for the
children, for the older people and so on – so you share quite unconditionally.
Outside that family, that acceptance of relationship is not there, so in spite of
having more than enough, the distribution does not take place. Not only is the
acceptance of relationship not there, we have a feeling of opposition for people
outside a limited circle of people. That is why, we are collectively spending a very
large percentage of our resources preparing for war. Isn’t it quite paradoxical?

The problem today is that we assume ourselves to be the Body and we try to see
the relationship on the basis of the Body. We, therefore, fail to understand
relationship and consequently, we fail to fulfil relationship, despite all our good
intentions. That is why, we have so much of complaint regarding relationship. We
keep thinking and talking about the lack of fulfilment in relationship, but we hardly
know what to do about it. Most of the time, finding lack of fulfilment of relationship,
we try to fulfil it through physical facility, but it does not work. We had explored in
chapter 3, whether the unhappiness in our families is more due to lack of fulfilment
in the relationship or more due to lack of physical facility. And we had observed
that much of our unhappiness has to do with the lack of fulfilment in relationship,
while we may be spending major part of our time and effort for physical facility.

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The problems in relationship today are due to absence of one or more of the right
feelings. And we try to make up this gap by physical facility or by trying to demand
these feelings from others, rather than ensuring these feelings in ourselves and
sharing it with others.

We can recall the question that if you are thinking of taking revenge with someone
for two hours and after two hours you drop the idea. You were unhappy. The other
person would not even know about it, because you have not expressed it, but your
unhappiness is definite. If you look at this unhappiness, the basic reason is that
you had a feeling of opposition for the other. Since this feeling of opposition is not
naturally acceptable to you, therefore, you were uncomfortable within. Instead of
having a feeling of relationship (like affection), you had the feeling of opposition
(like jealousy) which is not naturally acceptable to you, therefore, it was leading to
a contradiction within and therefore, unhappiness within.

The majority of complaints in relationship have to do with the lack of fulfilment of

naturally acceptable feelings. Since we do not understand the Self, we do not
understand the feelings, we do not have these feelings in ourselves, and we are
not able to express them to the other, leading to lack of fulfilment in relationship.
In fact, we are not even able to appreciate that the problem is because of lack of
fulfilment of feelings. Instead, we try to compensate it with physical facility. We
think that if we only had more physical facility, we would have resolved the problem
in relationship. Lack of physical facility is not really the cause – the complaint is
about the lack of feeling and not just the physical facility. Because we don't
understand relationship, and because we do not ensure these feelings in
relationship, we are not able to ensure the fulfilment in relationship. Let us look at
the following episode in this context.

A couple shared their situation. “I like to go for a walk in the morning”, she
said, “and he likes to play badminton, and so it goes – we keep fighting
about this”. Let us assume that she doesn’t play badminton and cannot join
him. This morning routine takes less than an hour. They spend so many
hours together. What do you think the complaint is about? Is it about her
feeling that he is not giving up his badminton for her? Is this feeling of
opposition or affection? Have you been in a similar situation? Think of this
scenario – they both do their respective activities and after they come
home, sit together and have a healthy drink and share their experiences!
The problem arises due the lack of right feelings. If they have right feelings
for each other, they can work out a joint programme that will be fulfilling for
both.

We attempt to fill this gap in feelings with physical facility. We go for elaborate
dinners, give exclusive gifts, go to exotic holiday destinations; we celebrate
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occasions like birthdays, wedding anniversaries and so on. Do such activities
actually fill the gap, if the feelings are lacking? Can physical facility be substituted
for feelings in the relationship?

We have seen that fulfilment in relationship is on account of ensuring the right

feelings and no amount of physical facility can ensure the fulfilment of feelings.
While we have physical facility, we have not understood these feelings and they
are not there in us – that is the problem. Now we are further not working to
understand the feelings and ensure them in the Self, rather we only expect the
other to express right feelings to us – we are just expecting these feelings from the
other. If the other is expressing the right feelings to us, we feel happy, and if the
other is not expressing the right feelings to us, we feel unhappy. For example, we
want the feeling of respect. Now if the other respects me, I feel happy, and if the
other does not respect me, I feel unhappy. That is how we go about it generally. In
fact, majority of our programs today are woven around it.

Find out, if you think in terms of having the feeling of respect and sharing this
feeling of respect with the other, or you think in terms of just getting respect from
other. If you think in terms of getting the feeling of respect from the other or even
demand for it, it doesn't work. In case the other person has not understood
relationship, has not understood the Self which is the source of the feelings, has
not understood the feelings in the Self, (s)he does not have the feeling of respect
within. Now when the other does not have the feeling of respect within, (s)he
cannot express it, cannot share it with you either. Therefore, you don't get the
respect from the other, not because (s)he does not want to respect you, but
because the other does not have that feeling of respect within. When this respect
is not forthcoming from the other, we keep doing many things to get respect from
the other – we wear fashionable clothes, build big houses and so many other things
like that. Does all this effort work? It may appear to work temporarily, but it doesn't
really work.

Refer to the question that we asked earlier, “When you go to a party with an
exclusive dress, does it generate a feeling of respect or create feeling of jealousy
in the other”? It creates a feeling of jealousy mostly. Sometimes you do get a
feeling of respect from one who already has a feeling of respect for you, for your
past behaviour (rather than on account of the exclusive dress). If you already have
a relationship with the other, and the other is comfortable with you, (s)he will have
that respect for you. Otherwise, the other will have that feeling of jealousy, because
(s)he himself is trying to get respect from you. We have become competitors. We
spend so much effort, time and money to dress up exclusively and what we often
get in return is the feeling of jealousy rather than the feeling of respect.

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The underlying issue here is that many people are unable to express respect for
the other because they really do not have the feeling within. Instead, they seek to
receive respect from the other, trying to extract this feeling from the other. This lack
of having the feeling of respect is because they have not understood relationship
nor the feelings in relationship.

Without right understanding, the other is also in a similar state, expecting respect
and unable to give respect.

This becomes a gap in the relationship where neither can express respect to the
other because their own capacities to do so are lacking. No matter how much they
try to fill it with physical facility, like that exclusive dress, the gap remains.

It can be filled only by having the feeling of respect within by understanding the
Self, understanding relationship and the feelings in relationship.

The major issue in relationship is that of feeling; and not of physical facility alone.

The larger issues of domination, exploitation, adultery, divorce, breakdown of the

family system, etc. can also be seen as symptoms of lack of understanding of
relationship and of lack of feelings in relationship.

These problems point to the need to understand human being, to know the Self,
to understand the relationship, to ensure the right feelings in the Self, to share
these feelings in relationship with the other and to evaluate them, ensuring mutual
happiness.

The Way Ahead

With this background, let's see what we need to do to ensure fulfilment in
relationship. The most fundamental thing is to understand these feelings. If we
understand these feelings, we will have these feelings in us. If we want to ensure
fulfilment of a relationship, it is essential to understand the feelings. When we
understand them, we have the right (naturally acceptable) feelings in us. When we
have these feelings in us:
1. We are comfortable within. These feelings are naturally acceptable to us,
therefore, we’re in a state of harmony (happiness) within. The moment we
understand the feelings in relationship we have these feelings in ourselves
leading to a state of harmony (happiness) within. This much is definite.
2. We share these feelings with the other. That is very natural. If we have a
feeling of respect for you, we express the feeling of respect to you.
Similarly, the feeling of affection, feeling of care, feeling of guidance, etc.,
will get expressed.
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3. Since these feelings are also naturally acceptable to you, it will lead to
happiness for you. Ultimately it will lead to mutual happiness.

Here is an anecdote.

During the discussion on relationship, seeing a ray of hope, a student confided

in his human values teacher. He told her about the bitter relationship with his
father. For two and half years both had not spoken to each other. Their only
means of communicating during this time was through the mother. Could he
do something to make up with his father? Recall that human values framework
is not about dos and don’ts. The teacher told him that if his desire was genuine,
he would figure out a way, ‘all it takes is a little effort’.

The boy looked thoughtful and nodded his head. Two and half years of a
strenuous relationship with his father, living in the same house, not speaking
to each other had been hard. It had started one evening when his parents were
out. He took advantage of the situation and invited his friends over for a party
and a game of cards. Just as they started the game, his parents walked in
unexpectedly. His father got furious scolded his friends and beat him up. It was
an embarrassing and humiliating experience for him.

A few days later, on his return from college, he found his father playing cards
with his friends at home! How could this be all right for his father but not for a
grown-up son? Should he not practice what he preaches? Engulfed with
frustration and resentment, he pointed this out to his dad. Unfortunately, his
father immediately flared up and he beat him up – this time in front of his own
friends. After this incident, their relationship turned silently sour. He stopped
talking to his father.

The boy was not comfortable within. In the classroom discussion on

relationships, he had figured out that his father must also be unhappy, so he
had decided to take a fresh look at the situation.

‘All it takes is a little effort’, the words of his teacher resonated in the January
air. It was New Year and the boy thought it could be a good time to heal the
broken relationship. He got a beautiful flower and went to greet his father, who
was getting ready to go to work. Rather awkwardly the boy held up the flower,
like a man proposing to a lady.

The father asked curtly, ‘what is this’? The boy, ‘it is a flower’. The father said
loudly, ‘I can see that it is a flower, but why are you giving it to me? What do
you want’? The father waved his hand indicating that he didn’t have the time;
he was already late for office.
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 The boy turned away sadly and tried to fight the tears that were already trickling
down his cheeks. ‘The flower is just an excuse – I want to talk to you. I have
much to say. I only wanted some of your time”, he whispered.

The father couldn’t but help notice his son’s hunched shoulders and head hung
low. The image of this gripped the heart of the father and then he very softly
said, ‘OK, let us talk…”

Two and half years of silence was finally broken. Talk they did. They shared
their deepest feelings, sometimes interrupted by tears and sometimes by
laughter. It was a new beginning for them.

Now in this incident, can you see that it was the understanding of relationship
which made a difference?

The programme for ensuring the fulfilment of relationship is as follows:

First, to understand and accept the relationship, identify the feelings in relationship,
to understand these feelings and ensure that these feelings are there in us. In fact,
the moment we understand the feelings, we have the feelings in us. We don't have
to do anything else to create these feelings, except to understand them.

Secondly, we have to share these feelings with the other. Because this is naturally
acceptable to the other as well, it will lead to happiness in the other also. Thus, it
will lead to mutual happiness. And that is how the fulfilment in relationship will take
place.

In this way, with understanding and acceptance of relationship, understanding the

feelings in relationship, having the feelings, expressing these feelings and right
evaluation of feelings lead to mutual happiness.

We can see that ultimately the fulfilment of the relationship calls for the
understanding these nine feelings and their fulfilment. We will now try to investigate
into each of these feelings one by one starting from trust.

(Note: This chapter is particularly large and contains detailed discussion on

the basic values in relationship. To facilitate understanding on the part of
students, we are providing the ‘Salient Points’ and ‘Test Your Understanding’
after each major section of the chapter).

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Salient Points regarding Relationship
• The family is the basic unit of human organisation for living in relationship
and harmony (order).
• To live with fulfilment in relationship, it is essential to understand
relationship. Assuming relationship without understanding does not work.
• Relationship is, it is already there. In human-human relationship, it exists
between one Self (I1) and the other Self (I2). We are embedded in
relationship – whether we recognize it or not. When we recognize the
relationship, we think in terms of accepting it and fulfilling it. When we don’t
understand relationship, the relationship is still there but we are not able to
see it, we are not able to accept it and therefore, we don't think in terms of
ensuring the fulfilment in the relationship.
• The unhappiness in the family is more due to lack of fulfilment in the
relationship, but also due to lack of physical facility. The major issue is that
of fulfilment of feelings in relationship; and with that, the minor issue is lack
of physical facility. By itself, physical facility cannot compensate for lack of
feelings.
• The base of relationship is feelings – in one Self (I1) for other Self (I2).
Feelings are in the Self, not in the Body. Feelings are fundamental to
fulfilment in relationship.
• These feelings are definite, so they can be understood. There are nine
naturally acceptable feelings in relationship – from trust (foundation value)
to love (complete value).
• When we ensure these naturally acceptable feelings in ourselves, we share
them with the other and when we are both able to evaluate the feelings
rightly, it leads to mutual happiness.

Test Your Understanding regarding Relationship

Part 1: Questions for Self-evaluation

(Have we grasped the basic proposals made in this chapter?)

1. Is it possible to live in relationship without understanding relationship? How

is a family the basic ground for understanding relationships? Explain.
2. ‘Relationship is – between one Self (I1) and another Self (I2)’. Examine this
statement.
3. Feelings in the Self are fundamental to live with fulfilment in relationship.
Evaluate this statement.
4. What are the feelings (values) in human relationship? Are they naturally
acceptable to you? Do you think these feelings are also naturally
acceptable to others?
5. What is the outcome when we try to identify relationship based on the
exchange of physical facility alone?
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Part 2: Practice Exercises for Self-exploration
(To help connect the content to one’s life, at least at the level of thought, these
exercises may be done individually or in a group, particularly with friends and family
members)

1. What is the meaning of family for you? List down the people in your
family/extended family.
a. What do you call these people? You may be calling them by a
relationship name like father, mother, brother, sister, chacha, chachi,
mama, mami, etc. or by a family name (pet-name) or their formal name.
b. What are your expectations from each of these people?
c. What are your responsibilities towards each of them?
d. What is your state of harmony with each person? Now, write down your
conclusions from this exercise.

2. Make a list of at least ten relationship pairs in the family (e.g., father-mother,
mother-daughter, mother-son, father-son, father-daughter, brother-brother,
brother-sister, chacha-chachi, mama-mami, chacha-mama, etc.). For each
pair, write down
a. The rough evaluation of the state of harmony of that pair. If your parents
are in harmony with each other, write 100% in front of father-mother. If
your chacha is in 50% harmony with your mama, write 50% in front of
chacha-mama.
b. The reason for that state of harmony or disharmony.
c. How can you contribute to ensuring harmony in these relationships
(wherever you find it lacking)?
What is your conclusion from this exercise?

3. Take the relationship in which you have the most dissatisfaction or complaints.
If you are in harmony with every member of your family, you can skip this
exercise or you can do it for someone in your extended family or friends circle.
a. Make a list of your dissatisfaction, complaints and all the things that you
dislike about the other person.
b. Make a list of some of the good qualities about the other person.
c. In these lists, find out the points that have to do with physical facility
and the points that have to do with feeling. What are your conclusions
from this exercise?

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Trust as the Foundation Value
We can see that the fulfilment of the relationship calls for the understanding and
expressing these nine feelings so, let us begin with the feeling of trust. Trust is “to
be assured”.

Trust is to be assured that the other intends to make me happy and

prosperous.

Do you feel assured when you have the clarity that the other wants to make you
happy and prosperous? Since our basic aspiration is happiness, prosperity and its
continuity, so if we are clear that the other person wants to make us happy and
prosperous, we feel assured of him – that’s what is meant by having a feeling of
trust. On the other hand, if we have even a small doubt that the other person wants
to make us unhappy or deprived, we will not feel assured of him. We will have
doubt and apprehension or fear. We will have the feeling of mistrust for him.

Is this definition of trust naturally acceptable to you? Let’s not hurry to answer that,
but do explore further.

In order to evaluate trust between two individuals, we will examine eight

statements. While you are reading this, think of yourself as the first person and
someone close to you as the second person – like your mother, father, brother,
sister, etc.

Let's evaluate the first set of four statements:

1a. I want to make myself happy.
2a. I want to make the other happy.
3a. The other wants to make herself/himself happy. 4a.
The other wants to make me happy.

These statements are about our natural acceptance about our intention.

Statement 1a – I want to make myself happy.

Is this statement true for you? Is it naturally acceptable to you? What is your natural
acceptance – to make yourself happy or unhappy?

Observation 1a – Yes, I want to make myself happy. In fact, I can see that my
every action is to make myself happy. The answer is yes. In fig. 8-1, we have put
a tick mark against 1a.

Statement 2a – I want to make the other happy.

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What is your natural acceptance – to make the other happy or unhappy? Your
spontaneous and natural response will be to make the other happy. However, you
may have a second thought, you may feel that it is OK to make this effort only for
those who have been good to you; you may be least bothered about strangers;
and you may even want to take revenge from some. Give some more thought to
this. Look into your natural acceptance (and not your ability, your competence) and
ask, given all the choice, will you prefer to make the other happy or unhappy?
Finally, the answer will be, given all the choice, you will prefer to make the other
happy.

Observation 2a – Yes, I want to make the other happy. Given a choice, I always
want to make the other happy. The answer is yes.

Statement 3a – The other wants to make herself or himself happy.

You may well ask, “how do I evaluate what the other person’s intentions are”?
While we may start with a guess of their natural acceptance, ultimately, we have
to find it out. If you can see that the other is just like you, his natural acceptance is
the same as yours. If you can see your own natural acceptance, you know the
natural acceptance of the other also. But don’t assume this – find it out.

Observation 3a – Yes, it is true. As I want to be happy, the same holds true for the
other as well.

Statement 4a – The other wants to make me happy.

Observation 4a – I am not so sure. We are putting a question mark in 4a on fig.

81.

That is the problem; that is where the doubt comes in. That is where the mistrust
comes in.

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Please keep in mind that all these questions are regarding our natural acceptance,
our intention. They are not about our ability or our competence. We will look into
the status about our ability next and then come back to this statement 4a, for more
clarity.

Now let us look at the statements which are based on or relate to ability.
1b. I am always able to make myself happy
2b. I am always able to make the other happy
3b. The other is always able to make herself/himself happy
4b. The other is always able to make me happy

Statement 1b – I am always able to make myself happy.

Is it a tick mark or question mark? Are you able to always make yourself happy?

Observation 1b – Not always. There is a question mark.

You can see that as far as your intention is concerned, as far as your natural
acceptance is concerned, you want to be happy, always happy; but when it comes
to living according to this natural acceptance, this intention, you may find it difficult
– sometimes you are able to make yourself happy and sometimes you are not.
Since we cannot say with confidence that yes, we are always able to make
ourselves happy. Therefore, there is a question mark on this statement. We can,
of course, say firmly that we always want to make ourselves happy – because that
is our intention, our natural acceptance.

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Statement 2b – I am always able to make the other happy.

Observation 2b – Sometimes yes, sometimes no. There is a question mark.

Statement 3b – The other is always able to make herself or himself happy.

Observation 3b – Again not sure, there is a question mark.

Statement 4b – The other is always able to make me happy.

Observation 4b – Now, there is a big or even a double question mark!

In most workshops that we have conducted, as far as the statements about the
intention, i.e., natural acceptance, are concerned, there is a tick mark in 1a, 2a and
3a, and there is a question mark in 4a. When we look at the competence, at the
ability, there is a question mark, from the beginning – there is a question mark on
1b, 2b, 3b and on 4b there is a big question mark. Now, what does this indicate?

Distinguishing between Intention and Competence

(The common mistake in relationship is due to confusion between intention and
competence)

Now if you try to analyse this set of responses, many things will get clarified. Look
at the whole situation. Look at your response to these statements, about your
intention (natural acceptance) and about your competence (ability). You’ll find that
while evaluating yourself, you evaluate on the basis of your intention (natural
acceptance). You think that you are a good person as your intentions are good.

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Refer to fig. 8-2. Can you see that you evaluate yourself on the basis of your
intention?

On the other hand, when you evaluate the other, you evaluate him on the basis of
his competence. You find that he is not able to make you happy all the time. Many
times, or most of the time he ends up making you unhappy. Therefore, you think
that the other wants to make you unhappy. You have a doubt on other’s intention.
When you find that the competence is missing, you have the doubt. But this doubt
does not remain limited to the competence, rather you start concluding about his
intention. On the basis of his state of the competence, you start doubting his
intention!

Let us consider a simple example. If a glass tumbler slips from your hand
and breaks, you immediately say, “the glass broke by accident. I had no
intention to break the glass”. You don’t even take the responsibility that you
couldn’t handle it properly (lack of competence) and the glass slipped. But,
if a glass slips for someone else’s hand, you may say, “you broke the glass”.
We doubt the intention of the other person right away. If we realize that it
was not his intention to break the glass, rather it slipped by accident, we
may say, “you need to be more careful (work on your competence)”.
Problems start when we don’t distinguish between intention and
competence.

You can see that as far as your performance is concerned, your action is
concerned, even if you make the same mistake hundred times, you never doubt
your intention. You feel that you make mistakes by accident. You have a feeling
that you are well meaning. You reinforce that you are good. And, mostly you do
not make effort to improve upon your competence.

On the other hand, for the other, we keep concluding that he makes mistakes
intentionally. We have this doubt on his intention. We assume his lack of
competence to be the lack of intention. When we doubt the intention, we have a
feeling of mistrust or even opposition. And if we have this feeling of opposition, we
tend to get irritated; we tend to get angry and so on. We conclude that his intentions
are wrong. By doing this, we reinforce the belief that the other is bad, he cannot
improve and thus we do not bother to help him improve his competence.

Find out if this is what has been happening in your life. Find out if this doubt on
intention of the other has been a major source of problem in your relationships.
Find out if this doubt has led to the feeling of opposition, irritation or anger in you
and if you stopped speaking to the other for days and weeks; or you have broken
relationships. Look back and see if you have lost friends and relatives because of
this confusion between intention and competence.

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Now, if you can see that the intention of the other is same as your intention and he
might be lacking competence then your response will be very different.

One time, when we were conducting a workshop in an educational institute,

amongst the students attending, there was a student named Suresh. Two
days after this discussion on the feeling of trust, he shared his experience.
He said “the previous evening when I was going to the mess, I saw my
friend rushing towards the mess. I wished him but he didn't respond. He
didn't even look at me. I was quite hurt and unhappy about it. But then, on
second thought, I thought maybe he has some problem, perhaps it is a
problem of his competence, not his intention. Maybe I should not doubt his
intention on the basis of what he has done, i.e., not responding to my
greeting. So today, when I met him, I asked him what happened. I reminded
him that I had wished him when he was rushing towards the mess
yesterday evening and he did not even look at me or respond to me. He
said “oh yes, when I went back to my room, I realized that I left my wallet
in the mess. I was rushing to the mess to get it back. I was in so much of a
hurry and so worked up that I did not even notice you, let alone see you
wishing me.” Suresh further shared “if I had not gone through this
workshop, understanding the difference between intention and
competence, I would have doubted his intention, I would have felt very bad,
I would not have spoken to him, not clarified what happened… I would have
lost that friend. We wouldn't have talked for days or we would not have
talked at all. Such a simple thing may be a reason for break-up of
relationship or create so much of a problem, so much of tension in
relationship”.

This is the common mistake that we make in relationship today. On the basis of
lack of competence, we conclude about the lack of intention of the other. When we
doubt their intention, instead of accepting the other as a relative, we have a feeling
of opposition. This feeling of opposition will come out as irritation or anger and so
on. This is something which you can check in your day-to-day interaction with
people to whom you are related. Every now and then this keeps happening. In very
small incidents and creating whole lot of problems in relationship.

One of our colleagues keeps quoting this example, the example of his uncle
who had a heart attack: When the uncle came back from the hospital, I went
to see him and asked “what happened, uncle”? We are very close, so he
opened up. He said oh, you know your auntie, sometimes she says such
things which are very hurting. It so happened that day his (uncle's) friend
came from Kolkata and he wanted some financial help (cf course, for a
huge amount). Uncle decided to extend that help to his friend.

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 The friend went back satisfied, but auntie was quite unhappy about the
incident. She said certain things to uncle. In response or reaction to her
being unhappy and what she said seemed to be so hurting for the uncle
that he met with a heart-attack.

I just asked uncle, “tell me – did you get hurt because of the words that
auntie said or because of the fact that you doubted her intention (she wants
to hurt you) on the basis of what she said”? He said, “because of the words”.
I said, “okay. Let me ask another question. If the same words were uttered
by someone whom you knew was mad, would you have got hurt”? He said
no. I said, “okay. Let me ask this question again. Were you hurt by the
words that she said or because you started doubting her intention on the
basis of what she said? And therefore, you had a feeling of opposition in
you for her”? He was silent for a few minutes and then he said, “yes! What
you are saying is making sense”.

This is what is happening. Uncle and auntie belong to a highly respected

family in a city in North India. They have been leading a married life for fifty
years, but they still have doubt on intention of each other and such small
incidents can cause the doubt on intention. With a doubt on intention, there
is a feeling of opposition. With that feeling of opposition, there is a hurt and
it might even damage to the extent of meeting a heart attack.

This is what keeps happening if you look at the interaction between the husband
and wife; most of the time you find that they talk as if they are fighting, as if they
are at war. Because the doubt on intention is there and that feeling of opposition
is there and therefore, there is so much of irritation and anger. Start observing in
your day-to-day interaction with your friends, with your relatives, with your
coworkers.

Now that we have clarity about intention and competence, let us explore this
question:
If you have unconditional, continuous trust on intention, on the natural acceptance
of the other and if the other is lacking competence, what will you do?
a) Try to improve upon his competence
b) Get irritated
c) Get angry
d) Have a feeling of opposition

The answer is obviously (a). If there is trust on intention, this is the response. If
you have trust on intention of the other and if you find that the other is lacking
competence, you will try to improve upon his competence. On the other hand, if
you have doubt on intention of the other, (b), (c) and (d) will happen. You will get

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irritated or angry or carry a feeling of opposition. That is the reaction out of your
doubt on intention of the other.

a) try to improve upon his competence Trust on Intention  Response

b) get irritated
c) get angry Doubt on Intention  Reaction
d) have a feeling of opposition

The action may be same, on the part of the other; but your response or reaction
depends on you, your perception. If you have trust on intention, you will respond
in terms of trying to improve upon the competence of the other. On the other hand,
if there is doubt on intention then you will react in terms of getting irritated or angry
or carrying a feeling of opposition.

Now with these indicators, find out how many people are there in your life on whom
you have trust on intention (natural acceptance) which is unconditional and
continuous. In order to check this, find out the names of those people with whom
you do not get irritated, you do not get angry and you do not have the feeling of
opposition, even for a moment, even if they keep committing mistakes over and
over again.

Most of the time, we find the answer to be ‘none’! This is a serious matter – in
relationship between husband and wife, father and son, between friends and so
on. It indicates lack of trust on intention. Further, we seem to be doing nothing
much to address the issue. Hardly anyone is paying attention to understanding
relationship and in developing their competence to live in relationship. We can see
that people keep doing things they don’t mean to. They don’t want to get angry
(intention), but end up getting angry (lack of competence).

The question about how many people we have unconditional trust is a very
fundamental question. It is an indicator of how much you have understood
relationship, how much acceptance you have in relationship from your side. This
will tell you exactly how many people you have been able to accept as being
related to you (the moment there is doubt on intention of the other, instead of
feeling related to the other, you feel opposed to the other, so those names will not
be in the list). Now, from here you can start working to develop your understanding
about relationship and be able to live with feelings which are mutually fulfilling, from
your side.

Of course, there may be many questions and doubts; because this is in sharp
contrast to what is prevailing in the society today. Generally, we don’t make a
distinction between intention and competence, so we are not paying attention to
the intention (natural acceptance) at all. As a result, the word trust gets used only
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to indicate the level of competence (or lack of competence). With such an
assumption about trust, the feeling of acceptance is almost completely missing;
rather there is a feeling of opposition. With that, we reinforce assumptions like:
• Strangers can’t be trusted – Every human being, including strangers, have
the same natural acceptance. However, the competence may or may not
be present. For a stranger, we may need time to evaluate their competence
(but not to know their natural acceptance).
• Trust is developed over a long time – true for competence, but is it true for
trust on natural acceptance (intention)?
• Never trust anyone blindly – we need to have trust on intention (natural
acceptance), and evaluate their competence before making a programme
with them – we will discuss this in detail next.

Feelings which are based on incidents are indefinite; they are conditional and not
continuous. Basing our relationship on incidents is another major mistake that we
keep making today. If we try to base our feelings and our relationship on the basis
of incidents, it does not work because these incidents depend on our mutual
competence, my competence as well as the competence of the other which may
be fluctuating and therefore, it might lead to lack of continuity in the fulfilment in
relationship.

On the other hand, when you are able to understand your own natural acceptance,
you can conclude about the natural acceptance of the other. You want to be happy
and make the other happy, but you may have lack of competence. The other also
has the same natural acceptance and (s)he also may be lacking in competence,
just like you. When we have this clarity, we can have that trust on intention at the
base of our relationship. That is what we want to explore in more detail now.

Let us recall, from chapter 6, that our intention is the same as our natural
acceptance. On the other hand, competence is what we are – the collection of all
desires, thoughts and expectations, i.e., all of our imaginations. Since desires may
be coming from preconditioning, sensation as well as natural acceptance; desire
is not necessarily the same as intention. Only some part of the desires that are
coming from natural acceptance are our intention, the others may or may not be
our intention (refer to fig. 6-6 in chapter 6). For instance:
• Our natural acceptance (intention) is to be happy and make others happy,
but we may have a desire for taking revenge!
• We keep getting hurt by the behaviour of others and we keep hurting others
with our behaviour. We don’t have a natural acceptance for it, but it is a
part of our desire!

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Competence includes all the desires, thoughts and expectations (from all three
sources). The intention (natural acceptance), on the other hand, is always same –
to be happy and make the other happy.

Trust on Intention

Trust is to have the clarity that the other intends to make me happy.

With this background of exploration, (refer to fig. 8-3) let us look back at these four
statements again and find out whether there will be a question mark or a tick mark
in 4a.

Statement 4a – The other wants to make me happy. What do you now think? What
is the natural acceptance of the other – To be happy and make others happy or to
be happy and make others unhappy?

Observation 4a – As far as the intention is concerned, as far as the natural

acceptance is concerned, the other wants to be happy and make others happy.
That would be the observation.

This is interesting. Any and every person wants to be happy and make others
happy, as far as their natural acceptance is concerned. This natural acceptance is
what we have been referring to as intention. When it comes to competence, the
other may or may not have the competence to make herself or himself happy and
to make others happy. The other has the intention but may be lacking in
competence – we need to have this clarity in ourselves.
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In order to have this clarity about the natural acceptance of the other, what you
really need to explore, investigate and find out what exactly your own natural
acceptance is. This is written in statements 1a and 2a. You can investigate within
yourself and find out whether you want to be happy yourself and whether you want
to make others happy. You can find out what your natural acceptance is. You will
see that you do want to be happy and you do want to make others happy – that is
your natural acceptance. So 1a and 2a are both true.

With the clarity that the other person is like us, now, we can conclude that he also
wants to be happy and make others happy. We can directly verify this from the
other as well. However, from our observation about our own natural acceptance,
we can conclude about the natural acceptance of the other and, in fact, for every
other human being. Basically, 3a is a reflection of 1a when I am looking from the
other side and 4a is a reflection of 2a. Therefore, I can see if 2a is correct, so is
4a. It will also be correct. The natural acceptance of the other is the same as my
natural acceptance – to be happy and to make the other happy.

This is the crux. If I can evaluate myself on the basis of my natural acceptance
(intention) and I can evaluate the other on the basis of his natural acceptance
(intention), I will have trust on intention of every human being. Because, deep down
everyone wants to be happy and make others happy. Trust on intention is founded
on the understanding of human being and the natural acceptance of the human
being; it would be definite, unconditional and continuous for every human being.

Find out if you are able to see this and have trust on intention of everyone.

With the trust on intention of the other, we can evaluate our intention as well as the
intention of the other; our competence as well as the competence of the other.
Then the interpretation of the same incident will change significantly. Now we will
be able to say that the glass broke by accident – for ourselves as well as for the
other. We can see that we did not have the intention nor did the other has the
intention; but because of lack of competence or by some accident the glass has
broken.

Now I can see that when I make a mistake even once I am clear about my intention;
I know the mistake is due to lack of competence, not a lack of intention and
therefore, I make effort to improve upon my competence. I am willing to understand
and learn. When I see the same instance happening with the other, even if the
other makes the same mistake hundred times, I am clear about his intention. I
know the mistake is due to lack of competence, not a lack of intention and I make
effort to help improve his competence with a feeling of relationship.

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This is important that I am trying to improve upon his competence, trying to help to
improve upon his competence with a feeling of relationship. When I am doing this
with a feeling of trust, I can see that he may have difficulty in understanding and
also, I may have difficulty in explaining. When I am trying to explain and he is not
able to understand, I do not doubt his intention to understand. I can see that he is
finding it difficult to understand because of lack of his competence and it might also
happen that I am not able to explain properly because of lack of my own
competence. If I can see that, I will try to improve upon my competence and I will
try to improve upon the competence of the other. And if I am unable to do that, at
least I will not have a feeling of opposition, irritation or anger.

With this background, now we can see that trust is the foundation of relationship.
If I have trust on intention of the other, I feel related to the other. As long as the
acceptance of relationship is concerned; it will be continuous, it will be
unconditional and it will be definite. If I have trust on intention of the other, I will
feel related to the other; therefore, I will treat the other as my relative.

When it comes to making a programme with the other, I will have trust on intention.
With that, I will evaluate my own competence, I will evaluate his competence and
on the basis of our mutual competence, I will make a programme with him.

For example, when we are conducting a class on human values, we have

trust on intention of everyone. We have the clarity that everyone sitting here
wants to know what is right and wants to do what is right, and that they
have the capacity to understand what is right. We have this trust at the
base. With this trust at the base, now we are making programme with you.
For that, we are evaluating our competence as well as your competence.
On the basis of our evaluation of our mutual competence, we are making
the programme of conducting this class. We are conducting the class in
English as we found that it is a language that both of us can speak and
understand. If either one of us did not know English, and we both knew
Hindi, we would have conducted the class in Hindi.

Further, we are repeating the important points so many times, even at cost
of being interpreted as boring. But we are doing it because of our evaluation
of your competence. We know that you take off many times during the
class. By the time, we are making some point, your attention is gone
somewhere outside, you are thinking of your home, your friends and so on,
and you come back after 15 minutes; so, whatever was said during these
15 minutes, is not registered at all. When you come back, you start
searching for what is going on in the class. We repeat the important points
many times, so that at least once you will be able to hear. Find out for

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 yourself, how many times do you take off during the class of 1 hour – 20,
50, 100?

When we assume trust (rather than understand trust), we may assume the other
has the intention and also has the competence. That means we do not evaluate
the competence while making the programme. If we make the programme without
evaluating our own competence and without evaluating the competence of the
other, the programme is likely to fail; and we may conclude not to trust anybody!

When we understand trust, it makes all the difference – we accept the other as he
is. He is just like me. He has the intention to be happy and make me happy. His
competence may or may not be matching his intention.

This trust on intention gives a direction for our effort. While making a programme,
we base it on our evaluation of mutual competence. The programme may succeed
or it may fail, but we are not perturbed. We make effort to assure the other. We are
able to re-evaluate our mutual competence for future programs. We are committed
to help the other to improve his competence, without becoming irritated, angry and
all that. We are, at the same time, making effort to learn, to improve our own
competence.

Making effort to assure the other is important. The acceptance of the other
is essential before he will even be willing to listen. Before trying to help him
to improve his competence it is necessary to assure him. To take an
example, after going through this content, a student was excited to share it
with his father and he did try to share it. The father did not show much
interest. Disappointed, the student discussed his problem with his teacher.
She only asked, “whom would you like to listen to – someone who is
responsible or someone who is not very responsible”? It struck the student
that his parents take most of the responsibility at home and he usually has
to be reminded what needs to be done many times before he does anything
to help at home. Over the next few weeks, he made effort to take some
responsibility at home, like getting things from the market proactively. His
father noticed the change and appreciated it. Over time, the student was
able to share with his father. It is important to assure the other in the
relationship, particularly before trying to communicate something important
that you want them to pay attention to.

Trust on intention is the starting point for mutual development. That is where the
relationship begins. It is in that sense we are saying that trust on intention is the
foundation of relationship.

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Salient Points regarding Trust
• Trust is to be assured that the other intends (has a natural acceptance) to
make me happy and prosperous. When I can clearly see that my intention
(natural acceptance) is to make myself happy and to make the other also
happy and prosperous, I can conclude that the other, who is like me at the
level of Self, also has the same intention (natural acceptance).
• I am able to accept the other. (S)he is like me – we have the same intention
and, like me, (s)he may also be lacking in competence.
• With trust on intention, I feel related to the other, and with that at the base,
I make a programme based on our current mutual competence. I make
effort to assure the other. Trust is the starting point of relationship, of mutual
development.
• Relationship is founded on trust. In the absence of it, we do not feel related
to the other and the relationship keeps shaking. A common mistake in
relationship is to evaluate myself based on intention and evaluate the other
based on competence. If we go by this, we assume ourselves to be good
and the other to be the problem.

Test Your Understanding regarding Trust

Part 1: Questions for Self-evaluation

(Have we grasped the basic proposals made in this chapter?)

1. What is the proposal for the definition of trust? Illustrate the feeling of trust
with one example, preferably from your own experience.
2. Distinguish between intention and competence. What is the outcome when
we confuse between the two and we doubt the intention of the other? What
is the outcome when we are able to see them separately and we trust the
intention of the other?
3. ‘If I trust the intention of everyone, people would take undue advantage of
me’. Is this statement true or false? Explain.
4. How is trust the foundation value of relationship?
5. Distinguish between reaction and response with the clarity of feeling of
trust. Give one example of each for a particular case of relationship.
6. Distinguish between intention and desire. Take at least one example.

Part 2: Practice Exercises for Self-exploration

(To help connect the content to one’s life, at least at the level of thought, these
exercises may be done individually or in a group, particularly with friends and family
members)

1. Take the eight questions regarding evaluation of trust. Evaluate them for each
person in your family (later you can extend it to your friends also). How many
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 people are there with whom you have an unconditional feeling of trust on
intention (which is continuous)? How many people are there with whom you
never get irritated, angry and you never have a feeling of opposition? How
many people are there with whom you are making effort for mutual
development?

2. Do you like people to accept you? i.e.,

a. To accept you with all your possibilities as a human being (your natural
acceptance)
b. To accept you with your strengths and weaknesses (your current level
of competence)
c. To help you to overcome your weaknesses (to help you develop your
competence)
Are there people in the family from whom you do not have this expectation? Is
there anyone in the family who is unlikely to have this expectation from you?
Do you always accept the others in your family in this manner?

3. Reflect on few instances where you got irritated or angry with someone. What
was the result of it? Can you recollect that you had a doubt on their intention?
Try to call and share your reflections with one or more of them. What is your
observation from this exercise.

4. For you, is it essential to understand relationship, at least to understand the

feeling of trust and to have the feeling of trust? Exactly what effort is required
to understand trust? Are you making this effort?

5. Watch the short film “Right Here Right Now”, directed by Anand Gandhi. The
film may be downloaded from:
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVAokeqQuFM
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIYJePEnvUY
Observe the interactions the characters are having with each other. List ten of
these interactions, along with your observations – is it a reaction or a response
and why. Write down the indicators of responsive behaviour and reactive
behaviour. Try to connect it to the activity of the Self.

6. List out ten or more of your interactions with other people in your family in the
last one week. What percentage of these interactions were response from your
side? Take one instance of reaction and one instance of response and share
it in detail. Comment on whether you were comfortable within or uncomfortable
for both instances.
If responsive behaviour is desirable for you, outline the effort required.

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Respect as Right Evaluation
With the feeling of trust in us, we can explore into the feeling of respect. Let us
see, when do we feel respected? How do I respect others?

The proposal is: Respect is right evaluation.

Respect means right evaluation. It is as simple as that. When we are rightly

evaluated, we feel respected. When we are not rightly evaluated, we feel
disrespected.

You might find that this is quite different from what is generally considered respect,
isn’t it? It is true that we are engaged in many activities to get attention, to appear
to be different or special. To be in the newspaper or magazine, to win awards, to
be in a book of records we are climbing up mountains, diving into the ocean depths,
jumping from aeroplanes, wearing all sorts of clothes, getting special hairdos,
growing our hair, shaving of our heads, tattooing our bodies and so on. The list is
almost endless. Even on an everyday basis, we do so many things to be in the
good books of parents, teachers, friends and work colleagues. What is your state
when you are involved in such activities – are you comfortable within or
uncomfortable within? Also, what do you think all this brings – some temporary
attention or anything more than that? Does it ensure acceptance for you in the
other? Think about it. Respect is simply the right evaluation.

Over Evaluation, Under Evaluation and Otherwise Evaluation Leading

to Disrespect
However, when we look at what we are doing today in the name of respect, it is
mostly:
Over evaluation – evaluating for more than what it is
Under evaluation – evaluating for less than what it is
Otherwise evaluation – evaluating for other than what it is

For example, when you are happy with a child, you start saying that he is
great, he can do anything. Is it a right evaluation or over evaluation? Yes,
it is an over evaluation. If you are angry with him for some reason, you say,
he's good for nothing, he cannot do anything. Is it a right evaluation or under
evaluation? Yes, it is an under evaluation. If you are really very angry with
him, you say he is a donkey. You are not even willing to consider him as a
human being. He is a human being and you are evaluating him for donkey,
for an animal. This is otherwise evaluation.

If we look at our day-to-day interaction, day-to-day behaviour, we generally tend

to do one of these three – over evaluation, under evaluation or otherwise

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evaluation. If any of these three is done, the other person feels uncomfortable,
disrespected. Check for yourself in every interaction with others whether it is
respect or disrespect, i.e., is it right evaluation or one of the three (over, under or
otherwise evaluation)?

This is exemplified by an incident related by one of our colleagues: I went

to one of my friends’ house. Somehow the wife was unhappy with the
daughter. She started saying look at this girl, she does not do anything.
She said that two or three times. I said, she must be doing something at
least. How can someone do nothing? But she was insisting that her
daughter does not do anything. After sometime, the daughter got very
angry and she reacted. She said, ‘what I am not doing. I am cooking food
for everyone in the morning before going to the college. I go to college,
come back in the evening and cook dinner for everyone; what else do you
want me to do’? At that time, she was studying in an engineering college in
3rd year. The mother was still saying, ‘she does not do anything’! This is not
something rare. If you are unhappy with someone, angry with someone,
you say she’s good for nothing, useless. But she’s not useless. I mean she
is doing some things and she is not doing other things. If you are happy it’s
the other way around. You could start saying this girl is great, she is doing
so much, she’s taking care of the house and she’s studying and also doing
well in studies!

We can see so many examples around us. Most of the time, do we do right
evaluation or under, over or otherwise evaluation? If it is your child, you look at it
one way; if it is someone else’s child you look at it differently. This is what we end
up doing. But why do we do this? It is because our very basic understanding or
basic assumption about human being has gone wrong.

Refer to fig. 8-4. As long as I don’t have my own right evaluation (based on right
understanding of human being), I can’t do right evaluation of the other. Over and
above that, this over-evaluation tends to ego, and under-evaluation or otherwise
evaluation to depression; whether I am the one doing my own
over/under/otherwise evaluation or someone else is doing it. When I am in ego,
my behaviour with the other is likely to be reactive and not mutually fulfilling.
Similarly, when I am in depression, I am unhappy and tend to make others also
unhappy.

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 One of the many examples of this is the case of an ordinary family
consisting of the parents and three children; an elder daughter, a middle
daughter and a youngest son. The middle daughter had recently joined B.
Pharma – she was the first female child to join a professional course in their
extended family or community. This made the parents very proud. When a
guest would come home, they would introduce the middle daughter with big
words – “she is our pride, the shining star of our family”, etc. At the same
time, they would generally ignore even to introduce the elder daughter.
They would ask her to make tea for the guests. And the youngest son was
introduced as a donkey doing very poorly in school – he was in class seven
at that time. Now what do you think – are the three children being rightly
evaluated or not? Are they being respected or dis-respected? Like this, the
middle daughter goes into ego, bosses on her own sister and brother; and
at her college also she is unable to make friends. The elder sister and
younger brother complain to the parents. The parents notice the haughty
behaviour of the middle daughter and reprimand her “this joining B. Pharma
has gone to your head – you better behave properly otherwise…”. Now the
girl is down, in depression. In the family of five, she feels that she is on one
side, while the other four are on the other side. She feels lonely and is
unable to focus on her studies. This ego-depression cycle keeps going on
for this girl. Who is responsible? (It is in such situations that people take to
alcohol, drugs and even suicide).

These sorts of incidents are happening all around in the families. Now what is the
solution? One needs to do right evaluation. Right evaluation of oneself will lead to
being self-referential, rather than being dependent on others for evaluation. Right
evaluation will lead to self-confidence that is not shaken up by others. This sort of
self-confidence is absolute. When the other over/under/otherwise evaluates me, I

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will not be affected; rather I will be able to affectionately contribute to helping the
other to set right their evaluation of me.

Minimum Content of Respect – The Other is Similar to Me

If we want to do right evaluation, how do we go about? Let’s look at this.

The first question is when we are trying to do the right evaluation; will it be on the
basis of Self or on the basis of Body? Based on what has been discussed so far,
try to explore the differences and similarities at the level of the Body and also at
the level of the Self.

To do the right evaluation, we have to do it on the basis of Self. However, when

we are presuming that human being is equal to Body and we have no clarity about
the Self, there is no possibility of evaluating on the basis of Self. The very basis of
right evaluation is not there. If we don’t understand the Self, the right evaluation is
not possible. That has been the trouble.

Now that we have clarity that human being is co-existence of Self and Body, we
can think in terms of evaluating the human being on the basis of Self, and ensuring
the right evaluation. If we go about doing this, let’s see these three things:

1. Our purpose is the same – I have a natural acceptance to live with

continuous happiness and prosperity. That is my purpose. The other also
has a natural acceptance to live with continuous happiness and prosperity.
That is the purpose of the other. So, on the basis of our natural acceptance,
we have the same purpose.

2. Our program is same – My program to achieve continuous happiness and

prosperity is to understand the harmony and live in harmony at all levels of
my being (from human being to the entire existence). The program for
achieving his purpose, the program of the other is also to understand the
harmony and live in harmony at all levels of being. In that sense, our
program to fulfil our purpose is also same.

3. Our potential is same – I am endowed with natural acceptance and the

activities of desire, thought and expectation are going on continuously in
me. This is my basic potential (to understand, think and do). The other is
also endowed with natural acceptance; and the activities of desire, thought
and expectation are going on continuously in the other. So, our potential is
also same.

When we are able to see the human being is the co-existence of Self and Body,
we can see that the other (Self) is similar to me because our purpose is same,
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programme is same and potential is same. This is the minimum content of respect
for a human being.

Are we able to see this similarity? Just try to find out, are we focusing on
establishing that the other is similar to me or on showing that the other is not similar
to me, and that I am special? What are we focusing on? When we are unable to
see the human being as it is, most of the time we are trying to prove that I am
special, I am different.

Disrespect Arising out of Differentiation

Instead of trying to see both the similarity as well as the differences, are we
primarily trying to focus on the differences? When we focus on the differences, we
try to discriminate on the basis of these differences; and when we are
discriminating, it is disrespect.

In general, what we are doing in the name of respect today is differentiating and
discriminating.

One criterion for the differentiation is on the basis of body (fig. 8-5). One set of our
basic criteria for giving respect is related to body – on the basis of age, gender,
race and physical strength. We keep saying – respect elders. What about younger
people? What about the children? Do they deserve respect or not? Since we are
not able to see this similarity generally, we are not able to see that children also
need respect, just as older people do. Like this, we are differentiating on the basis
of age, we are differentiating on the basis of gender. Many societies give higher
priority to the male as compared to females or vice-versa; or giving priority to white
as compared to brown and black. Similarly, we have been giving respect to those
having more physical strength.

If you observe all these bases of respect, is it really giving respect or is it

discriminating? And when you are discriminating, will it lead to respect or
disrespect? Of course, it will give rise to disrespect and that is the problem today.
If you see around, all these bases of giving respect are generally discriminating
which is leading to disrespect and therefore a lot of dissatisfaction, lot of opposition,

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lot of movements and revolts. You can see, there is movement against generation
gap, movement against gender inequality, feminine movement, antiracial
movement and so on. All this is the basis of differentiation and it is causing
disrespect in the name of respect. Interestingly all this is done in the name of
respect.

Of course, this differentiation is based on the gross misunderstanding or implicit

assumption that the human being is equal to the Body; while the reality is that the
human being is co-existence of Self and the Body. If we can realize this, we can
evaluate the human being on the basis of Self and if we do that, we can see the
similarity.

The second set of differentiation is made on the basis of physical facility – on the
basis of wealth and on the basis of post (refer to fig. 8-6). The one who has more
wealth is given respect over the one who is not having as much of wealth. Similarly,
the one with the higher post is given respect over the one who does not have higher
post. But these things again lead to discrimination and therefore, there are many
movements against this. There is a fight going on between the rich and the poor,
people in the higher post and people who are not having post or having a lower
post. The gross misunderstanding here is that physical facility is equal to
happiness. The fact is that happiness is to be in a state of harmony, in the state of
relationship, in the state of co-existence.

The third set of bases of differentiation is what we can call beliefs (fig. 8-7). There
are different isms (thought systems like socialism, capitalism, etc.), different sects,
and different set of information available. Depending upon which particular set of

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beliefs you have, you are given respect or not given respect. For example, if you
belong to communism then you will respect people who belong to communism and
not respect people who belong to capitalism and so on. Similarly, if you belong to
one sect, you will respect people who belong to the same sect and not respect the
people who do not belong to the same sect and so on. Regarding the information
– if you have one set of information, say, as an engineer, you will be respecting
engineers and not, for example, doctors and vice-versa. Respect is given on the
basis of the beliefs, on the basis of isms that you follow, on the basis of the sect
that you belong to, on the basis of information you have. But this all leads to
discrimination, therefore, leads to disrespect. This third basis of differentiation is
founded on the main misunderstanding that if the pre-conditioning of the other
matches with mine then the other is like me, otherwise he is not like me, while the
reality is that every human being is similar to me.

All put together, this is the way we generally give respect and these are the bases
of giving respect – the Body, physical facility and beliefs (refer to fig. 8-8). You can
see all this is differentiation and it is ultimately leading to disrespect because this
is something which is not naturally acceptable. When it is not naturally acceptable,
it leads to opposition and ultimately it leads to movement, revolt or to war. Can you
see this? Are we able to see that the other is similar to me or we are trying to
discriminate on the basis of all these three things which ultimately boils down to
disrespect which is not naturally acceptable?

In fact, a majority of the problems that we are facing in the society today have to
do with the issue of respect and disrespect or the issue of disrespect in the name
of respect. The majority of the movements, revolts that you see in the society today
have to do with the issue of respect. One simple feeling of respect or disrespect
may lead to so many problems in the society. For instance, discrimination on the
basis of the race has created so much of problem in the society all around. If you
are discriminating between white and black, and it is just an issue of respect or
disrespect; the white will disrespect the black on the basis of this criterion, the
blacks will not accept it. They will keep complaining about it and then at some point
of time it may lead to some movement, it may lead to some opposition and it might
even lead to war. So, the simple issue of over-evaluation of one and
underevaluation of the other can lead to all this!
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If we look at our day-to-day living, simple incidents of discrimination (in the name
of respect) cause so much of fight, so much of disagreement, so much of ongoing
trouble. Now, if we are able to do the right evaluation on the basis of the Self and
see that the other is similar to me, many of these issues can be resolved.

Complete Content of Respect – We are Complementary to Each Other

In addition to the purpose, programme and potential of the Self, there is the
competence. The competence means how much of the potential has been
realised. One Self may have realised more of its potential, while another may have
realised less of its potential. So, in terms of competence we are not the same, we
are different.

Having understood that our purpose is same and our potential is also same, we
use the difference in competence to help each other in further developing our
competence. So, we are complementary to each other. So, being able to see that
‘the other is similar to be and we are complementary’ is the complete content
of respect.

We define our complementarity by developing a joint program for mutual

development and fulfil that complementarity. If I have not understood something
and the other person has understood it, I can take help of the other to understand
it. Similarly, I can be of help to the other by helping him to understand something
that I have understood, which the other has not yet understood. In this way, the
difference in competence does not lead to discrimination, but rather it leads to
mutual fulfilment.

Looking into the details of complementarity:

• If the other has more understanding, is more responsible than me, I’m
committed to understand from the other
• If I have more understanding than the other, I’m more responsible
than the other, I live with the responsibility with the other,
unconditionally, unperturbed by the behaviour of the other. I am
committed to facilitate the understanding in the other, once the other
is assured in relationship and not before that

It is easy to see that we are willing to share and discuss with those people with
whom we have a feeling of assurance. Also, we are willing to understand from
those whom we consider responsible and having more understanding than us.

If I have more understanding than the other, then I live with responsibility with the
other – without getting perturbed by the behaviour of the other. If the other does
not have the right understanding, (s)he will not be able to behave properly all the
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time. If I have done the right evaluation of the other, I will not get disturbed by the
behaviour of the other, rather I will continue to behave with responsibility. In due
course of time the other will feel assured of me; (s)he will feel related to me. Only
when (s)he is assured, (s)he is willing to share and discuss. It is only then, that I
need to facilitate understanding in the other.

If we look at respect in that sense, it will mean the acceptance of the other as being
similar to me at the level of purpose, programme and potential and then defining
the complementarity at the level of competence. If I do this, it is respect. If I violate
any of these conditions, it is disrespect.

Are we doing this today? Or we are just trying to discriminate in the name of respect
on the basis of body, on the basis of physical facility and on the basis of beliefs?
That ultimately boils down to disrespect.

The complete content of respect is

• The other is similar to me in terms of purpose, programme and
potential and
• We are complementary to each other in terms of competence

With this background, let's make a comparison between differentiation and respect
on the basis of Self. Refer to fig. 8-9.

When we are differentiating in the name of respect, I evaluate on the basis of body,
physical facility or belief (i.e., preconditioning); I compare, compete and
differentiate and I try to prove that I am different from the other. If you look at it in
the right sense, respect would mean: our purpose (natural acceptance) is same,
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the programme is same, potential is same- therefore, the other is similar to me.
What we are doing today is mostly differentiation. When we're looking at the
difference in competence on the basis of differentiation, we see each other as
opponents. If we are looking at the right evaluation of differences in competence
based on the Self, we are complementary to each other.

Ultimately, what we are generally trying to do in the name of respect is that we

make effort to accentuate the differences, to manipulate, to exploit the other. But,
if we are rightly evaluating on the basis of the Self, we define our complementarity,
in terms of helping the other to understand. The fulfilment of this complementarity
leads to mutual development, mutual happiness.

Revisit fig. 8-9 and find out what we are generally doing. Are we
differentiating or ensuring respect on the basis of the Self?

When we look at the society today, much of the effort is to differentiate,

to highlight the differences and to accentuate the differences. We plan to make a
bigger house because we desire to show that we are superior to our neighbour.
We desire to buy an exclusive, latest model car because we want to accentuate
the difference. And we think that we will get the respect out of it. Instead of sharing
the feeling of respect, we're creating differentiation which is causing disrespect
which is causing jealousy in the other or opposition in the other.

Look at marriages, for example. Earlier, people were satisfied to perform marriages
in their house, then many went to guest houses, started doing it in cruise liner
ships, chartered planes and such exclusive locale. Now people are performing
marriages in a foreign country. Mostly, it is to show off, to accentuate the
differences. And in order to accentuate the difference, we may also manipulate
and exploit. We spend hundred crores for the marriage and very little of it is really
necessary. Whether there will be mutual happiness in the married life after this
pomp and show is also not assured. It is just to show that I am special and superior
to the other.

With this, let us sum up the feeling of respect. What we have said is that respect
is right evaluation. And of course, it is possible only with a feeling of trust on
intention. Otherwise you can't even respect the others, can't even think of
respecting unless you have this trust on intention. The over evaluation, under
evaluation and otherwise evaluation is disrespect. Differentiation is also
disrespect. Respect on the basis of Self means the other is like me and we are
complementary to each other in terms of competence and this is the right
evaluation. The only difference is in our competence which is related to our level
of understanding, i.e., how much of our desire, thought and expectation is on the
basis of our natural acceptance. We discussed in the beginning that, as long as

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our desire, thought and expectations are in line with our natural acceptance, we
are in harmony within and therefore, we are in a state of happiness, therefore, we
have the competence to fulfil our intention, our natural acceptance. That is what
essentially counts as competence.

Fulfilling the relationship from my side leads to harmony within me. If I can
understand the relationship, accept the relationship and fulfil the relationship; it
leads to happiness within me. Because I'm in harmony within, I am thinking of
relationship which is naturally acceptable to me. In the process, if the other has
more understanding than me, if he is more responsible than me, I'm committed to
understand from the other. That is the complementarity. If I have more
understanding than the other, I need to be more responsible than the other – that
is the indicator that I have more understanding than the other. I live with
responsibility with the other, unconditionally, unperturbed by the behaviour of the
other. Further, I am committed to facilitate understanding in the other, once the
other is assured in the relationship.

Salient Points regarding Respect

• Respect is right evaluation (of intention and competence on the basis of
Self). We are similar at the level of purpose, programme and potential and
we are complementary at the level of competence. I express this
complementarity as follows: o If the other has more understanding, is more
responsible than me, I am committed to understand from the other. I make
effort for it from my side.
o If I have more understanding, I am more responsible than the other,
• I live with responsibility with the other, unconditionally,
unperturbed by the behaviour of the other. This makes the other
comfortable with me in relationship and then he has a willingness
to understand from me. This may take a lot of time.
• I am committed to facilitate understanding in the other (once the other is
assured in relationship and not before that). The communication is feasible
only when the other person is assured in relationship and is ready to listen
from me.
• Disrespect arises out of over-evaluation, under-evaluation or
otherwiseevaluation; and also, out of differentiation or discrimination on the
basis of body (age, gender, race, physical strength), physical facility (post,
wealth) or beliefs (ism, sect, information). Small incidents of disrespect can
have long-lasting consequences – from not speaking to each other, to
opposition, struggle, break in relationship, divorce, fights and even war.
• When I can see the central role of the Self, I evaluate myself as well as the
other on the basis of the Self, rather than merely at the level of Body,
physical facility, etc.

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Test Your Understanding regarding Respect

Part 1: Questions for Self-evaluation

(Have we grasped the basic proposals made in this chapter?)

1. Respect is right evaluation (on the basis of the Self). List some of the
prevailing notions regarding the feeling of respect. Examine these notions
as well as the proposal for the feeling of respect.
2. The minimum content of respect is to be able to see the other person as
being similar to you. On what basis is the other similar? What is the
complete content of respect?
3. Give one example each of over evaluation, under evaluation and otherwise
evaluation. Why are these evaluations leading to disrespect? What
problems do we face because of these wrong evaluations?
4. How do we differentiate in relationships on the basis of body, physical
facility or beliefs? What problems do we face because of such
differentiation?
5. Why is understanding of the ‘Self’ important to ensure respect? Explain.
6. How does the feeling of respect help us in defining our complementary with
other human beings? What is the expression of the feeling of respect?

Part 2: Practice Exercises for Self-exploration

(To help connect the content to one’s life, at least at the level of thought, these
exercises may be done individually or in a group, particularly with friends and family
members)

1. List out ten or more of your interactions with other people in your family and
friends in the last one week. Now analyse these interactions:
a. From your side, was it over evaluation, under/otherwise evaluation or
right evaluation of the other? In each interaction, were you comfortable
within, uncomfortable within or unaware of your state?
b. Did they evaluate you rightly or they over evaluated or under/otherwise
evaluated you? In each interaction, were you comfortable within,
uncomfortable within or unaware of your state?

2. Study fig. 8-9 (the chart regarding differentiation and respect – on the basis of
the Self). Where has most of your effort been? Where would you like to put in
your effort now? What effort, if any, is required from your side now?

Affection

Affection is the feeling of being related to the other.

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When I can see that the other has a natural acceptance to make me happy and
prosperous, regardless of my competence, I am assured of the other. With this
feeling of assurance (trust on intention), when I am able to rightly evaluate our
competence (respect), I am able to define my complementarity with the other. In
this way, I am able to accept the other as my relative.

Affection is the feeling of acceptance for the other as one’s relative. Parents
generally have a feeling of affection for their children. The parents are very
naturally able to relate to their children, feel concerned for them. Similarly, children
feel related to their parents. This feeling can also be seen between friends, siblings,
between teacher and student, between husband and wife, or any other
relationship. It is a naturally acceptable feeling, and hence desired in every
relationship. The feeling of affection is essential for the fulfilment of any
relationship. Particularly, for children, it is a necessity for their development. The
child feels secure in the early stages of development when it enjoys the affection
of its parents. The parents, though having a hectic schedule, take care of the child,
and feel happy and fulfilled in the process. But one important thing to note is that
the feeling of affection can be there in continuity only if it is based on the feelings
of trust and respect. If the first two feelings are not present in the Self, then the
feeling of affection cannot be not continuous.

Lack of affection is seen in the form of opposition or jealousy. Such things too are
observed in relationships. If the feeling of affection is missing or lacking, then we
feel opposed to the other and tend to have a feeling of jealousy. This can be seen
even in very young siblings. For example, if a brother is not able to accept his
younger sister, then he would not have a feeling of affection for her and he may
keep vying for the parents’ full attention. The very feeling of trust is missing, so
respect is also violated. Like this, the boy is jealous of his sister and considers her
to be his competitor.

The understanding of trust, the feeling of trust as well as the feeling of respect,
based on understanding of respect, are essential to have the feeling of affection.
If we assume these feelings (rather than understand them), then these feelings
keep getting violated sometime or the other and the relationship keeps shaking.

So, the feeling of affection comes naturally, out of the feeling of trust and respect.
It is followed by the responsibility and commitment for mutual fulfilment. Can you
see that?

The acceptance of the relationship and the feelings in the relationship are based
on understanding. They are not based on expectations from the other. So, parents
with right understanding will have the feeling of affection for the child in continuity.
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Similarly, affection between any two human beings (between a husband and wife,
between a father and son, a mother and daughter, a brother and sister, a teacher
and student and so on), will be continuous and unconditional; it will not be affected
by the lack of competence of the other only if it is based on right understanding. In
general, there is always the expectation that the other would reciprocate the
feelings.

Now you can see that the other would be able to do that only if they have the
feeling in them, not otherwise; and they would have the feeling within only if they
have the right understanding, not otherwise.

As we go on, you will see that we are primarily talking about naturally acceptable
feelings and rarely talking about the feelings that are not naturally acceptable. So,
when you look at these negative emotions, they are the absence of these right
(naturally acceptable) feelings. Opposition and jealousy are indications of the
absence of affection. When we understand naturally acceptable feelings, we have
the right feelings within, so the negative emotions naturally subside.

So, the feeling of acceptance of the other as one as a relative is called affection.
With the feeling of affection, one naturally takes the responsibility for mutual
development – both at the level of Self as well as at the level of body.

Care and Guidance

We can see that when we have a feeling of affection then the responsibility and
commitment comes naturally. This starts reflecting in terms of the feeling of care
and guidance. They are the natural outcomes of the feeling of affection. It can be
seen in terms of
1. The feeling of responsibility towards the Body of my relative, and
2. The feeling of responsibility towards the Self of my relative.

If I have this feeling of responsibility, what will I do? I would think in terms of
nurturing the Body and protecting the Body. We already discussed what nurturing
and protection of body entails. Let us continue with the example of the parents
having the feeling of affection for the child and therefore, the responsibility of taking
care of the child – both in terms of body as well as the Self. To care for the child,
they nurture and protect the Body of the child. This can be seen in most parents.
Mothers are willing to do it even if it may cause inconvenience to them. They are
seen skipping their own food for feeding the child on time, or change their complete
routine of the day for the sake of the child. When the child is small, it many a times
wets the bed, or even wets the clothes of the parents. However, the parents take
such things as a part of their responsibility to continue taking care without getting
irritated or angry. They nurture the child regardless of whether the child is able to
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reciprocate or not, that is to say their feeling and fulfilment is, in some sense,
unconditional. This is something which is quite common. Mothers particularly can
be seen taking care of the child in terms of nurturing its body, protecting it and so
on.

Care is not only expressed to the child. It is also important for elderly, infirm and
sick family members who need assistance to take care of their bodies, who need
help to eat, who need help to keep their body clean and so on.

In general, the feeling of care plays an important role in human relationship today,
because the Body is considered to be most important. When guests come to your
house, the food and drink is of great significance. They remember what was served
the last time they came to your place, even more than what was discussed!

You can see that in order to fulfil the feeling of care (commitment towards the
Body), physical facility is required. Food, water and other physio-chemical things
are required for nurturing the Body. Similarly, clothes and shelter are required for
the protection of the Body. It may be useful to recall that for the fulfilment of the
other feelings, physical facility has no significant role; at most, it plays a symbolic
role.

The feeling of care also makes a difference during the production, protection and
right utilisation of physical facility. These actions are done with happiness, as a
part of our responsibility, when we have the feeling of care; otherwise, they are
treated as drudgery. When the mother is cooking food, with a feeling of care, the
work is joyous. However, when a hotel employee is cooking the food, perhaps with
a focus of the pay check, the work may not be joyous.

Can you see that:

Care is the feeling of responsibility and commitment for nurturing and

protection of the Body of my relative.

Now, looking at the feeling of guidance, it has to do with the responsibility towards
the Self of someone we have accepted as a relative. What can be the responsibility
towards the Self? Naturally, to help ensure right understanding and right feeling in
the Self of the other. Once we can see that the other also is co-existence of Self
and Body, we become responsible towards the Self too. This is also something
that we naturally accept. Are you able to see that:

Guidance is the feeling of responsibility and commitment for ensuring the

right understanding and right feeling in the Self of my relative.

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In families, we do try to guide the children to the best of our ability. We can observe
how parents’ guide the child to walk, to speak, to take care of the Body, to do
household chores, etc. Similarly, as the child grows, the domain of guidance also
widens. Sending the child for education, providing advices for betterment of the
life, counselling for a successful life, etc. can be seen in most homes.

Parents and other family members pass on what they know or assume to the
children. If they have the understanding of harmony, and they are living in
harmony, they are able to provide guidance to the children in the true sense.
Through it, the children also understand harmony and live in harmony.

On the other hand, if the parents themselves are not very clear about harmony,
about the co-existence of Self and Body, about right understanding and right
feeling, about difference between physical facility and happiness, etc. Then in
place of providing guidance, the parents’ preconditioning gets passed on to the
children. Through that, the children may develop a mix of right and wrong
preconditionings.

Guidance is the need of every human being, not just the children in the family.

Now if you can see this difference between the feeling of care and the feeling of
guidance, we can look back and ask ourselves that when we are taking care of the
child, are we taking care of both, care as well as guidance? Or we are largely
focusing on the Body alone?

You will see that our focus is mostly on care. We are focused largely on care
because we have come to assume that human being is Body. We are not even
aware of the Self. Therefore, we are not aware that we have to take care of the
Self as well.

One common example we can see all around is that of the person feeding
a child. Many times, we tend to over-feed the child or even force-feed it.
Does this make the Self of the child happy or unhappy? It is easy to see
that in such a process; the Self is becoming unhappy. The child may cry,
complain and do so many things but we have devised so many ways of
feeding the child. We may even frighten the child or give lucrative incentives
to it. We may keep saying, if you don't eat a crow will eat up your food or a
policeman will take you away or after you eat, you will get a chocolate and
so many other things. In one of the workshops, a mother was sharing that
she bought a plastic lizard. When the child is given food, she tells it that the
lizard will bite you if you don't finish your food. While doing all that, are we
creating a conducive condition for the Self or violating the Self? We are

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 focusing on the Body at the cost of the Self. If we are over-feeding the child,
we are not even taking care of the Body.

There can be harmonious ways to feed the child. If we can see that the
child too has a natural acceptance to nurture its body, we can have a
conversation. If we can see that the Self of the child is just like ourselves –
we will be able to see it wants to be treated at par with us; it wants to have
proposals in place of prescriptions; and given all that, it wants to decide on
its own.

Every human child has a natural acceptance to understand what is right and do
what is right; it can understand, it is ready to take help to understand and it makes
effort for it on its own. A parent or a teacher can help to fulfil that need with the
feelings of trust, respect, affection, care and guidance for the child.

Reverence

Reverence is the feeling of acceptance for excellence.

What we are proposing is that excellence is to be in a state of continuous

happiness (see fig. 8-10). This calls for understanding harmony and living in
harmony – at all levels of our being. Once we achieve excellence, it continues.
Excellence is something definite, something absolute.

If someone has achieved this state of excellence, we naturally have an acceptance

for such a person. This feeling of acceptance for excellence is called reverence.

We all aspire for continuous happiness. In that sense, we all aspire for excellence.
Since the revered person has achieved excellence, we would naturally like to take
inspiration from such a person and make effort to become like her/him. We are not
talking about imitating someone’s appearance, mannerisms, achievements and
such. We are pointing to their realisation of harmony within and harmony with the
world outside. Our effort for excellence is called worship. We keep using this
word quite often, but the sense of worship is essentially to make effort for
excellence.

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There may be a confusion between the feeling of reverence and the feeling of
respect. We say, “how can we respect someone when…”, and we have many
reasons. We will not have a feeling of reverence for someone who has not
achieved excellence. However, we will rightly evaluate everyone (i.e., respect
everyone), so that we can determine our complementarity with every person.

We can also try to see the basic difference between excellence and competition.
If you have achieved excellence, what would you like to do for the other? To
differentiate and dominate over them or to make effort to help them to come to your
level? A little exploration will show that you naturally like to help the other. In a
state of continuous happiness, there is nothing more that you need to do for
yourself. Therefore, you would naturally make effort for helping others to achieve
excellence. On the other hand, in competition, we not only do not help rather we
hinder the other to reach to our level. Remember, we had asked you to explore
how many children can come first in the class and how many children can
understand all that is being taught in the class? Now you can see that every child
has the desire for and potential for excellence. If we are making effort for
excellence or helping others to achieve excellence, it is a joyous effort for all
concerned. When we are competing, say for that first position in class or to be
someone special, it is an unhappy effort for all concerned, including you! Can you
see that?

You can find out if this definition of excellence and reverence is naturally
acceptable to you or not. Also find out if worship means making effort for
excellence by taking inspiration from the revered person, or it means just handing
over your responsibility to the revered!

Glory and Gratitude

With this clarity about excellence, we can now define the feeling of glory as well as
the feeling of gratitude, because only in the light of understanding excellence, it is
possible for us to understand both the feelings.

Glory is the feeling of acceptance for those who have made effort for
excellence.

We have a feeling of glory for people who have made effort or are making effort
for excellence. So, for all those people whom we call great people, we accept them
as great people because they invested themselves to achieve excellence. When
we can accept the effort made by them, to whatever extent they are able to achieve
it, we naturally have a feeling of glory for them.

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We want to have this feeling for our family elders and teachers too. We have a
natural expectation from them that they would make sincere efforts for right
understanding and right living.

Gratitude is the feeling of acceptance for those who have made the effort for
my excellence.

It is the feeling for all those who have helped me, in any way, in my own effort to
achieve excellence. In our life, there may be so many people who have been of
help to us in the process of understanding harmony and living in harmony. So, we
have this feeling of gratitude for them. Particularly in the family, we can see such
people. We can see that the parents and others have affectionately brought us up,
provided us with necessary physical facility to nurture and protect our body.

You may be remembering your parents and elders – they have cared for you and
arranged to send you to school and college, provided the necessary physical
facility and helped you to utilize it in your effort for excellence. We can also see
what the other has done in terms of fulfilling the need of the Self, i.e., to help us in
developing right understanding and right feeling. For that our feeling of gratitude
continues for a very long time. You must be remembering the guidance received
from your mother, father and some of your teachers. Like that, there may be so
many people outside the family too who are involved in the process of your
development. You may have a feeling of gratitude for them too.

If you think in terms of continuity of the feeling of gratitude, it has to do more with
the efforts made by the other for your understanding and feeling. When you look
at the continuity, it is only possible at the level of Self. What the other can do for
the Self is to help in facilitating the development of right understanding and right
feeling. This has the continuity. Therefore, the possibility of continuity of the feeling
of gratitude is there for effort made at the level of the Self.

On the other hand, what is being done at the level of body, in terms of physical
facility, may not have continuity. Of course, there will be feeling of gratitude for this
too, but it may not have the continuity. So, if we are only participating at the level
of physical facility, then the other will have this feeling only for a limited time. The
continuity of gratitude for the physical facility, or on the basis of what has been
done at the level of body, is possible only when one has developed right
understanding.

Gratitude is a significant feeling in the development of relationship. When the child

can see that the parents and the other relatives in the family are taking care of his
health, they are taking care of his happiness, they are helping him in the process
of education, so, with all that he has this feeling of gratitude. It extends to people
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outside the family, like the immediate neighbours, the community around, the
society, the nation and ultimately the whole world family. Because when we try to
understand, explore and find out the people who are involved in the process of
helping us in achieving excellence in the Self or taking care of our body, we find
that a whole lot of people are involved, the whole system is involved. This feeling
of gratitude is significant in the development of a human being.

You can do this homework: Try to find out about all those people who are involved
in the process of ensuring excellence in you. For any small thing that you use, say
food, find out where is it coming from, who are the people involved in the process.
If you are getting milk in a packet, where does it come from, who are the people
collecting and distributing it, who are the people producing it. People who are
producing milk are using fodder, grains, etc. Where is that coming from? You may
try to investigate and find out the entire chain of it and then you will see, even for
the small things that you use – so many people are involved and they're all together
facilitating your nurturing and protection of the Body.

One indication of the feeling of gratitude is that we know what the other did for us.
We also know what the other could not do for us, in spite of having the intention.
So, we do not have remorse for what they could not do. In fact, this gives us a
good starting list of what the next generation needs or expects from us. So, with
gratitude, we make effort for developing our competence for it.

When parents and family elders have the right understanding and right feeling, the
family has a conducive environment for the development of the child. It is a model
of living in relationship. In it, children will accept the relationship naturally, through
all that is being done for them. When the family is already living in relationship,
then the feeling of gratitude in the child is the entry point for the appreciation of
relationship, followed by the understanding of relationship. However, if we are
trying to understand relationship afresh, then we have to start from developing
clarity about trust. That is another reason that trust has been called the foundation
value.

A Relook at Respect, Reverence, Gratitude and Glory

Since these feelings are quite similar, let's make a little comparison for clarity. If
you look at the human goal, it is to achieve excellence. Excellence is understanding
harmony and living in harmony at all levels of being, leading to continuous
happiness. It is in terms of this excellence, that we can understand these four
feelings – the feeling of respect, reverence, glory and gratitude.

Respect is there for all on the basis of right evaluation of the Self. When we do the
right evaluation on the basis of Self, we find that the purpose of every human being
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is the same – to achieve excellence. Not only is our purpose the same, our
programme is same and our potential is also same. In that sense, every human
being is similar. The only difference is in the competence, i.e., how much of the
potential has been realised. Since we all have the same goal, we can be of help to
each other in achieving it – that is how we are complementary to each other. We
can identify our complementarity only with the right evaluation – that right
evaluation is respect. Respect is for each and every human being.

When it comes to reverence, of course the respect is there at the base. In addition
to that we have this feeling of reverence for those who have achieved excellence.
From them, we would like to take inspiration and make effort for our excellence.
That is the difference between the respect and reverence.

When it comes to glory, of course respect is there at the base, but glory is for those
who have made effort to achieve excellence. To whatever extent they might have
achieved it, but they have made effort for it. For them, we have a feeling of glory.
If they have achieved excellence, we have this feeling of glory as well as
reverence.

We can see that we have respect, we have glory and then we have reverence.
Since respect is for all, so it is also there for the person who is revered. Then glory
is for those who have made effort for achieving excellence, thus, the feeling of
glory is also there for the person who is revered. Of course, the feeling of reverence
is for those who have achieved excellence.

When it comes to reverence, the feelings of glory and respect are included in it.
When it comes to glory, the feeling of respect is included in it, but reverence is not
necessarily included in glory. When it comes to respect, it is for all; there is no
additional qualification required.

The feeling of gratitude is for those who have made effort for my excellence, who
have helped me to achieve excellence or who are helping me to achieve
excellence. Of course, respect is at the background here also, but the additional
qualification is that (s)he has made effort for me to achieve excellence.

Initially you are able to appreciate something which is directly of help for you, but
when you go on analysing and relating to it, you'll be able to see those who have
been of help indirectly also, this will include a very large number of people as we
saw.

Now, if you look at the difference between all these four feelings: respect is for all
on the basis of right evaluation of the Self, reverence is for those who have

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achieved excellence, glory is for those who have made effort for excellence, and
gratitude is for those who have made effort for my excellence.

In other words, we are saying that for the one we have the feeling of reverence,
we also have the feelings of glory and respect. For the one we have a feeling of
glory, we also have respect anyway, but not necessarily reverence. Of course,
gratitude will also include respect and we may also have the feeling of glory here
too, but it is not necessary; it depends on whether he is making effort for excellence
or not. This is the difference between these four feelings.

Love as the Complete Value

Having talked about the first eight values, now we can talk about a value that
encompasses all, and can be termed as the complete value.

Verify on the basis of your natural acceptance, if you want to be related to none,
to one, to many or to everyone? What is naturally acceptable to you? We can see
that it is not acceptable naturally to be related to none (or to be unrelated). We can
also see that it is naturally acceptable to be related to one, and to many and
ultimately, to all. The feeling of being related to one or to many is what we are
calling affection. But if you look at the full possibility of the feeling of being related
to everyone – that is called love.

Love is the feeling of being related to everyone, to all. It starts from affection, which
we have already explored. If this feeling expands and includes all, it is the feeling
of love. We begin with the feeling of affection, and we complete it with the feeling
of love. That is why it is called complete value.

Love is the feeling of being related to all.

Ultimately all of us want to reach here. It starts with a feeling of being related to the
other human being. It starts with accepting the other human being, with his
complete possibility (natural acceptance, intention) and present competence. It
slowly expands to the feeling of being related to all human beings and then to all,
each and every unit in nature – human being as well as all other units in nature.
This is how it progresses. That is the meaning of love: the feeling of being related
to all – human being as well as all other units in nature.

The feeling of love is expressed in the form of kindness, beneficence and

compassion.
• Kindness is to provide a resource that the other needs but for which he
does not have the competence – the other could be in need of some
physical facility or fulfilment in relationship or right understanding.
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 • Beneficence is to provide something that the other requires, but has not felt
the need for it. For example, he may require right understanding, but may
not have felt the need for it. With the base of the feeling of love and out of
the feeling of beneficience, one may help him to develop right
understanding.
• Compassion means that one is willing to extend help to the other
unconditionally, whether the other has felt the need or not, has the
resources or not – without any conditions put on her/him. One is willing to
help the other and do whatever is required in order to fulfil the relationship
in an unconditional manner. That is the meaning of compassion.

The feeling of love is for all but it is expressed for those who come in contact. This
is interesting. When you talk about the feeling of love, it is not just within the family,
within the friends’ circle, rather it is for all – those with whom you are in immediate
contact as well as those with whom you are not in contact. So that feeling is there
but the expression of the feeling will take place as and when you come in contact
with the other person. Ultimately, we all want to reach this state, to have the feeling
of love, to feel related to every human being and every unit in nature. That is the
complete value.

We can see that when we are able to realize this feeling of love within us, we are
able to express and share it with others. It is the feeling of love which paves the
way for an undivided society.

Till then we have a divided society; because if I feel related only to people within
my own family, there are two parts of the society, those who are in my family and
those who are outside my family. Similarly, if I have feeling of affection for those in
the community and not outside the community, I divide this society into parts, my
community and outside of my community.

Love is the complete value because this is ultimately where we want to reach and
this is the feeling which includes all the other feelings that we have talked about –
the feeling of trust, respect, affection and so on.

When we are talking about the feeling of love, of course this is not something which
is based on sensation. It is based on understanding – understanding oneself,
understanding the other, understanding the whole nature and ultimately
understanding the whole existence, where I can see that I'm related to every unit,
every human being as well as the rest of the units in nature. It is a feeling born out
of the understanding of the existence as co-existence which we will discuss in
detail in chapter 11. It is born out of understanding of the nature and the harmony
in it, and it is born out of the relationship of one unit with another unit in a mutually

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fulfilling manner which we will discuss in chapter 10. Thus, the feeling of love is
born out of understanding and not out of the sensation.

With this clarity of love as a feeling of being related to all which is based on the
understanding of the whole existence, we can see that love is the complete value
and that is where we all want to reach. Even if we may not be able to ensure
fulfilment in relationship with even one, our aspiration is to be related to all and
ensure fulfilment in relationship for all.

Distinguishing Between Love and Infatuation

The feeling of love is, of course, not based on sensation. On the other hand,
infatuation is an attraction based on sensation. The excitement from sensual
pleasure is the central issue. Infatuation is conditional on getting the desirable
sensations. Also, it is temporary, lasts only as long as one is able to get the
sensation. While infatuated, the deeper expectations are not prominent. Once, the
effect of infatuation wears off, then the deeper, long-term expectation of feelings
become prominent. If these expectations are not fulfilled, they tend to be
dissatisfied, even arguing and fighting. If the basis for our relationship is sensation
(beauty, sensual pleasure, etc.), and the feeling of relationship is missing, then
sooner or later this is where we may end up.

Most of the cases of adultery and divorce are attributable to lack of fulfilment at the
level of feeling, rather than any other reason. When you have the feeling of love
on the basis of understanding, you are standing (rising) in love! You are no longer
falling in love. You will have the feeling of acceptance, regardless of the behaviour
of the other and will be living with responsibility in the relationship from your side,
unconditionally; primarily with the responsibility for mutual development. Over a
period of time, the other will also evolve and the feelings will start flowing from the
other as well – starting with trust. It is like there is no “best spouse”, “best friend”
and so on. Rather it is what one makes out of the relationship. With the right feeling,
if one works on mutual development, almost any relationship can blossom.

Now you can ask yourself what will be naturally acceptable to you: love (to stand
(rise) in love) or infatuation (to fall in love)? Reflect on what is generally happening
now and its impact in the family and in the society.

Right Feeling – within Myself or from the Other?

With this background, we can ask ourselves what can have continuity:
• Right feeling in myself or
• Getting right feeling from the other

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Of course, when we ask like this, the answer is quite obvious that there can be
continuity of right feeling if it is from within. Only then it is a part and parcel of me.
If we are expecting right feeling from the other, we may get it sometime and not
get it at other times. There is no definiteness in the feeling from others. Also, the
feeling from the other is a source of temporary excitement – it can never ensure
harmony within us.

That is what we have been alluding to from the beginning. The need of the Self is
continuous happiness. This is the complete feeling we are all aspiring for. We had
given a name to the complete feeling – the feeling of love. All the other feelings we
have discussed in this chapter are different levels of reaching to this complete
feeling within.

Also, we have been pointing out that the base for right feeling is right
understanding. Feeling based on right understanding can have continuity. Feeling
based on experience of events are actually only temporary emotions. The
foundation feeling of trust is based on understanding that every Self is endowed
with a natural acceptance for relationship, i.e., every Self wants every other Self to
be happy. The emotion based on the competence of the other to make you happy
will keep fluctuating, because the competence of the other is not always upto your
expectation. You can see this very clearly even now for yourself – you want to
make yourself happy all the time, but due to lack of your own competence, you are
unable to do so in all cases.

Is it clear that there can be continuity of right feeling in you, only on the basis of
right understanding within you?

Role of Physical Facility in Fulfilment of Relationship

You can now see that physical facility has a limited role to play in the fulfilment of
the feeling in human-human relationship. To fulfil the feeling of care, physical
facility is certainly required. It is required in a limited quantity for nurturing the Body,
protection and right utilisation of the Body – your body or the Body of your family
members.

Other than the feeling of care, physical facility only has a symbolic role. For
example, you may offer a chocolate to someone to express the feeling of affection
for him. The chocolate is not affection – it is a symbol of your feeling of affection
for the other. Like that you can check the role of physical facility in the fulfilment of
every other feeling.

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Response and Reaction in Behaviour
An important implication of understanding relationship, particularly trust on
intention, is the clarity about living in reaction and the possibility of living with
response. To understand response, a contrast between reaction and response is
shown in the table below.

Reaction Response
You decide how to behave based on You decide how to behave on your
the behaviour of the other own right
It depends on whether you like or It is based on right understanding
dislike the (taste of the) behaviour of and right feeling in yourself which
the other are definite. Your behaviour is
- If the other behaves properly, you always for mutual happiness
also behave properly
- If the other misbehaves, you also
may misbehave
Your behaviour is decided by other You decide your own behaviour
(“remote control” is with others)
You are enslaved You are self-organised
- You have doubt on the intention of - You are clear about the
the other intention of the other
- You get excited or hurt by their - You are neither hurt nor excited
behaviour by the behaviour of the other
- You don’t consider mutual happiness (their behaviour is an input to
and mutual development rightly evaluate their
competence)
as a part of your responsibility in the - You take responsibility for mutual
relationship happiness and mutual
development

Your conduct is indefinite Your conduct is definite

Understanding Justice
With this background, we can now talk about justice in relationship. Each one of
us aspires for justice in every relationship and at every moment. Isn’t it? Now we
will sum up the discussion above with a brief discussion on the proposal for justice:

Justice is the recognition, fulfilment and evaluation of human-human

relationship, leading to mutual happiness.

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To expand it a bit:
• Recognition of relationship means unconditionally accepting the
relationship. Accepting the other with their full possibility (potential) and
with their current level of competence.
• Fulfilment of relationship means o Ensuring the naturally acceptable
feeling in oneself and sharing it with the other.
o Living with responsibility with the other unconditionally. This makes
the other comfortable and assured.
o Making effort for mutual development, i.e., development of one’s
own competence and being of help to the other in developing their
competence.
• Evaluation means verifying that the right feeling has reached to the other
and that the other is able to make out that it is the right feeling.

One has to gain competence to live with justice in the relationships in

continuity. When the recognition, fulfilment and evaluation is right from my side,
I feel happy. When the other is able to evaluate the expression of my feeling
rightly, then (s)he also feels happy. Developing this competence may take time.

Thus, mutual happiness may sometimes result instantly, and sometimes may
take some time when one of the persons is yet to gain competence. But if
neither of the two is competent, justice will not take place. If one is
preconditioned or is trying to draw happiness through sensation, neither will he
be able to ensure happiness for himself in continuity nor will the other. When
you are able to look at justice with so much preciseness, you will be able to
see why there is so much problem in relationships today. Many times, we start
by the wrong recognition of the feelings and the very possibility of justice is
forsaken.

To take an example, if we have assumed that there is struggle for survival, we

will start with a feeling of opposition (jealousy). With this wrong feeling,
howsoever hard we try for fulfilment in relationship, ultimately it will land us up
into competition, opposition, fights and even war. There could be many such
wrong assumptions leading to wrong feelings in us that retard the possibility of
justice.

But the good thing is that once we develop the competence for justice, then
establishing and maintaining relationship will become a smooth process; and
this is a big achievement in itself, isn’t it?

In this way, it leads to mutual happiness. This, in a nutshell, is the meaning of

justice. Is this definition of justice naturally acceptable to you? Is justice desirable?
Find it out.
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 Here is an interesting example of a lawyer who found this definition made
sense. He happened to come for one of our workshops at a well-known
institute. Touched by the discussion on justice, he decided to experiment
with it in his practice. At that time, he was dealing with the divorce
proceedings of a young couple, one of whom was a PhD student at the
same institute. He called them up and requested, rather suggested to them
to attend this workshop, saying “we will proceed after you go through what
they have to say. Pay attention to it”. They came for the workshop. The girl
could get a feel of her responsibility towards relationship and wanted to
withdraw her divorce paper, “he has made mistakes, but I have also made
some, so let me try again, sincerely”. The boy was adamant and asked for
the divorce to go through. “You did not pay attention. Go and listen again”,
the lawyer advised. “I am paying you. Please go ahead or I will go to some
other lawyer”, the boy argued. The lawyer told him to go ahead, but he
would have to get the papers signed again by the girl. Since she had
realised her part, and decided to try again, the lawyer said, “I won’t give her
signed papers to you”. Frustrated, the boy went for the workshop a second
time. This time he also saw both sides, her mistakes as well as his
mistakes. These two are still married, have become good friends by now,
happy to help each other develop. Of course, they realised that they had a
long way to go, but now they are working out how to solve the problems,
rather than to just complain about them. What do you think happened to
the lawyer? Not surprisingly, he has developed a great reputation of being
helpful – nobody wants broken relationships. His practice is gaining
acceptance.

Find out whether you have natural acceptance for justice within the family? Check
in how many relationships within your family you are able to ensure justice from
your side. Remember, the mark of justice is mutual happiness.

When we reflect on it, we can easily see that we have an expectation for justice
well beyond the family. We expect that everyone will behave properly with us and
we also tend to behave well with everyone in general. Deep within, our natural
acceptance is for justice from family to world family – justice in the family as well
as justice with every human being. That is how we want to live!

We have a natural acceptance for an undivided human family, i.e., an undivided

society. That is the meaning of harmony in the family.

My Participation (Value) in My Family

(To Make Effort for Harmony in the Family)
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The important issue in the family is that of the feelings. These feelings are in one
Self for the other Self.

My participation (value) vis-à-vis my family is to ensure harmony in the family,

ensure mutual happiness, ensure justice in the family by way of:
• Ensuring the right feelings (trust, respect, affection, care, guidance,
reverence, glory, gratitude and love) in myself – this leads to my happiness. •
Expressing (sharing) these feelings with the other – when the other is able to
make the right evaluation of these feelings, it leads to hi(s)her happiness, thus
leading to mutual happiness. My participation is to be of help to the other in
their self-evolution, self-development.

With this preparation in the family, I have the ability to participate meaningfully in
the larger society – in the neighbourhood, in the community and so on. When I am
able to recognise and accept relationship in its fulness, I find that all human beings
are part of the family. This feeling of acceptance is called love; and it is expressed
in the form of compassion. This is my participation (value) vis-à-vis my family.

Salient Points
• Harmony in the family has to do with acceptance of the other human being
and ensuring the fulfilment of the naturally acceptable feelings in
relationship. To live with fulfilment in relationship, it is essential to
understand relationship. Assuming relationship without understanding
does not work.
• Relationship is – it already exists between one Self (I1) and the other Self
(I2).
• The base of relationship is feelings – in one Self (I1) for other Self (I2).
Feelings are fundamental to harmony in the family, i.e., in human-human
relationship.
• Except for the feeling of care, physical facility has a symbolic role in
expressing the feelings (majority of complaints in relationship are due to
lack of fulfilment of these feelings and no amount of physical facility can
compensate for it).
• These feelings are definite, so they can be understood. There are nine
naturally acceptable feelings in relationship – trust, respect, affection, care,
guidance, reverence, glory, gratitude and love. Having these feelings in me
ensures my happiness. Since they are naturally acceptable to the other
also, sharing these feelings with the other leads to their happiness, thus to
mutual happiness.

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• Feelings born out of the understanding of relationship are unconditional
and continuous. Feelings or emotions based on incidents / happenings are
conditional and temporary. Negative emotions are basically the absence of
right (naturally acceptable) feelings.
• Justice in relationship is understanding relationship, acceptance of
relationship, having the right feelings, fulfilling these feelings followed by
the right evaluation of these feelings, leading to mutual happiness: o
Having the right feeling in myself leads to my happiness o Expressing
(sharing) these feelings to the other and its right evaluation leads to his/her
happiness
• Expecting to get these feelings from the other (instead of ensuring these
feelings in oneself) cannot be ensured in continuity.
• Trust = to be assured = to be assured that the other intends (has a natural
acceptance) to make me happy and prosperous. It is the foundational
feeling (value) in relationship. In the absence of it, we do not feel related to
the other and the relationship keeps shaking.
• Trust (on intention) means that:
o I am able to see that as far as the intention (natural acceptance) is
concerned, it is to make the other happy and prosperous. This is
true for me and true for the other. We are similar, we are related to
each other and we have a common intention.
o I am able to see that as far as competence is concerned, I am
lacking in some areas and that is true for the other also. I make a
programme based on my evaluation of our mutual competence (I
do not assume that our competence is perfect, same as the
intention).
o In case the other is lacking in competence, I assure the other,
without getting irritated, angry or having a feeling of opposition and
once the other is assured, I make effort to help the other to improve
his competence, to the extent I can.
o I am always making effort to improve my own competence.
• A common mistake in relationship is to evaluate myself based on intention
and evaluate the other based on competence. If we go by this, we assume
ourselves to be good and the other to be the problem.
• Respect = right evaluation (of intention and competence). Respect, on the
basis of Self means the other is like me in terms of purpose, programme
and potential of the Self and we are complementary to each other in terms
of competence. If the other has more understanding, is more responsible
than me; then I am committed to understand from the other. If I have more
understanding, I am more responsible than the other; then
• I live with responsibility with the other, unconditionally, unperturbed by the
behaviour of the other. This makes the other comfortable with me in
relationship and then he has a willingness to understand from me.
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• I am committed to facilitate understanding in the other (once the other is
assured in relationship and not before that). The communication is feasible
only when the other person is assured in relationship and is ready to listen
from me.
• Disrespect arises out of over-evaluation, under-evaluation or
otherwiseevaluation; and also, out of differentiation or discrimination by
making comparison of body (in terms of age, gender, race, and physical
strength), physical facility (in terms of post, wealth) or beliefs (in terms of
ism, sect, information).
• Affection is the feeling of being related to the other. One naturally feels
related to the other only when there is feeling of Trust and Respect in
oneself for the other. Feeling of jealousy or opposition is basically the
absence of affection. Responsibility and commitment for mutual fulfilment
in the relationship emerges from affection. Thus, I take the responsibility
for the Self as well as the Body of my relative.
• Care is the feeling of responsibility and commitment for nurturing and
protection of the Body of my relative. Physical facility, in a limited quantity,
is needed to fulfil the feeling of care.
• Guidance is the feeling of responsibility and commitment for ensuring Right
Understanding and Right Feeling in the Self of my relative.
• Assuming human being to be the Body results in being largely focused on
care of the Body and lack of guidance toward the Self.
• Reverence is the feeling of acceptance for Excellence. Excellence means
understanding harmony and living in harmony at all levels of being
(individual, family, society, nature/existence), thereby, living with
continuous happiness.
• Glory is the feeling for those who have made effort for excellence. They
may or may not have attained excellence in completeness.
• Gratitude is the feeling for those who have made effort for my excellence.
In the process, they may have shared proposals for right understanding,
communicated right feeling or made available the necessary physical
facility.
• If you make a list of people involved in providing you right understanding,
right feeling and physical facility, it will be a long list ultimately including
almost all the people on the Earth. Thus, you will be able to see the
interconnectedness, relatedness with all other human beings and it slowly
develops a feeling of gratitude for the society as a whole.
• Love is the feeling of being related to all. It all starts with identifying that
one is related to the other human being and it slowly expands to the feeling
of being related to all human beings and then to all, each and every unit in
nature (human being as well as other units). The feeling of love is there for
all and it is expressed to those who are in contact, in the form of
compassion. It is unconditional and continuous. Love is the final or

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 completion point of feeling where every human being aspires to reach and
continue. In that sense, love is the complete value.
• A common misunderstanding about love is that it is based on sensation
(sensory pleasure). In fact, it is merely infatuation.
• The feeling of love is the foundation of undivided society. With the feeling
of love, there is justice in the family and it extends from family to world
family resulting into undivided society.

Test Your Understanding

Part 1: Questions for Self-evaluation

(Have we grasped the basic proposals made in this chapter?)

1. Define affection. How does affection lead to harmony in the family?

2. Explain the feelings of care and guidance.
3. What is excellence? Is working for competition the same as working for
excellence? Explain with the help of examples.
4. Distinguish between respect, glory and reverence.
5. If someone is helpful in fulfilling your needs, what feeling do you have for
him? Explain in terms of needs of the Self as well as needs of the Body.
6. Define love. How is love the complete value?
7. How does one develop right feeling – is it on the basis of right
understanding or on the basis of experience of events? Explain in detail.
8. What is the role of physical facility in the fulfilment of relationship?
9. What is justice? Is it a continuous or a temporary need?
10. What is the basis of an undivided society – the world family?

Part 2: Practice Exercises for Self-exploration

(To help connect the content to one’s life, at least at the level of thought, these
exercises may be done individually or in a group, particularly with friends and family
members)

1. Make a list of people you are closely related to or friends with (in your family,
extended family, community, village, town, city, etc.). What is the relationship
name that you call them by (like mother, father, brother, sister, in-laws,
cobrother, uncle, teacher, etc). Also find out the feelings expected in that
relationship (like you may expect your father to have the feeling of trust and
guidance). What are your feelings for them? Now find out if these feelings are
being fulfilled. Find out what effort you need to make to develop yourself.

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 Relationship Feelings I expect from Feelings I have for
Name (Name of them them
person)
E.g. Ma (Usha Trust, affection, care, Trust, respect, gratitude,
Devi) reverence, etc. glory, etc.

2. In your life, there must be people who have helped you in your effort for
excellence (harmony). For each such person, write down what they have done
for you.
Find out:
a. What are the feelings you have for such people? How do you express
these feelings to them?
b. Categorise the contributions as being primarily related to right
understanding, feeling in relationship or physical facility. Which
category of contributions do you value most?
Now add to the list, what you expected from them, but they could not do it
for you. This is a rough list of what you value.

Person Contribution – Primarily this contribution is related

What they did for you to Right Understanding or Feeling or
Physical Facility?

What they did for Do you have the Primarily this

you + what you competence to do contribution is related to
expected, but this for others in the Right Understanding or
they could not do family? Feeling or Physical
for you Facility?

Find out if you have the competence to do this for others in the family.

3. Who are your role models? What qualities do you like about them? What
feelings do you have towards them? Do you want to be like them in all aspects
(how they are as an individual, as a member of the family, as a member of the
society and as a part of nature)? What effort are you making or you need to
make to be like them?

4. Recall the scene from “Right here Right Now” where the young boy says “I love
you” to Chand, after he gives her the drawing he had made. Do you think that

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 scene shows love or infatuation? Distinguish between love (rising in love) and
infatuation (falling in love). Discuss how some young people confuse between
the two? What are the outcomes of this? Do you feel it is essential to have
clarity between love and infatuation? If yes, suggest ways in which this can be
done.

5. What could you understand about the meaning of excellence? Contrast

excellence with competition. What is the effort that you are comfortable with
making – effort for competition or making effort for excellence?

6. What could you understand about the meaning of justice? Find out the state of
justice in your family. Are any steps required to ensure justice in the family?
How would you extend that feeling with your neighbors, in the community?

7. In the daily family routine, what activities are there or that need to be added, to
promote harmony in the family? In these collective activities, what are the
topics that are being discussed or need to be discussed for harmony in the
family? Revise your daily routine, if you feel it is useful for harmony in your
family.
[e.g., taking food together, sharing common facilities, helping each other in
household chores, sharing how the day went, sharing feelings and ideas, jointly
planning the next day, etc.]

8. Update your future resume (which you started in chapter 2 and updated in
chapter 5) to update the section on family – write down the goal of your family,
your responsibility in the family (regarding parents, other elders, siblings,
children, etc.) and what skills you will need to fulfil your responsibility toward
your family.

Part 3: Projects and Modelling Exercises

You may like to revisit this part of Test Your Understanding after reading through
the complete book once and self-exploring all the key proposals. With that, you
may have some (or many) aha! moments in which something clicks for you, you
understand a proposal. What you have understood may be expressed in various
creative ways which appeal to different people. This part is for you to give a
creative expression to your understanding. Of course, you can do this in a group
also. Creative expressions may be in the form of sketches, drawings, paintings,
clay models, sculptures, songs, poems, music, dance, audios, videos, games,
puzzles, stories, skits, plays, dramas, charts, diagrams, plans, survey
questionnaires, blogs, something on social media and so on. It is the story of your
own life – and it matters. While some hints are given above, please feel free to
share your real aha’s in your own way!

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“Is it possible to live in relationship only with the understanding of relationship”?

“Trust on intention is the foundation of relationship”.

“Respect (right evaluation) is essential to define one’s complementarity with the

other human being”.

“Ultimately, we all aspire for love (complete value), justice and an undivided
society”.

“Family is the practice ground for living harmoniously in relationship”.

Part 4: Your Questions

Write down your questions or doubts in your note-book. If any of the previous
questions have been clarified by your self-exploration of the proposals so far,
please mark them as answered. We would like to discuss the questions remaining
unanswered in your self-exploration.

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Chapter 9: Harmony in the Society –
Understanding Universal Human Order

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Recap
So far, we have explored harmony in the human being and harmony in the family.
In the previous chapter, we discussed at length about harmony in the family. It has
to do with relationship. The base of relationship is feelings – in one Self (I1) for
other Self (I2). Feelings are fundamental to harmony in the family; except for the
feeling of care, physical facility has only a symbolic role in expressing the feelings.
We listed all the values (feelings) in human-human relationship and explored into
the meaning of each. We saw that trust is the foundational value in relationship
and love is the complete value.

In the sequence, the next level of living for a human being is society. In this chapter,
we will share the proposal about the harmony in the society. Do verify for yourself
whether this is something naturally acceptable to you and whether this will lead to
mutual fulfilment and the fulfilment of all.

We are well aware, that human families do not exist in isolation but are always in
mutual co-existence with other families in a family cluster. Also, the family relations
naturally get extended far and wide. In addition, we usually need to frequently
interact with various other human beings and this forms our immediate society.
Let’s now try to understand the harmony in the society. Of course, the base of
harmony in the society is harmony in the family for which the base is harmony in
the human being. That’s why we are going in a sequence. First, we talked about
harmony in the human being, which leads to harmony in family, which further leads
to harmony in society. We are trying to unfold them one by one. Only people who
have harmony within will be able to ensure a family which is in harmony. Families
which have harmony within can give rise to a society which is in harmony.

We will explore into three aspects of society:

1. The goal of human being living in society (Human Goal)
2. The system required to achieve human goal
3. Scope of this system

Understanding Human Goal

The goals of human being living in a society can be articulated as shown in fig. 9-
1.

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Check, if this is also your aspiration. What is naturally acceptable to you?
• Right understanding in every human being or only a few to have right
understanding and others to follow them?
• Prosperity in every family or few families to have accumulation, and others
to be deprived and dependent on the few?
• Fearlessness, based on trust and affection, in the society or a state of fear,
based on mistrust and jealousy in the society?
• Co-existence (mutual fulfilment) in nature or exploitation and domination of
nature?

Find it out. Also, find out if you can do away with any one of these four goals - are
all four desirable or can we leave something out? Next, find out if all four are
achieved then what else would be required?

A little exploration will show that all four goals are desirable and required, we can’t
leave anything out and nothing seems to be missing. Therefore, we can recognise
a definite human goal and it can be common to everyone living in the society. Can
you see that?

The next question is that if all four are required then, from where do we need to
start? Will we start with right understanding and right feeling in the Self/individual
or with prosperity in every family or fearlessness in the society or co-existence in
nature/existence?

Since the individual human being is a basic building block for the family which is
the basic building block of society, ensuring right understanding and right feeling
in every individual is the first thing to do. Families of such individuals only can
identify their need for physical facility, produce more than that and ensure
prosperity in the family. Prosperous families living together in a relationship of
mutual fulfilment can ensure fearlessness based on trust amongst themselves.
Such a society can ensure mutual enrichment with the rest of the nature and it can
lead to co-existence in nature/existence. This is the kind of society we want to now
explore into.

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Appraisal of the Current Status
In this chapter, we are exploring into society, a social order, a way of life that is
fulfilling for all, generation after generation. At the core of it, all human efforts have
been in this direction. If we see today, some of the major achievements include:
• There is abundant availability of physical facility, like food, clothing,
housing, gadgets, instruments and equipment.
• The world has become well connected – physically, by transportation and
virtually by television and telecommunication.
• There is more sense of equality in the society through democracy.
Governance changes hands to people who are more competent by
people’s vote.
• Infant mortality rates have reduced and lifespans have increased.
• Education is now a basic human right. Literacy has increased.

Today, things can be done at a pace much greater than perhaps any time in the
past. However, in the absence of a comprehensive goal and programme, rather
than holistic development, there are many problems. Terrorism, global warming
and climate change, to name a few.

We can see that the root of these problems is in the wrong assumptions we have
about ourselves, about the nature, the existence and therefore, about our purpose,
about goal of society and so on. With these assumptions, the efforts are often
leading to contradictions. These appear as the problems. These are only the
indicators or symptoms of our wrong assumptions.

While we are discussing the current state, it is with a view to realise the need for
right understanding and to be able to see the holistic solution in the light of it; and
further, to be able to define our participation in it, to develop the commitment for it.
The understanding of the existential harmony is essential for recognising our basic
aspiration and our collective goal as a society and make effort to live by it. In time,
as we make sincere effort in the right direction at the individual level, family level,
society level, the symptoms which are due to lack of solution at the level of society
will slowly dissolve. It is with this background that we are discussing the current
state.

In fig. 9-2, the comprehensive human goal is mentioned on the top. Are we working
for all four of these goals, some of them or none of them? The predominant
prevailing notions of societal objectives are mentioned in the bottom half of fig. 92.
Are we also having such notions and making effort for them? Let us try to find out
what is the effort in the society today.

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The first goal is to ensure right understanding and right feeling (happiness) in every
human being. As we discussed in chapter 4, the prevailing notion of happiness is
quite different, therefore, the major effort is for accumulation of physical facility
(money) by any means and getting feeling from others. These false assumptions
are being propagated, knowingly or unknowingly, even through education, through
the parents, schools, teachers, media, friends, and the overall society.

The second goal of prosperity, is similarly replaced by accumulating more and

more, as we are not able to identify our need for physical facility, due to lack of
right understanding. It is felt that if one has money, one is prosperous. However,
without having an idea of our needs, we keep on accumulating more and more
(unlimited!), and by any means. It is said that most of the money supply is in the
hands of a very few people.

With these as the driving assumptions in the society, it has led to people living with
three kinds of obsessions:
1. Obsession for consumption
2. Obsession for profit
3. Obsession for sensual pleasure

Obsession with something implies over-evaluation of that thing; considering it to

be the ultimate aim of life and that thing itself becoming the value. Obsession for
consumption means to consume more and more for happiness, be it food, clothes,
house, gadgets and so on. Obsession for profit means to take as much as possible
from the other and give as little as possible with the assumption that more profit
means more happiness and prosperity. Obsession for sensual pleasure means
trying to get happiness from the sensation through the Body. For example, obesity
is largely due to an obsession for taste. Similar is the case for any other sensation.
Many of the crimes in society today are due to the pursuit of these obsessions, be
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it corruption, rapes or murders. It is these that we are trying to deal with at the level
of society, when their roots are in the family and individual assumptions.

Similarly, the third goal of fearlessness (trust) is replaced by domination,

exploitation and fear in the society. When we understand that the other is a human
being like us, with the same purpose, etc., we will think about mutual fulfilment in
the relationship, so there will be trust in the society. In the absence of right
understanding, there is lack of trust and there is domination, exploitation and fear
instead. When we dominate, is it naturally acceptable to the other person? Today
what goes in the name of business, what goes in the name of economy is all about
expansion (profit and growth) – trying to expand our territory. Now when we try to
expand, there are only two possibilities – either you expand on the basis of
domination or you expand on the basis of relationship. That is the only choice we
have. Now, if you go by domination, we all know, you have to really force upon the
other person. The other person doesn’t buy that domination or exploitation. The
other person tries all the possibilities to resist or retaliate. This ultimately results in
opposition and mutual unhappiness. On the other hand, when you try to expand
not with domination, but with right feelings in relationship, your behaviour touches
other people. Other people accept you, they trust you. This, certainly results in
mutually fulfilling existence. Today, instead of trust, we have domination and
exploitation in the society. When this happens, ultimately, it leads to problems the
world is facing today – opposition, struggle and ultimately, terrorism and war.

Then, our fourth goal is co-existence in nature and existence. But what we are
mostly trying to do today is mastery over nature and its exploitation. When we
exploit the nature, it results into resource depletion and environmental pollution.
And there is a lot of hue and cry about it in the whole world today. It is not that we
were not using natural resources or creating some pollution a thousand years ago.
The difference today is that we are using resources at a much faster rate than what
nature can produce. We are generating so much of waste and pollution, and at
such a pace, that it is beyond nature’s capacity to absorb the waste. That is why
we are confronting this problem of resource depletion and pollution. As a
consequence, there is a crisis of global warming and climate change.

Social administration is grappling with worries about the system consuming a very
large percentage of resource on healthcare to combat obesity, depression, lifestyle
disorders and suicide; another large chunk for defence, law enforcement and legal
system to deal with problems in relationship; and the seemingly unsolvable crisis
of global warming and climate change to top it all. They themselves seem to be
facing frustration and depression, suffering from multiple lifestyle disorders; at the
level of relationship they are facing strife in family, divorce and isolation. Even with
all the power and money, happiness seems to be elusive. They, like everyone else,
are searching for a way out. We all seem to be in the same sinking boat.

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These are some of the problems we are facing in the society. These problems are
not coming from some hitch, some lacunae or some inherent contradictions in the
nature, rather they are coming from individuals without right understanding, people
with wrong assumptions and living on the basis of gross misunderstanding.

Today, we are trying to address to these and such other problems in bits and
pieces. Such efforts results into more controls, more surveillance, more rules and
regulations, more courts, more police and defence, more jails and so on.

What is being proposed is that only a holistic solution, that takes care of all aspects
and for all people as well as rest of nature will work. This book is an attempt to
describe a holistic solution which is in tune with the way the nature/existence is.

The Way Ahead

There is a need for understanding the existential harmony, for recognising our
basic aspiration and our collective goal as a society and make effort to live by it.
Let us go step by step in exploring the proposals about such a human society.

Human Goal and Systems for its Fulfilment – Human Order

We have already seen that all these four goals are important and that we cannot
do away with any one of them. We have to realise all four of them.

Now, if we have to realise all four, where do we start? What is the sequence in
which these four goals can be fulfilled?

Refer to fig. 9-3. The first and foremost is right understanding and right feeling,
because it ensures happiness in the individual and also prepares the base for other
three. Without right understanding and right feeling, it is not possible to identify the
need for physical facility, therefore, right understanding and right feeling has to
come before prosperity. Similarly, fearlessness can take place only with the
acceptance of relationship, with right feeling in relationship and prosperity in every
family. The fourth goal is a natural outcome of the first three. Only with right
understanding can mutual fulfilment be realised.

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The next question is what would be the programme to fulfil this human goal? What
social systems would be required? The social order that is fulfilling for all human
beings as well as the rest of nature, is the subject of our exploration. That is what
we are calling as human order or universal human order.

Dimensions (Systems) of Human Order

With this clarity we can discuss five interconnected, complementary dimensions of
human order required for the fulfilment of all human goals. These are five basic
systems of a human society:

1. Education-Sanskar
2. Health-Self regulation
3. Production-Work
4. Justice-Preservation
5. Exchange-Storage

Let us see how these dimensions fulfil the human goals:

Education-Sanskar -- (leads to)  Right understanding and right feeling

(happiness)
Having a system of human education-sanskar ensures right understanding and
right feeling (happiness) which is the first goal. Of course, it has to reach every
individual.

Health-self-regulation -- (leads to)  Health of the Body

Having a system for health and self-regulation ensures health of the Body. It also
helps us in identifying what is required as physical facility for nurturing, protection
and right utilisation of the Body which forms the basis for prosperity. This
indirectly ensures co-existence with nature as well.

Production-Work -- (leads to)  Prosperity

Production-Work ensures the production of more than the required physical
facility. The health-self-regulation and production-work dimensions together lead
to fulfilment of the second goal of prosperity in every family. Also, if production is
done in the manner which is cyclic and mutually enriching, it will contribute to the
mutual fulfilment (co-existence) with rest of nature which is the fourth goal.

Justice-Preservation -- (leads to)  Fearlessness and Co-existence

(respectively)
Then comes justice which has to do with human-human relationship. If
humanhuman relationship is understood, accepted, fulfilled and rightly evaluated,

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it ensures mutual happiness or justice. Then there is trust (fearlessness) in the
society. Justice ensures the fulfilment of the third goal.

Preservation leads to fulfilment of relationship of human being with rest of nature

which means it fulfils the fourth goal of co-existence (mutual fulfilment) with
nature.

Exchange–storage -- (leads to)  Prosperity and Fearlessness

Finally, exchange and storage with a feeling of mutual fulfilment, rather than a
feeling of exploitation, will be an aid in ensuring prosperity in the family and also
contribute to fearlessness (trust) in society.

This is how the dimensions of human order fulfil the human goals [A Nagaraj,
2001]. This has been summarised in fig. 9-4.

Now we will go in detail of each of the dimensions or systems; we will unfold them
one by one in greater detail.

Education-Sanskar

Education is to develop the right understanding of the harmony at all levels

of being – from self to the entire existence (individual, family, society,
nature/existence).

Sanskar is to develop the basic acceptances of the harmony at various

levels.

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These acceptances give rise to commitment to live with them. It also provides the
foundation for preparation and practice of living in harmony at all levels.
Preparation includes learning the skills and technology for living in harmony.

Our living is an expression of our sanskar. Our world-view, attitude, tendency, etc.
are all part of the expressions of our sanskar.

As proposed in chapter 3, the role of education and sanskar is to facilitate the

development of the competence to live with definite human conduct by ensuring
all three:
1. Right understanding, i.e., understanding the harmony in the human being,
in the family, society, nature/existence, thus understanding what to do as a
human being at all these levels
2. Right feeling – the capacity to live in relationship with the other human
beings – in family and in the society
3. Right skills for prosperity, i.e.
• The capacity to identify the need for physical facility
• The skills and practice for sustainable production of more than what
is required (by way of labour using cyclic, mutually enriching
process)
• The feeling of prosperity

These are the three major outcomes of human education and sanskar. This
process can take place when the teacher has a feeling of affection and guidance
for the student and the student has a feeling of gratitude and glory for the teacher.

A person given human education will ensure right understanding and right feeling
in himself, thereby living with continuous happiness. He will be able to identify the
need for physical facility and produce more than what is required therefore, ensure
prosperity in the family. With right feeling he will be able to ensure living in
relationship with other human being leading to fearlessness in the society. And if
the production is done by cyclic and mutually enriching process, he will also ensure
co-existence in nature.

The current education is hardly working on the first one – it is mainly talking about
skills, not really paying attention to values. Instead of the right feeling, competition
(feeling of opposition) is getting promoted. Instead of skills for prosperity, skills for
exploitation are getting promoted. The major focus seems to be on accumulation
of money, almost by any means.

Young children primarily learn by observation and practice. The environment at

home, in the school and the society plays a significant role, much more than the
words. Children older than about 10 years or so, continue to learn by observation
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and practice, but they start self-exploring, validating by their own experience, the
guidance for self-exploration becomes significant (see appendix A9-1 for details).

Since this book is primarily written for older children and adults, the approach of
self-exploration has been taken. We are placing the proposals for your
selfverification.

Now if we recall chapter 3, we had discussed that education has to ensure the
transition from animal consciousness to human consciousness (see fig. 3-6).

You can see that living with animal consciousness means living with the physical
facility as the only priority. People living with this assumption give rise to an
inhuman society.

On the other hand, education that results into living with human consciousness,
education which ensures all three things i.e., right understanding in the Self,
relationship with human being and physical facility with rest of nature will thereby
result into a society which ensures the fulfilment of all four human goals as shown
on the upper right side of fig. 9-5.

The education system has a major responsibility for preparing the people and
developing the society into a living model of human society. This is an ongoing
process. Once the human society is realised or established, it is able to ensure
human education and sanskar for the next generation; and if human education and
sanskar is established, it is able to prepare the people who have the capacity to
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contribute to develop and live in a human society, to participate and contribute in
the continuation of human society.

Of course, formal education is an important part of the education-sanskar

dimension. But, the family and the society play a significant role in this process of
education-sanskar by the inputs that the child receives through them. On a day-
today basis the behaviour and systems in the family, the messages through
newspapers and media; and the various festivals, functions, celebrations,
significant events like birth, marriage, death, etc. – all these contribute to the
making of an individual’s sanskar.

Health and Self-regulation

We had discussed this at length in Chapter 7. We may recall a few things from
there before discussing the related societal systems.

Self-regulation is the feeling of responsibility toward the Body, for nurturing,

protection and right utilization of the Body.

Health of the Body is indicated by the fact that it is able to act according to
the instruction of the Self and the different parts of the Body are in harmony.

The feeling of self-regulation is not restraining or controlling, but rather it is

identifying the responsibility and having this feeling of commitment towards the
Body for:
• Nurturing the Body
• Protection of the Body
• Right utilisation of the Body

At the level of society, we can look at the societal systems required to support,
protect and enrich family and social efforts. Some of these are outlined below.

1. Education system – It is necessary to prepare the child in all dimensions

of health, so that (s)he develops the feeling of self-regulation and has
appropriate practice to keep the Body healthy.
2. Family system – It plays an important role. Harmony in the family provides
a conducive environment. A system of appropriate intake, routine and
labour / exercise, etc. is a natural part of the family system. It will also have
the skills and means to deal with minor ailments with home remedies. It
would participate meaningfully in these areas in the neighbourhood, in the
family cluster and beyond.
3. Health system at the societal level – A core part of the societal system
is mainstream education. This has been highlighted in point 1. Further, the
health system would be focused on ensuring health and on prevention of
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 disease, rather than on treatment of disease alone. It would promote
labour, exercise and various means to keep the Body and breathing in
balance. It would help to proliferate at all levels the good lifestyle practices,
particularly of intake, routine and labour, as well as home remedies for
minor ailments.
4. Medicine and treatment system at the societal level – An evolved
holistic system of medicine and treatment which is based on the essence
of different systems prevailing today. It would be run as a service with a
feeling of mutual fulfilment, rather than merely as a for-profit business.

With this, if we look at the current health system, there could be a significant
reduction in the burden on it. About 80% of illnesses which are related to lifestyle,
could be prevented at the level of individuals, families, family clusters, schools and
colleges. Approximately 10% of the remaining could be handled by home remedies
leaving a very small percentage of communicable illnesses, accidents and genetic
disorders that would require medicine and treatment. With this basic
understanding, there can be a major shift in paradigm.

One essential outcome of all this exploration on health and self-regulation is that
we are able to identify the definite need of physical facility. We are able to find out
what is required and how much is required for nurturing and protection and right
utilization of the Body. We have briefly explored this in the discussions about
prosperity in chapters four and seven. For designing the production system, it is
essential to identify and aggregate the need for physical facility in the family,
village, nation and so on all the way to the world.

Production-Work

Work is the effort a human being does on the rest of nature and Production is the
physical facility derived from work.

The production of a mobile phone includes the mining of hematite (iron ore),
chalcopyrite (copper ore), crude petroleum oil, etc. and refining it for use in the
mobile phone manufacture. Human effort is required to design the phone, make
the components, assemble them, test the assembly and in so many other steps.

In the production of wheat, a field with fertile soil, water, air and wheat seeds are
required. All these are units in the rest of nature. In addition to these, human effort
is required to till the soil, to sow the seeds, to water the field, to remove the weeds,
to harvest the wheat, to thrash it, to remove the husk, to clean it and so on. All this
work is required.

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For any production to take place, two things are required – rest of nature (natural
resource) is required and human effort (work) is required.

There are two important issues related to production-work. These are:

1. What to produce?
2. How to produce?

Regarding what to produce, we have already discussed while exploring the

proposals about prosperity, health and self-regulation – we have to produce
physical facility required for nurturing, protection and right utilisation of the Body.

Regarding how to produce there are two criteria:

1. The process must be cyclic and mutually enriching – it must be eco-friendly
2. Justice must be ensured in relationship with human being – it must be
people-friendly

A process is cyclic when it is in accordance with the cycle in nature. In such a

process, the resources utilised can return to their original state in due course of
their lifecycle. In such a process, there is no waste – everything produced is either
in the form of a finished product, a by-product or co-product which is used in some
other process.

For example, when you sow wheat, it germinates, grows into a plant, produces
multiple grains of wheat and goes back to the soil. A guava plant originates from
one seed of guava, grows into a tree, has multiple leaves and fruits, and after
certain period of time, goes to the state from where it came up. But before it goes
to soil, it enriches the soil too with its fallen leaves and fruits. Such processes are
already taking place in the nature. Our task is to understand the existing cycles in
nature and utilize them to fulfil our needs. When it comes to production, we can
add some activity in between to fulfil our needs without disturbing the overall cycle.
For example, the production of jaggery is a cyclic process. Sugarcane is pressed
to extract the juice. The leftover husk is dried and used as fuel to heat the
sugarcane juice. The juice reduces to a thick sweet syrup and then dries to form
jaggery. The emitted carbon dioxide is absorbed by the leaves of the trees around.
The released water vapour mixes with the air. The ash from the fired husk fertilises
the soil of the surrounding fields.

A process is mutually enriching when every unit that is participating in the process
is being enriched. In the jaggery production process, the soil is enriched when the
ash of the fired husk is mixed with it, the air is enriched by the water vapour and
so on. Jaggery, with its various natural minerals and vitamins, is nurturing for the
human body. It is used in many traditional medicines in India.

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Of course, justice is essential amongst the people involved in the work. We have
discussed that in the previous chapter, so we can recall that it basically means
ensuring mutual happiness.

So, for a production process to be sustainable, eco-friendly and human-friendly, it

has to be:
1. Cyclic
2. Mutually enriching
3. Justice is ensured with human being

Now let us look at nature. Natural processes already have these two
characteristics – they are cyclic and mutually enriching. While we will recall and
elaborate this in the next chapter, we are introducing it here because of its
application in man-made processes is essential.

Just look at the soil, water, air and plants (refer to fig. 9-6). The plants are growing
on soil. The soil, the water, the air is getting converted into a plant. When the
leaves, the fruits, the flowers fall on the ground, they get converted into soil. You
can see the soil is getting converted into plants and the plants are getting converted
back to soil – it is a cyclic process.

In this process of soil to plant and plant to soil cycle, the plant is getting enriched
and the soil is also becoming more fertile, it is also enriched. When the leaves, the
flowers, the fruits are falling into the soil and getting degenerated, this soil becomes
more fertile. This is a cyclic process resulting into enriching of the plant and the
soil both, resulting into mutual enrichment.

You can see that this is a process which is already going on in the nature. It’s not
that you have to construct that process. What we need to do is to understand that
process. We saw the cyclic and mutually enriching process between air, water and
the plant. Now when you look at the forest you can extend it further to include
animals also. Animals need water and air to survive. Bird and animal droppings
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are very good manure for the plants. Animals and plants play a key role in
balancing the soil-based carbon and atmospheric carbon. If you look at this – the
soil, the plants, the animals and birds all are there in the forest. They are all related
to each other in a cyclic and mutually enriching manner. The soil is enriching the
plants; the plants are enriching the animals and birds; the animals and birds are
enriching the soil. All of them are related to each other in a mutually enriching,
mutually fulfilling manner.

This process of mutual enrichment is already going on in the forest. If you see
among these three groups (refer to fig. 9-7), you don't have to create this cycle of
mutual fulfilment; it is already there. Through this process, we are getting so many
things from the forest – we are getting fruits, we are getting flowers, we are getting
timber, we are getting water throughout the year coming down from the forest and
so many other things. We don't have to do anything for this process to continue. It
is like a perpetual machine which is going on without our participation. It is cyclic
and it is mutually enriching, as long as human being has not made an intervention
to it.

Now, let us place the human being there and see what happens (see fig. 9-8).
When we place human being, we realise that soil, air and water are fulfilling for a
human being. We see that the plants and trees are also fulfilling for human being.
We can also see that the animals and birds are fulfilling for human being. When
we look at the human being, it has a natural acceptance for being mutually fulfilling
for all these three groups. If you ask yourself what will be naturally acceptable to
you – to ensure mutual fulfilment with three orders or to exploit them, you will see
that your natural acceptance is for mutual fulfilment. However, without right
understanding, we are unable to be mutually fulfilling. We need to understand
mutual fulfilment, understand harmony in nature and thereby ensure mutual
fulfilment from our side. Then we will be in harmony with nature. Mutual fulfilment
essentially means prosperity for human being and preservation of the rest of
nature.

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Physical facility is produced as a result of human labour on the rest of nature.
Through labour on the rest of nature and using cyclic, mutually enriching
processes, we can ensure physical facility in abundance for all human beings.
Natural farming (or forest-like farming) is an example of a cyclic, mutually enriching
production system. With this method, production takes place and, at the same time,
the soil also gets enriched.

In the absence of being in tune with the natural processes, we see ultimately
resource depletion and pollution.

Resource depletion is the symptom of using a natural resource at a rate which is

greater than the rate at which it is produced in nature. For example, if we use
petroleum at a rate greater than the rate at which it is produced in nature, there will
be a shortage of petroleum.

Similarly, pollution indicates that we are producing something which does not
return to the cycle in nature or it is produced at a rate that is faster than the rate at
which it can return to the cycle in nature. Plastic, for example, does not degrade,
it does not return to the cycle of nature for many years. Carbon dioxide today is
produced at a rate much higher than the rate at which nature can absorb, and
therefore, there is rise in the percentage of carbon dioxide, resulting into global
warming.

When we understand this, we have the commitment to develop production

processes which are cyclic and mutually enriching (see fig. 9-9). The existing
processes will also be appropriately updated. With the necessary research efforts:
1. First, we have to ensure that whatever processes we have developed so
far have to be converted into cyclic and mutually enriching processes.
2. Second, we have to take care of the damage done in all these past years.

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 3. Third, we have to ensure the processes we develop in the future are cyclic
and mutually enriching.

When we are able to ensure this, we can be sure of the fulfilment of our needs for
physical facility for generations to come. That is to say, we can ensure prosperity
in every family as well as contribute to preservation of the rest of nature, generation
after generation. Otherwise, after a certain point of time, there will be scarcity of
resources.

While discussing prosperity, we had seen that it is the feeling of having / producing
more than required physical facility. This more in ‘more than required’ physical
facility is not for indulgence, but for sharing with other, to extend the boundary of
fulfilment of our relationship; this in turn will help in societal development – for the
development of relationship as well as development of order at the social level,
i.e., leading to universal human order.

In traditions around the world, there are many good examples of this. In India, a
certain portion of family income, some 10-25%, was kept for the purpose of
sharing. Food being made available to guests, and to people committed for the
well-being of the society, is still prevalent in most parts of India, may be in many
parts of the world, particularly in the rural areas. Many systems maintained by the
society still have arrangement of food and lodging for anyone who comes to the
village or town from outside. This is funded by the contributions of individuals and
families. It was designed for societal development. Similarly, many pilgrimage
places were contributed, and are still being contributed and supported, by
individuals and families – with a view of societal development. The basic idea of
volunteerism is also for societal development. For all this, the more of the ‘more
than required’ is to be utilised.

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It is interesting to note that this type of allocation can help not only in societal
development, but is also very fulfilling for the individuals and families – they have
the satisfaction of doing the right utilisation of their resources. At the same time, it
generates the feeling of gratitude and glory in the family and society. In contrast,
the same ‘more’ applied for indulgence, like in latest model cars and huge buildings
for extravagant personal use, degenerates the individual and, at the same time,
generates feelings of jealousy and opposition in others!

By ensuring mutually enriching production and work processes, we can ensure

prosperity in every family as well as contribute to preservation of the rest of nature.

Now one thing to note is that production may have multiple activities. In the
example of mobile phone production, we saw various activities were involved.
Similarly, for production of food grain, we need farm implements which also have
to be developed and produced. To carry out the agricultural activity smoothly, we
may need a mobile for communication, a TV to learn and share better techniques
of production, etc. Then we may need activities like maintenance work at all these
levels, transportation of the raw material and finished goods, etc. which can be
termed as service sector activities.

With this background, the various production activities may be organized for:
1. Primary production – production of physical facility used for nurturing,
protection and right utilisation of body e.g., food, clothes, shelter…
2. Secondary Production – production of physical facility used to facilitate
primary production. E.g. production of tractors, weaving machinery,
building component manufacture…
3. Tertiary Production – production of physical facility used to facilitate
production, services and human interaction. E.g. train, TV, mobile, etc.
4. Services – to facilitate any of the above activities. E.g. maintenance of
tractors, mobiles, software development services and so on.

You can reflect on what would be the appropriate priority order (1, 2, 3, 4? or 4, 3,
2, 1?).

One can easily see that primary production is of the first priority as it is necessary
for the basic survival of human being. Secondary production gets the second
priority as it facilitates primary production, and so on. However, in the present
society, the importance given to these is just in the reverse order.

Justice-Preservation

Justice is recognition of human-human relationship, its fulfilment and

evaluation leading to mutual happiness.
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We had discussed earlier that in human-human relationship, the feeling is the core
issue. These feelings are definite, can be recognised. Trust is the foundation
feeling in relationship. Trust is followed by respect, affection, care, guidance,
reverence, glory, gratitude and love. Love is the complete value; this is the feeling
of being related in a mutually fulfilling manner to all human-beings as well as all
units in existence. Love is expressed as compassion in behaviour and work. We
have discussed this in quite detail in last chapter i.e., chapter 8; however, we will
discuss some issues related to its implication at the society level.

For instance, if we are serving young children, the sick/disabled or old people, with
a feeling of care, both are happy. It serves the people in need; at the same time
gives satisfaction to those involved in the serving processes. If the same thing is
done without a feeling of care, or with a feeling of opposition, it is tiresome for the
care-giver and results in unhappiness of both. That is why professional old-age
homes, hostels, orphanages, hospitals and the like cannot be run just on the basis
of physical facility / paying the care-givers. A feeling of care is a must in those
running these systems. You can also observe that the proliferation of such
institutions in the society is an indication of the breakdown of the family system.
Traditionally, the older generation took care of the children, particularly their
education-sanskar. The younger people served the aged. In this manner, the
adults could focus on the production of physical facility.

Expressing right feeling to the other (human being) leads to happiness in the other.
This achievement of mutual happiness is justice. The various occasions of public
gatherings, like festivals and functions are an occasion for such sharing, and
drawing attention to the individual and collective sanskar. If there is justice in the
society, it will lead to trust, and it will lead to fearlessness. This justice leads to
fearlessness in the society. It is desirable to ensure justice from family to world
family leading to an undivided society. In order to ensure justice in the society, we
need to:
a) Stop the offender from doing further injustice as well as
b) Help him/her to develop the competence for ensuring justice.

Think about it. In the present system, mostly we seem to be restricting ourselves
at (a) and not doing (b); and hence the vicious cycle of injustice continues in the
society, despite various laws, rules, regulations and so on. Of course, we need
laws, rules and regulations, but these need to be in harmony with the existential
laws and not in contradiction with them. With the right understanding, one would
be able to see that all human beings are one family making effort for a common
human goal, outlined above; and that collaboration is the underlying responsibility,
not competition, struggle or survival of the fittest.

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 This is an experience shared by a faculty member of a college. Eight
students were found to be taking drugs in the boys’ hostel. This is a
punishable offence. A disciplinary committee was called and they started
their deliberations. Usually such meetings were concluded in a few hours –
they routinely reported such cases to the police and suspended the
students. This time, however, was different as the director-general and
about 50 faculty members, including most of the disciplinary committee
members, had been through the human values workshop. The discussions
started, “we must follow the rules. The precedent is to report them and
suspend them – that’s it”, “these students had come to our institution to
become good human beings and learn business management. We have
not been able to do the first part at least. Now, if we report and suspend
these students, where will they go? Back to the society? Will the society be
a better place with them as they are now? The society will be worse off and
the future of these students will be spoilt. We should try to help them
become productive citizens”, “how will we do that”. The discussion went on
for 11 long hours. They finally agreed to take a risk. These eight were sent
for counselling during the winter break. In the next semester, they were
attached to a faculty member who further discussed with them regarding
values. It worked partially, but the key learning was the role of the
educational institution. The human values programme was run with
enthusiasm for all students. Over the next few years, disciplinary cases
overall came down to a fair extent. with trust on intention (that every child
wants to understand and do what is right), and with the effort by the faculty,
this change could be seen.

The justice system would have the responsibility to facilitate the development of
ability in everyone to understand justice and live accordingly.

Justice = Recognition, Fulfilment and Evaluation of Human-Human

Relationship leading to Mutual Happiness

Now when you look at preservation, it has to do with relationship of human being
with the rest of nature.

Preservation is the recognition of relationship of human being with the rest

of nature, its fulfilment and evaluation leading to mutual fulfilment.

Precisely, preservation would mean enrichment, protection and right utilization of

the entire nature.

Preservation => 1. Prosperity in human being

2. Enrichment, protection and right utilisation of nature
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We have discussed prosperity at length, as the feeling of having or producing more
than required physical facility. This physical facility is produced by human effort on
rest of nature. If it is produced in a manner in which the rest of nature is also
enriched, the preservation part is also ensured.

Enrichment means increase in quantity and quality of physical facility. For

example, one grain of rice gives rise to many grains of rice, given a conducive
environment. This increase in quantity is enrichment. Cultivating rice and
consuming rice as food, the prosperity in human being is ensured along with
enrichment of rest of nature.

Protection means ensuring the value of a physical facility for an extended period
of time. Protection would include maintenance of the physical order, mineral
availability, consistency of the seasons, weather, air quality (~250-350PPM of
CO2), rainfall, maintenance of arctic ice, glaciers, under-ground water reserves and
so on. In everyday life, protection can be as simple as covering this book with a
strong book cover to extend its usable life; varnishing a wooden chair to keep it in
usable shape for a longer time; repairing a torn pant; natural farming to extend the
time period in which the soil is conducive for agriculture (it will also enrich the soil).

Right utilisation is its use for the purpose of the larger order. For example, the right
utilisation of food grain is its use for nurturing the Body, not letting it spoil. The right
utilisation of a pen is to write meaningful things. The right utilisation of the human
body is its use in fulfilling the purpose of the human being (as we have seen in
chapter 7).

Out of the three, enrichment, protection and right utilisation, the first priority is right
utilisation. It can be the first step in preservation. So right utilisation of electric
power, water, food, clothes, etc. can be an initial step for preservation.

It is estimated that all the needs of one human being in terms of wood can be met
by using the wood from four full-grown trees. Trees are anyway growing in the
forest and more can be planted. Sal1 trees, for instance, mature in about 100 years.
Other timber trees mature in even less time. In due course of time, they turn back
into soil. Wood from planned felling (i.e., selective felling of mature trees only), can
be used to make a house. This way, we can ensure prosperity along with right
utilisation, enrichment and protection. Think of how many trees you can plant?
Many more than four, isn’t it? In this way, if you plant a tree on every birthday, you

1 The scientific name of the sal tree is shorea robusta

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may be able to plant many more trees than you utilise. Of course, after planting, a
tree needs care for about three years to thrive.

Justice ensures fearlessness (trust) in the society and preservation ensures the
co-existence in nature.

Exchange-Storage

Exchange means sharing or exchanging of physical facility with a view of

mutual fulfilment.

The sharing is within the family, or to the extent one has been able to accept
relationship. Beyond that is exchange. Through sharing and exchange of physical
facility, each family can have all that it needs, i.e., there is mutual fulfilment. When
we are exchanging physical facility with a family, with a community, the important
aspect is the feeling or view with which the exchange is done.

Storage is keeping physical facility with a view of mutual fulfilment and not
with the obsession for profit or for accumulation or exploitation.

It is for protecting physical facility, so that it is available, when required, for the
purpose of mutual fulfilment.

To see this further, reflect on the following example. There are two persons. They
have two pieces of bread which is not sufficient for both. How do they divide this
bread? There are three possibilities:
• Both try to take both the pieces of bread. They struggle and fight.
Eventually, they decide to take one each. Each decides separately that
henceforth, they will make more effort to grab more of the available food.
This would be the economics of “take-take”. Both are trying to maximise
their returns. Both are unhappy.
• They logically work out that they can get only one piece each, so they divide
it equally, but neither is fully satisfied. This is the economics of “give-take”.
• Both persons have a feeling of relationship, like a mother and child. They
know that two pieces of bread are not sufficient even for one person. Each
offers both pieces of bread to the other. They discuss and eventually decide
to take one piece of bread each. They also decide to work together to make
more pieces of bread in future, so they can both fulfil their needs. This is
the economics of “give-give”.

Try to find out which kind of economics is operating in your family. When there is
acceptance of the other, it is always the give-give mode, the mutual fulfilment is in
the centre. Only when there is lack of acceptance of the other, or opposition with
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the other, we think about the take-more-give-less (or give-nothing) mode. You can
verify this. Which mode is comfortable, naturally acceptable to you?

When the exchange and storage are done with the view of mutual fulfilment, it will
help to ensure prosperity and it will also help in the process of ensuring
fearlessness in the society. On the other hand, if it is done with a view of profit or
obsession of profit or it is done for exploitation, it will be a cause of deprivation
instead of prosperity and it will also be a cause of fear in the society.

Now, when that feeling of production and right utilisation, feeling of giving, etc.
extends to the neighbourhood and the community, it makes for an assuring unit of
human order. In such a neighbourhood or community, there is a feeling of
assurance which further strengthens fearlessness based on trust.

Professions in a Human Society

Once we understand that we have a common human goal, a common purpose,
we will organize the society so that it will facilitate the fulfilment of these common
goals for all human beings. Also, once we are able to see that we are related to
each other, there will be a feeling of acceptance for all, i.e., the feeling of love. With
that acceptance, we will be able to work together in harmony for these human
goals.

Profession is the participation of a human being in one or more of the

dimensions of the society. We may choose our participation where we have
developed competence and interest. With the feeling of purpose and relatedness,
our professions will be interrelated and, in a manner, that everyone is able to
participate meaningfully, i.e., for mutual fulfilment. It includes teachers, doctors,
farmers and so on. This will be elaborated in section III (chapters 12-16).

Harmony from Family Order to World Family Order – Universal

Human Order
A society is composed of families living together with a common goal. At each
level, the harmony contributes to the harmony at the next higher level. Human
beings individually in harmony contribute to a family order that is in harmony. And
families in harmony contribute to a harmonious societal order; and all the way to a
world family order which is what universal human order is.

If you try to look at the details, it starts with the family order because that is the
smallest unit where all these dimensions can start taking shape, can be worked
about. You must be taking some responsibility at home, like sharing views on
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various topics, production of food grain, shopping for food, cooking food, washing
clothes and so on. Like that in a family, there is some effort for the development of
a perspective about life (education). There is also some effort for development of
life related skills – how to interact with other people, how to take care of others,
how to live with the neighbours and so on. This is all to do with sanskar. There is
some schedule for waking up, cleaning, labour, exercise, meals and so on. These
are some of the components of the health system in the family. Like that, there is
some effort in the family for each of the dimensions. That is what we are referring
to as family order. Family has to do with relationship and feeling in relationship.
Family order has to do with the systems, with the base of relationship.

Actualising all dimensions will lead to the fulfilment of human goals in the society.
With this background now, we can talk about the scope of the human society or
the scope of the human system.

The scope is from family order to world family order. We have seen that the scope
of relationship is from family to world family. Now we can see that the scope of
harmony in society, order in society is starting from family order and going right up
to the world family order.

If you try to look at the details, it starts with the family because that is the smallest
unit where all dimensions can start taking shape. Then you have family clusters,
the village, village clusters… the nation and ultimately the world family. You move
from family order to world family order whereby you ensure all dimensions of
human order and fulfil all the human goals starting from family order to world family
order.

The family order is the smallest unit of a society. Family order refers to the system
in a family of responsible people living together for the common human goal. In
particular, the family is making effort for
• Mutual development of right understanding and right feeling (trust, respect
and so on) in every family member, including the next generation, leading
to mutual happiness.
• Participation in production of required physical facility in the form of labour,
leading to prosperity.
• Contributing to a human society by way of participating at the next
higherlevel order.

The family cluster order is the next larger unit. It is the system that a group of
families evolve in order to fulfil those goals of individual families which require the
participation of more people than the family has. Take a typical example of repair
of the roof of a house in a rural area. The house owner just has to inform the village
elders that the repair has to take place and a day is chosen. People from the village
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assemble at the appointed time sparing themselves from their own work and
accomplish the repair work. The house holder contributes with a celebration meal
for all. This is something that had been happening traditionally in the India.
Similarly, even today we can see that if there is a marriage in a family, the group
of associated families join in to make arrangements, take care of the guests and
ensure that the function is organized smoothly. We can see that there is synergy
in the goals of these families – all are making effort for the common human goal.
At the base is the feeling of relationship. There is complementarity at the level of
skills and a natural division of responsibility in each of the dimensions. A system
for dialogue amongst the families, through a selected family representative from
every family, would ensure proper planning for the common works. All this put
together is being referred to as the family cluster order.

The family order and the family cluster order are mutually fulfilling. The scope of
systems at successively larger and larger complementary units from the family
order to the world family order are indicated below.

Scope – From Family Order to World Family Order (Universal

Human Order)
Family Order Family Cluster Order Village Order Village Cluster Order City
Order… Nation Order… World Family Order

In this way, every human being has a voice and a role in one or more of the social
systems, all contributing meaningfully to the family order, the family order to the
family cluster order and so on to the nation family order and ultimately, the world
family order. That is the scope of the systems in a human society.

Natural Outcome of Right Understanding

Now if you look at the basic human aspiration and its fulfilment:
1. The happiness is ensured by having the right understanding and right
feeling in the Self.
2. The prosperity is a feeling of the availability of more than required physical
facility. Right understanding is required at the base, along with physical
facility.
3. The tradition of living with happiness and prosperity starts from the family
order and ultimately, continuity can be ensured by the universal human
order.

So, a meaningful life would mean that we have made effort for the above. If we are
in harmony, we contribute to a family order that is in harmony. Families in harmony
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comprise of a harmonious family cluster and so on, all the way to a world family
order which is what universal human order is which is what harmony in the society
means.

What we have discussed earlier, upto chapter 7, is the development at the

individual level. In chapter 8, we discussed about the human family and in this
chapter, about human society. The overall transformation that is being visualized
is this – first, transformation from animal consciousness to human consciousness
at the level of individual human being; and second, transformation from inhuman
society to humane society at the collective level. A total transformation is required;
piecemeal solutions are not going to suffice.

For example, corruption is a problem. There are movements against it,

there are laws, rules and regulations against corrupt practices. There are
agencies like police, courts and jails to deal with corrupt people. Morals and
ethics are taught in schools and colleges. Like that there are various efforts
in the society. Yet, corruption is still there. We are saying that corruption is
only a symptom of a deeper malady. Trying to handle this symptom or
suppress it in a piecemeal manner is not sufficient.

The effort, however small, has to be with a holistic perspective in the background:
1. Understanding things holistically, developing a holistic perspective
(through education-sanskar). For instance, we need to be clear about our
basic aspirations as individuals; and we need to be clear about our goal as
a society.
2. Effort for:
• Personal transformation to human consciousness and living with
definite human conduct.
• Societal transformation to human society. Effort for comprehensive
human goal in the family and in the society.

With this in the background, now the symptoms, like corruption, can
then be properly dealt with.
3. The root of the symptoms can be identified. Corruption, domination,
exploitation, etc. are symptoms of inhuman conduct. The real problem is
inhuman conduct.
4. For getting rid of the real problem, effort can be focused on developing
human conduct. Of course, till such time as the society does not have the
capacity to develop human conduct, the existing efforts (laws, rules and
regulations, police, courts, jails, etc.) have to be kept up, but these are only
temporary efforts to suppress the symptoms.

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Refer to fig. 9-10. Human education will prepare people with human
consciousness. These people will live by human values and have a human
conduct. People living with human conduct will ultimately give rise to a human
society. Such a human society would naturally provide human education for the
next generation, thus ensuring continuity of human society.

This is the proposal regarding the harmony in society and ultimately about
universal human order. Now you can verify for yourself whether this is something
naturally acceptable to you and also work out whether it is feasible to do it.

My Participation (Value) in the Society

(To Make effort for Harmony in the Society)

The society is composed of families living together, making effort for the common
human goal. They are interconnected and interdependent from family order to
world family order.

My participation (value) vis-à-vis the society is to develop the clarity of society, its
goals, programme and scope; and with that, playing a part in the family order and
then in the larger society.

In the family order, my participation (value) is:

• Ensuring happiness in the family by way of helping in the development of
right understanding and right feeling in the Self of every member of the
family, particularly the next generation.
• Ensuring health in the family by way of a system of nurturing, protection
and right utilisation of the Body for every member of the family.

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 • Ensuring prosperity in the family by way of helping the family recognise the
need for physical facility, its production, its protection and its right
utilisation.
• Facilitating one or more members of the family to participate in the larger
society, in one or more dimensions of human order.

In the larger society, my participation (value) is:

• To play a role in one or more dimensions of the human order
(educationsanskar, health-self-regulation, production-work, justice-
preservation and exchange-storage)

In this way, the society with happiness in every individual, prosperity in every
family, fearlessness (trust) in the society and co-existence (mutual fulfilment) in
nature/existence is realised. This is my participation (value) vis-à-vis society.

Salient Points
• A society is composed of families living together for the common human
goal. The base of a harmonious society is harmony in the family, for which
the base is harmony in the human being.
• The goals of human being living in society are:
1. Right understanding and right feeling (happiness) in every
individual
2. Prosperity in every family
3. Fearlessness (trust) in the society
4. Co-existence (mutual fulfilment) in nature/existence
The priority and order in which these four goals can be fulfilled are 1-4.
Without right understanding and right feeling, it is not possible to identify
the need for physical facility, therefore, right understanding and right feeling
has to come before prosperity. Similarly, fearlessness can take place only
with the acceptance of relationship and prosperity in every family. The
fourth goal is then a natural outcome of the first three.
• The systems or dimensions required for the fulfilment of the four human
goals are:
1. Education-Sanskar
2. Health-Self regulation
3. Production-Work
4. Justice-Preservation
5. Exchange-Storage
• If there is effort for these goals in the family, the family is in harmony. In
other words, there is a family order. The society is many families living
together in a relationship of mutual fulfilment. The scope of harmony in the
society starts with the family order and extends all the way to world family
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 order in steps, from family order, family cluster order and so on to nation
family order and ultimately world family order. This extension of harmony,
from family order to world family order, is universal human order.

Test Your Understanding

Part 1: Questions for Self-evaluation

(Have we grasped the basic proposals made in this chapter?)

1. What is the building block for harmony in the society? Explain with
examples.
2. Describe the human goal. Explain how this is conducive to sustainable
happiness and prosperity for all.
3. Critically examine the goals of the present-day society with respect to
human goals. What is the outcome?
4. List the dimensions (systems) that comprise a human order. Explain how
each dimension contributes to the fulfilment of the human goal.
5. Is there a particular sequence in which these goals can be fulfilled?
Explain.
6. Why is education and sanskar the first human goal? Distinguish between
education and sanskar.
7. What are the two important issues to be addressed in the dimension of
production? Explain with two examples.
8. Explain, giving examples, how pollution and resource depletion are both
the direct outcomes of not understanding nature the way it is.
9. How can exchange of physical goods be mutually fulfilling? Evaluate the
motivation of exchange in today's scenario.
10. Write a short note on the three aspects of preservation.
11. There are three kinds of obsession. List them. Give any three examples of
each from your observation in the society.
12. Why is storage required in a society? Suggest any two ways in which you
can store the produce for right utilization in the future.
13. Indicate a few steps to promote harmony in the society and co-existence
with nature.
14. What is the meaning of 'universal human order'? What is its scope? How
is the family order related to universal human order?

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Part 2: Practice Exercises for Self-exploration
(To help connect the content to one’s life, at least at the level of thought, these
exercises may be done individually or in a group, particularly with friends and family
members)

1. What are your personal goals or values that you would like to make effort for?
Discuss with your family and find out the goals of other members. Is there a
common family goal? What are the goals being pursued by your workplace or
educational institution? How much of these three sets of goals are aligned to
each other? What is your role in the fulfilment of these three sets of goals?

2. Assuming that you would like to see your hostel or workplace or educational
institution as a model of human society, write down:
a. Its goal(s) – relate it to the four human goals and elaborate on what
each goal means. Also develop some key indicators or measures which
will show that the goals are realized
b. The system to achieve these goals – Make a comprehensive plan for
the fulfilment of each goal. Relate it to the dimensions of human order.
c. How much of this system can be realised with you and your friends
working on it in the next 2-4 years? If you select goals that are
meaningful for many people, they will, sooner or later, join in. So, factor
that into your plan. Just as an example, you may like to watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPeeZ6viNgY. It is a short 2½
minute video about a small boy who moved a fallen tree out of the way
– of course many people joined in, eventually.
If you want to think more widely, you can consider your mohalla / colony /
village / district / state / country / world. You may find a lot of inspiring
material on the internet, like
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb0Qvh9BJ0s. It is a documentary
about a progressive village called Hiware Bazar in Maharashtra, India. It is
about how good governance and people can make significant change in
society. Of course, please consider all goals and all dimensions of a
humane society for your exercise. Your vision and plan should be holistic,
even if you can start just in the smallest of ways. The overall vision and
plan give a definite direction.

3. Read appendix A9-1 to get a view of the process of understanding. Education

is the most significant dimension of a human society. Now rightly evaluate your
present state of understanding and skill:
a. Understanding
i. Self-discipline based on knowing – living on the basis of your
natural acceptance or

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 ii. Arbitrariness based on assuming without knowing – living
largely on the basis of preconditioning and sensation
b. Understanding and skills regarding relationship
i. You have a feeling of trust, respect… love within you –
continuous and unconditional. You also have the behavioural
skills to respond, to express these feelings. You are well
prepared with the right feelings to be a good son or daughter, a
good parent, a good husband or wife, etc. in the family and as
a good citizen in the society or
ii. You have emotions like opposition, jealousy and fear at some
or all of the time. You also have the behavioural skills to
respond or react, to express yourself.
c. Understanding and skills regarding physical facility
i. You have a good idea of your physical needs. You have the
mindset and skills for cyclic and mutually enriching production
of something that is useful for you. You have a good idea of
right utilisation of physical facility. You have a mindset of
sharing. You are well prepared to participate in the society in
one or more dimensions of human order (as a teacher in the
educationsanskar dimension, as a doctor in the health-self
regulation dimension, as a farmer in the production-work
dimension and so on) along with having the well-being of all
(mutual fulfilment) in your understanding, thought and deed or
ii. You have the technical, managerial, behavioural skills for
obtaining maximum physical facility with minimum effort from
your side.
Where do you like to reach (in next three years)? What inputs are
necessary from education (through the family, institution or the society)?
What role can you play in ensuring these inputs for yourself? What role can
you play in ensuring the inputs required for others in the coming time?

4. Update your future resume to address the section on workplace and society.
Be sure to include your level of understanding as well as your skills.

Part 3: Projects and Modelling Exercises

You may like to revisit this part of Test Your Understanding after reading through
the complete book once and self-exploring all the key proposals. With that, you
may have some (or many) aha! moments in which something clicks for you, you
understand a proposal. What you have understood may be expressed in various
creative ways which appeal to different people. This part is for you to give a
creative expression to your understanding. Of course, you can do this in a group
also. Creative expressions may be in the form of sketches, drawings, paintings,
clay models, sculptures, songs, poems, music, dance, audios, videos, games,
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puzzles, stories, skits, plays, dramas, charts, diagrams, plans, survey
questionnaires, blogs, something on social media and so on. It is the story of your
own life – and it matters. While some hints are given above, please feel free to
share your real aha’s in your own way!

“Human goal, dimensions of human order and scope of universal human order
(from family order to world family order)”

“Human education and sanskar  human conduct  human values 

undivided society and universal human order”

Part 4: Your Questions

Write down your questions or doubts in your note-book. If any of the previous
questions have been clarified by your self-exploration of the proposals so far,
please mark them as answered. We would like to discuss the questions remaining
unanswered in your self-exploration.

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