Every Human being aspires for a way of life that ensures harmony and integration in all four dimensions (Thought, Behaviour, Work and Realisation) of his personal existence. He also aspires to ensure this harmony and integration at all four levels (Individual, Family, Society and Nature) of his life, and all steps of social organization (Family, … Village, towns…Nation to World Family) of human existence.
This overall harmony in the self, in all dimensions of ones existence and all steps of human organization is the aspiration; the desire, the innate need of every human being, irrespective of his age, sex, caste, creed, nation and beliefs.

A Way of life, a World view that ensures the fulfillment of this human aspiration will be called a Holistic Solution to Human existence.
Let each one of us ask himself as to “How do I want to live?” or “What is the span of Human Existence?”-

What do we want: what is written on the left OR what is written on the right?
Do we want fulfillment in all four dimensions and all four levels OR do we just want to ensure accumulation of wealth, (that too Unlimited) at the Individual level? What are we doing now!* (* To live with left (fulfillment of all four levels and dimensions of human existence) is to live with human consciousness and to live with right (fulfillment of physical needs by accumulation of material facilities alone) is to live with animal consciousness. The way to ensure development of consciousness from animal consciousness to human consciousness is what Jeevan Vidya is working for)

This can be explained a bit more to make it clearer:
At the four dimensions of the Individual (The Self) -

• In Thought: will solutions lead to fulfillment/resolution to ones state or would it lead to problems? Would a resolution lead to a state of clarity or a state of confusion?
• In Behaviour: would justice with other human beings give happiness to me as well as the other, or would it lead to unhappiness/injustice? Would recognition and fulfillment of relationship with other humans lead to mutual happiness, or would it undermine it? What do we want in behavior?
• In Work: when we work with the rest of nature, would adherence to physical laws, & law of mutual fulfillment ensure mutual enrichment or would it lead to the exploitation of nature? Do we want cyclical mode of production ensuring prosperity for human beings and protection of rest of the nature or do we want indiscriminate extortion of the rest of nature?
• In Realisation: Do we want to have an assurance and authenticity of having known the truth, of having understood the reality, or do want to live with mere belief or assumption about the reality/truth? Would understanding the reality/truth give continuity of self satisfaction or would it not?

• In Every Individual: Is an all encompassing solution, a state of right understanding that leads to self satisfaction in every individual desirable or would a state of confusion leading to unhappiness and dissatisfaction be acceptable to us?. Or should it be so that a state of right understanding in some individuals will do and the rest can/should merely follow them?
• In Every Family: What is desirable? A feeling of prosperity, i.e. capacity to produce more than what is required as physical facilities for the family leading to a feeling of having more than ones needs in every family, OR a feeling of deprivation, a feeling of having less than what is required, irrespective of how much has been accumulated (through production/exploitation)?
  
• In Society: Are fearlessness, Trust and a feeling of being related to the other desirable or do we want a feeling of mistrust, a feeling of being in opposition to others leading to fear? Do we want an undivided society based on this feeling of trust (acceptance of relationship with every one) or would a society divided into sects, caste, creed, race, nations opposing and fighting each other be acceptable?
• In Nature: Is Co- Existence, i.e. a relationship of mutual fulfillment of human being with the rest of the three orders of nature (animals, plants, physical order) leading to prosperity in human beings as well as protection and enrichment of the rest of nature desirable, or is indiscriminate exploitation of the rest of nature threatening our very existence what we want?

Today, are we ensuring the fulfillment of all these four levels of human existence or are we just focusing on the Individual to ensure accumulation of unlimited physical facilities, without deciding how much of it is required? This too is being done for a selected group only, in terms of class, nation etc. and not for every individual (It is implicitly assumed that benefits will slowly percolate to every body!).

Where do we stand today?

With the limited one dimensional approach taken by us, we have arrived at the following situation:

At the level of the individual: We see today that human beings on the one hand suffer from unhappiness, dissatisfaction, a sense of purposelessness or futility, tension, frustration, depression & even suicide and on the other hand show signs of domination, violence, crime, terrorism etc. The health of the body is steadily declining in spite of improved levels of material and medical facilities. A majority of people find themselves engulfed in problems of one type or the other, and some people have even come to believe that no solution is even ever possible!

At the level of family: One finds that in family, there are complaints, lack of understanding, inter-personal tensions and even hatred in some cases. Numerous attempts are made to solve these, but to little long term success. The reason for all of this is ultimately assigned to lack of sufficient material facilities, without ever deciding how much is going to be sufficient in terms of physical facilities. One can see numerous self-help books promising solutions and talk shows talking about ways to better ones relationships. However, there seems to be no clear way out.

At the level of society: Problems are visible in the form of poverty and unemployment on the one hand and division, discrimination, exploitation, opposition, struggle & war on the other. There are talks of cooperation with each other, but they usually end up in one form of exploitation or the other. The possibilities of war between nations, terrorism, fear of fights and violence within nation states and corruption tiring out the daily lives of human beings has increased, while one sees that ‘blood relations’ living under the same roof have problems in their relationships, and unknown expectations in these relationships are making man weaker. An absence of harmony between humans both in families and at the workplace is leading to an underutilization of human potential and available facilities and opportunities. People are bearing with the frustrations of dealing with constant trickery. Children’s futures are steadily becoming uncertain.

At the level of nature/environment: Problems manifest in the form of ecological disturbances (seasonal imbalance, pollution) and depletion of natural resources. Air, water, soil and food are increasingly getting poisoned. The fertility of the soil is reducing. The problem of water shortage is deepening. The nutritional value of food is decreasing. Global warming and Ecological imbalances are heralding larger problems and disasters soon to come. Earth may become unlivable for man and other species in the near future, and there is already talk of going to other planets!!

On the one hand, many breakthroughs and wonders are being unleashed by modern, science and technology; while on the other, the human being is not able to understand what he is, and what human conduct is.  Mans biggest problem today is man himself.

. I.e. Failures seem to be hidden behind our successes. The ultimate result of all this is that suffocation in individuals, disintegration in society and damage to the environment are on the rise. Man is thus getting isolated and lonely. Getting isolated is a more fearsome state than any other scarcity.

If one looks at these conditions a little deeply, it seems that man has not even been able to rightly recognize his needs so far. Today’s prevailing materialism has made us believe that unlimited acquisition of physical/material facilities is the ultimate aim of the human being. Our entire culture, science, technology, education and nation states are being applied to ensure this. As a result, every human being is being engaged in this. Material acquisition has become the aim of man’s thought, behavior and work without even bothering to find out how much material facility is required for an individual, family and society!

While mans need to live/survive has been recognized as a primary need, the need to live in perennial happiness, in a state of no-conflict, to live with knowledge, has not yet been recognized as a basic human need.

The reality is that to live with knowledge is an innate and basic need of the human. It is only on the basis of knowledge that man is able to live in harmony within himself and in harmony with the larger organization (other humans and rest of nature). Otherwise, he lives in a way purely based on what he has ended up assuming (which may or may not be so in reality, i.e. may be right or wrong).

In the absence of knowledge, absence of a resolution (hindi:samadhaan) man is unable to even correctly recognize the need for material/physical facilities. As a result, he is unable to feel prosperous in spite of having physical facilities/wealth.  He keeps getting stuck in a vicious circle of trying to accumulate unlimited facilities/wealth; getting dissatisfied with the same, and then trying for more. When one evaluates the attempts to get around these problems so far, one concludes that these attempts are either insufficient, or not implement-able. When we see the attempts at various levels so far, we find that:

Result of Today’s Efforts

Today: At the level of individuals:
Education is based on competition, ultimately aimed at acquiring unlimited material facilities from jobs or business, getting fame and position, and when these are not available to all (i.e. not ‘everyone can come first’); man takes to opposition & protest as a solution/ way out.

Today: At the level of family:
There is no Jus tice – Nyaya in the Supreme Courts of the world…where would the gram panchayats get it from? The SC decides….
Courts and gram panchayats (village level organizations) are being created in spite of not having the ability provide justice, wherein instead of advancing the understanding of justice, what is practiced is better ways to mete out punishment & pass judgments (arbitration), wherein instead of having ways of forging stronger human relationships, one ends up separating people from being in relationship.

Today: At the level of society:
While on the one hand solutions speak of governments functioning properly, and having stricter rules and regulations, on the other, it is declared that nothing will come out of the government, and only multi national companies and businesses can do something about these problems. Arresting population growth, make and break in the markets, and promises for employment seem to be the order of the day. Ultra modern weapons for getting rid of the conflict between nations and societies are also being touted as a panacea for the ills/problems we face today.

Today: At the level of nature:
Further research for cleaner and greener technologies, alternative sources for energy, and/or establishing tolerable levels for pollution, establishing forest departments, restricted use of natural resources, etc are some of the attempts at taking care of the environment. The inspiration to protect the environment has stemmed from fear, but the constant rush for profit (driven by the economic system) is getting ahead of fear. Hence, agreements around the environment are not seeing much fruition.

On paying attention to the current attempts, it becomes evident that as we try and solve a problem at one level, numerous problems are created as a byproduct at other levels, leading to an increase in the number of problems we deal with. In this situation, while some people have a feeling of despair, some are saying that we should learn to live with problems, while others are busy selling dreams. Even big movements are unable to move beyond small scale issues, unable to think of human organization in its entirety.

A new ray of hope

On studying existence and mans place in it, it becomes evident that these problems are not innate to existence or nature. These are due to absence of ‘right understanding’ (knowledge) in man and fulfillment in relationships between human beings; i.e. problems are manifested by man. If man is the cause/source of the problems or if man is the carrier of problems, then the cause/source and carrier of solutions would also have to be man.

Attempts so far to free ourselves of these problems, have not placed right human understanding and responsibility of human beings at the center, and we have not been able to live in harmony (within oneself and with entire existence) and form a human tradition. Jeevan Vidya is a proposition for human understanding, organization and tradition which has to be evaluated in our own right, studied, realized and understood within the self and lived as an expression of this understanding, in terms of behavior, work and participation in the larger order * (* Detailed literature on Jeevan Vidya-Madyasth Darshan is provided on this website. A concise background and content of Jeevan Vidya is given in “The Laternative” (Vikalp)’ by Shri A. Nagraj Sharma )

On the basis of attempts & successes made by a few of us during the past 15 years in understanding this knowledge; and living it in the form of work, behavior and participation in our society, we have now begun to feel that it is necessary and possible to have harmonious inter-relationships in the

• four dimensions of the self (thought, behavior, work and realization),
• four levels/expanse of human living (self, family, society and nature) and
• 10 steps (family, village, towns…. to world family) of human organization;

On the basis of living in this self-organization:
At the level of individual: Right understanding/resolution (hindi: samadhaan) is ensured in every human being via knowledge (hindi:gyaan) …..knowledge of self, existence and human conduct (hindi: jeevan gyaan, astitva darshan gyaan, manaviyata poorna acharan gyaan), wisdom/discrimination/rationale (hindi:vivek) (identification of human goals) and science (hindi:vigyan) (process of achieving human goal: setting the direction) and in human expression as- behavior, work and participation in the larger order. The possibility of an undivided society, holistic natural order and human tradition becomes clear as one lives according to the right understanding.

At the level of family: Resolution in each member of the family, mutually fulfilling relationships and prosperity in family are ensured. It becomes possible to identify the physical needs of the family on the basis of the right understanding and members of the family are able to produce (in a recyclable manner) more than the family’s requirements for physical facilities and experience the feeling of prosperity.
There is enough scope in nature for this kind of effort, and enough capacity and scope in the human being for putting in these efforts. A prosperous family is able to fulfill its physical needs and also help out other families; hence, one establishes a relationship of mutual fulfillment, instead of exploitation of other.

• education-right values (hindi:shiksha-sanskaar);
• health-restraint (hindi:sawasthya-sanyam);
• production-work (hindi:utpadan-karya);
• exchange-storage (hindi:vinimay-kosh); &
• justice-security (hindi: nyaya-suraksha).

Such self-organization ensures the fulfillment of human goals of:

• complete resolution (hindi:samadhaan),
• prosperity (hindi: samriddhi),
• fearlessness/trust (hindi: abhay) and
• co-existence (hindi: sah-astitva).

The possibility of realization of this holistic, all encompassing self-organization from an individual to family to world family seems very natural.

• Material order (hindi:padarth avastha) = Soil, water, air, etc;
• Plant Order (hindi:pran avastha) = plants and shrubs, etc;
• Animal order (hindi:jeev avastha) = animals

Man living in complete resolution, prosperity, fearlessness and co-existence at all these four levels, is able to be satisfied in all his four dimensions-

• In Thought (hindi: vichaar): satisfaction in thought by way of complete resolution,
• In Behavior (hindi: vyawhaar): satisfaction in behavior by way of mutually fulfilling relationships,
• In Work (hindi: karya): prosperity in work by way of enrichment and protection of the larger natural order, and
• In Realization (hindi: anubhav): bliss (continuity of happiness) by way of realization (knowing – hindi:anubhav) of the reality of existence as co-existence.

On the basis of the success that we have been able to get in the past ten years through this understanding, behavior and work; and the enthusiasm that stems from it, we thought it appropriate to share and start a dialogue with you on the necessity, possibility and natural-ity of this human order.

• Thought: (Vichar)
• Behavior: (Vyawhaar)
• Work: (Karya)
• Realization: (Anubhav)
• Resolution: (Samadhaan)
• Knowledge: (Gyan)
• Wisdom: (Vivek)
• Science: (Vigyan)
• Reality: (Vastavikta)
• Truth: (Satya)
• Existence: (Sah-Astitva)
• Understanding: (Samaj)
• Human Consciousness: (Manav-Chetana)
• Animal Consciousness: (Jeev-Chetana)