My dear friends,
Once I was captivating introduction of the new batch of MBA at NPTI. The dialouge went as follows:
A Student: Sir, I am Shrivastava, BE(Elect)
Me: I am not interested in your surname and your degree
-These are on our records
Student: Sir, I am Mahesh Kumar (Imaginatively substituted name)
Me: That is your name given by your parents-drop it
Student: I am a student of NPTI
Me: That’s your present occupation-I know it
Student: Sir, I am a boy
Me: I am not interested in your gender
Student: I am becoming conscious now, who am I?
Another Student: I am feeling intrigued, I am thinking now,
His next: I am sensitized on my existence today,
Next to next: My conscience says I am God’s creation,
Yet another: I am motivated to think, I am divine.
Me: When you drop all your labels, you come out as “the pure you” :
- Your consciousness (awareness)
- Your conscience (sense of right and wrong)
- Thinking & feeling part of you
- Your sensor/ sensitivity
- Your motivation/ inspiration
- Your divinity
-is your Spirit . Keep it awakened!
We need it all the time for the spiritual paradigms of our MBA education at NPTI, I indicated. I further clarified to them that subjects like “Power Reforms” , “Customer relationship & Entrepreneurship”, “Energy Environment Interface & Sustainable Development” etc. derive their essence from holistic spiritual paradigms of our survival. Besides technicalities, they involve ethics and ethos, human values, customer care, environmental sensitivity, resource renewability, society’s anxieties over clean energy, electricity for all and its availability 24×7 and so on.
Spirituality
Spirituality is a rather mysterious term for the scientific community who keeps experimenting with external and physical world only. There are several inner dimensions of human existence which can not be denied; for example Mind, Intellect (consciousness transforms intellect into wisdom), Innner voice/ Intuition (sixth sense) etc. An encounter with one’s own “inner dimension” is spirituality.
Spirituality is manifested by original qualities of “the spirit or the soul” such as love, compassion, wisdom, bliss, peace, purity, humility, power, forgiveness, sacrifice, contentment, self-responsibility, values, self-esteem, harmony and connectedness to others.
Spiritual literacy is a basic literacy for all that enables the understanding and use of the deeper meaning and connection in all aspects of life. Spirituality teaches us how our lives fit into the greater scheme of things.
Education & Spirituality
Swami Vivekanand said : “Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain, undigested all your life. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated just five (5) ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library.
A semi-literate man “Anna Hazare” also talked of 5-ideas
- Pure Thoughts
- Pure Conduct
- Unblemished Life
- Sacrifice and
- Capacity to withstand humiliation;
which he assimilated, practiced and demonstrated, becoming the most literate man of today, saluted by the Indian Parliament.
Education is not merely Academics
Somehow we have misunderstood academics to be education
– We teach our children to read and memorise history but we don’t teach them to create history
– We teach them geography, but not geographical cultures and respect for them
– We teach them science, but not the science of life
-We teach them external management, but not internal management of Mind
Education is to lead a person to knowledge (know-how & know-why) graduating further to wisdom (discovery of truth by himself) to see life in its totality and to face it in its completeness. It is to set a higher goal of life, inner transformation, vision of oneness and genuine care for others.
Best wishes and Regards,
Dr. B.S.K.Naidu
BE(Hons), M.Tech., Ph.D., CBI-Scholar, D.Engg. (Calif.), FNAE, Hon.D.WRE (USA)
Chairman Emeritus, Great Lakes, Gurgaon, NCR, New Delhi, INDIA
Former Director General (NPTI & CPRI) Govt. of India
No job is small or big, the way in which you do, makes it small or big (c)