NATIONAL SEMINAR ON VEDIC
STUDIES
AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Honourable Chancellor Dr.
Pranav Pandya of the very prestigious Dev Sanskriti University, Honourable
Vice-Chancellors, Professors, respected Professor Mr. Abhay Saxena, Secretary
of Organization of the Department of Computer Science, and Responsible of the
prestigious National Seminar on Vedic Studies and Information Technology, for
all of you my most kind and respectful regards in Anjali, my gratitude, my
recognition to Shri Veda Mata Gayatri Trust for its sponsor to this outstanding
event, my humble tribute to all the speakers, specialists, and participants of
the seminar, my very kind regards to all the students and other participants.
May all be rendered to the Divinity, may all be rendered to the Rishis,
Siddhas, Acharyas, and refuged in the Dharma and under the Lotus Feet of my
Venerable Gurudev Puja Tilak Swami Paramahamsa. I humbly address to all of you
to share with you my reflections regarding to what I have titled "The
Accurate Communication for the Revolution of the Consciousness".
OVERVIEW OF THE ARTICLE
COMUNICATION AND NEW
TECHNOLOGIES
The communication is the basis of
all the relations and this communication should be at least correct, which
means, the receiver has to understand the message the sender sends to him. This
message comes codified through the language, both spoken and gestual language.
The result of a good comunication is a cohesive and prosperous society, which comunicates
correctly with the Divinity, with the individuals and with itself.
The aim of comunication is to
transmit a knowledge and that transmission should obey a basic rules which
guarantee a comunication where the space for interpretation of the message by
the receiver is the minimum possible. Through the education we create a link
between the one who knows, the one who desires to know and the knowledge.
The one who transmits a knowledge
should educate through teaching and training to the one who is going to receive
the message. This education should be well structured trough a didactics that
marks the form in which the teaching is given and will have as a result the
consecution of an adikhara that cualifies this person as a receiver of this
knowledge.
In order to carry out this communication process in which
the transmission of knowledge is involved, it is necessary a technology in
accordance with the times. All that it is not renewed expires, is degraded and
the transmission of knowledge is no exception to this rule. For this reason it
is an act of responsibility to be
trained on new technologies and use them towards achieving accurate
communication to help harmonize the universe and relations of all beings that
inhabit it. Dharma sets the duty of relating to all beings using the best tools
at our disposal. If we do not encourage the student to project in his
environment the wisdom of the Vedas, if we ignore the technological means that
gives us our time, students will abandon the teachings since they will not see
them or practical nor applicable to life. It is our responsibility to preserve
knowledge through its correct transmission, so we must learn as much as we can
in the scientific knowledge applied to communication.
COMMUNICATION
IS THE BASIS OF ALL RELATION
This idea is dissiminated in
between all the generations as a patron and primordial link on which all the
ideology is set and on which any model of civilization is developed. To improve
the communication is to go beyond the obstacles that are always present in the
understanding, in the comprehension and in the achievement of all ideals.
Despite the comunication is the
motor of survival, in itself “the
comunication” as a concept is an abstration that needs to be technological
developed to be effective and to acomplish the basis for which it exists: to
link the knower with the object of
knowledge.
In the practical level, which
means, the inmediate experience, only triumphs in the comunication the one who
knows something, has a knowledge, and can make another one, the receiver, not
only to receive it, but also to understand it. In fact, that is how we know,
that in the didactics is, one thing is to know, and the other is to know how to
communicate the knowledge one has. It is so crucial and important the
development of communication, that all the species, starting from the micro
organisms, until the human being, have evolved according to their comunication
resources, as for the organization in between the species and for the self
defense and protection before a superior comunication that the agressor might
have in any attack.
The word is the vehicle of
message
The human have grown as intelligent beings, due to the
development of a sofisticated, ideographic and phonetic resource to which we
call language. We could not understand civilization without the culture, and
the culture without the release of the word. The word carries in itself, the
message, the idea, the knowledge, in such a way that we make synonimous of
teach, deliver the word or give the word. We induce the word to be transformed
and take the character of honorable, contractual, sublime or sacred according to
how the word is communicated. The word is knowledge.
The good functioning of human
societies is only possible thanks to the continuous improvement of the communication, in such a way, we
improve in the economy when the channels of comunication are converted into
roads that transport in an effective, quick and secure way, people and goods
from one place to another, but since the ancient times, the ideologies, the
thoughts that have formed the men civilization, and in the culture, the
religion, the human perspective of social justice, the colective well being,
the philosophy that searches answers, this link of communication that is needed
to be established with the universe, with the transcendent, with the Divine
has, also, travelled by the same
paths, for which the men has walked.
Communication is organizad through codes that structure
the language
In the didactics of communication, a referential terminology
is used to be able to clarify what communication is and how it can be
established. Thus code is called to the system of signals and rules that
organize the road for communication and language. This code must be previously
organized and must be mutually known between the speaker and the listener. For
this reason, previous to the reception of the message, there must be the
preparation and qualification of the receiver. This preparation of the receiver
is called, in the theory of communication, the channel. This channel is the means
used to make possible the message to arrive. But no means nor code can be
activated and have success without a previous qualification of the sender. For
this reason in communication terminology, we call sender to that who has the
capacity to transmit the message because he has previously collected the
knowlege and thus symmetrically to the sender is the receiver, who conversely
to the sender is that who must de-code the code and has to have the capacity to
be able to interpret and thus make his the message.
The objective of the communication is to convey a
knowledge
As the spirit or omnipresent
soul, there must be previous to everything, even before the code, the channel,
the sender, and the receiver, a message, something to convey, a knowledge, that justifies all the process of communication. A
knowledge that exists before the knower and the object known; but in this
process of communication we must take into consideration that possibly, there
would always be in one way or another, what it is called the context of
situation or state, which is the whole group of circumstances that is going to
affect the transmission and reception of the message and which can affect it in
such a way that it can also modify it, making it to be unlinked extensively
from the original message, and as a result, the receiver will receive the
message through the altered channel or the message itself would be conveyed
altered. In our tradition, in the Dharma of the Veda, we know, through the
legacy of the Rishis, that all that is part of the theory and practise of
communication is part of the nature itself of the Dharma.
Bhagavan Krishna wanted to
communicate his disciple, Arjuna, that there is a message that must be conveyed
and there is the necessity to be known , and which is, at the same time, key to
the correct building of the human civilization, which is vital for the harmony
not only of all the beings on this world but in the cosmos, and from this
message, which is the key of an acquisition or revelation of a truth, hidden up
to that moment, a civilization, a way of living, and a way of being is
organized.
Bhagavan Krishna declared that
this message is Dharma, which is the core on which the universe is sustained
and a conception of human being which codifies and channels as arya and yoga.
Shrî Krishna makes his disciple understand that he is generator or main sender,
who sends his message to his disciples, that will act first as receivers and
later as repeaters senders. At all times receivers disciples have received this
message and these, at the same time, have become senders to others, but Shrî
Krishna also clarifies Arjuna that the circumstances that interfere this
communication process abort the success of the transmission, making not only
the message not successfully received by the receiver but also the signal
detracts the message and, therefore, the teaching of the Dharma remains as a
hidden message, unknown because previously it has been corrupted in the
understanding both by the sender and the receiver.
The link between the one who
knows, the one who desires to know and the knowledge is the education
Education is the vehicle or
channel for which it is established the link between the one who knows and the
one who desires to know. Therefore the education is, in itself the set of technologies needed to make the communication
effective.
The English word “education”,
comes from the latin “educere” that means to guide and to drive and at the same
time, also, “educare”, which means, to form and instruct. In the first meaning
“educere” indicates that the one who has received the education, not only he is
able to drive himself in life and in the process of knowing, but he can also
form and instruct others because he is the valid sender, due to have been
previously learned and this is the meaning of the second word “educare”.
Therefore, the education in itself establishes a cultural, moral and conductual
consciousness, which is transmitted in the form of vinaya, which means codes or conduct
patrons, which fixes samskaras, links and constructions of mentality, ways of being
and proceeding which are the values to be preserved by a civilization that want
to be human and elevated. For that reason, the education has to be sikshana, binding. For the one who
receives the knowledge, this link has to be with the person who transmits, and
with the message he receives, which means the heritage that is perfected
according to what is given and receiving.
The education, as the
communication, is another abstraction until it is defined and organized
according to the objective that is wanted to be reached and having in
consideration the context in which the message has to be given and also to whom
has to be given. To place the person the nearest possible to the knowledge is upadeshaka.
This is education: to establish a
scientific, pedagogical discipline that always keeps present all the processes
and elements that exist in the teaching and the learning. Upadeshaka is the didactics. The teaching of the ones who give knowledge and
learning by those who receive it
is the didactics or the technology of teaching, Greek word from which the
English word didactics comes. To estructure and facilitate this didactics is
what gives the reasons for the
existence of a school, in connection with the Master, which means, in the
gurukula, where the knowledge that the human being has acquired about himself,
about the universe and about its secrets is spread. From this we have learned
to call university or visvavidyalaya to the place where the whole group
of investigation units and teaching of the highest knowledge possible has been
established.
To receive the message is
necessary to have a certain adikhara
The Arjuna’s adikhara, as a symbol of the disciple, is in
direct relation with the upadhis and adhyasas, which means with the obstacles and the
superimpositions, both those which existed in him as well as the ones which his
environment generated. This necessity of reaching a optimum degree to be able
to receive the message was essential for Isvaku, in the ancient times, as it is
for Ravish, Sharada, Peter or Jane in the middle of 21st century.
The social and the individual adikhara
claim for a
didactics, in other words, a group of technologies and systems prepared for
make the learning process easier, given the importance of renewing and updating
without opposition of traditional methods because they should know how to
coexist with it.
The transmission of knowledge
requires a technology related with this era
All which is moved is degraded.
All which is renovated expires. The message is eternal because the knowledge is
permanent, and the methodology and the technology should be according to the
times. To insist in refusing using
new didactics and new resources, admiring how the students and Masters from the
past where is to deny the movement of the history, is to deny the reality that
is in front of us.
The world is not the same today than
yesterday and even less than fifty years back, five hundred years or thousand
years. Neither the people that are in the world nor their way of living. This
might like us or not, but to dream with the past times is just a dream. And if
we do not awake up from the dream we wanted to live in, we are going to loose
the present and the same knowledge Krishna said it is sleeping in the course of
time, will again hide from us and who knows when it will come again.
Teachers, professors who teach raised from the student they were
in the past. And those who are learning today will
be the teachers of the future.
If we do not motivate students to be projected on their
environment combined wisdom of
the Veda with all the practical and scientific knowledge required
in this modern era, students of Vedic teachings will not understand to the extent that they will not know
how to apply it in their lives.
Those who teach Dharma, because
we live this life in Dharma are convinced not only of the conceptual eternity
of Veda but also how our life has content apparently living like everyone but
in a way called Vedic, in which we have made of yoga our way of living, but
from there we know how to transmit it to Ravish, Sharadha, Peter and Jane, from
India or any part of the world, is something else, is a new challenge that
requires strategy, intelligence, and relerning on behalf of the teaching staff.
Sometimes we have reductive ideas
that make our students see us as dinosaurs of the past. See sannyasis, pandits,
yogis as character of pre history, they give us obstacles for the modernity and
the advancing of the societies, country, etc. and they are right when they have such a vision because we
do not consider essential the pedagogy in our didatics, both new technologies,
as chanels of communication, as the new psychology with which we should relate
and understand emotionally the students from our days.
The adaptation of the
Communication to the new technologies has requiered a great effort in the last
decades
The 20th century jumped
quantitative and qualitatively higher in hundred of times, in comparison to
what the world was progressing or transforming in the previous centuries. In
only 50 years, fashions, mentalities, culture, society, technology trasnformed
radically, and contemporarily from one year to another, the understanding we
have of the world escapes out of our hands like water.
The teachers,
the educators must be very updated. It is a continuous renewal. The guru or
teacher or yogi or sannyasin that boasts of not knowing how to use a computer,
an Ipad, a videoconference programme, of not participating in a social network,
of not sending and receiving mails, of not knowing how to study or consult
through the Internet, is condemned to become extinct like a species that does
not know to adapt and in its recession drags a whole culture. Many things
threaten our knowledge of the Dharma, the preservation of our Vedic culture.
But many do not come from our decays, etc, they do not come only from the
panchakaristhas, from our laksyam, negligence, avinaya, tendency to
desobedience, from our ahamkharam (egoism and egocentrism) from our asviya, our
tendency to envy, jealousy, competitivity, and from our asavyata, our lack of
correct behaviour and social respect; but this threaten for the preservation of
the Dharma comes from the social changes that are taking place in our society,
that establishes new codes and scale of values. And it is here where we must
know to give and be flexible so that we can adapt our gurukulas to make place
for the new students of the Dharma, that must learn what Veda is when invoking
the Divine Gayatri as well as learning psychology, medicine, mechanics or
business management. If we inspire in the ideal of Vyasa and in the example of
his disciple Visampayana, we will understand that Vyasa was the last in
receiving knowledge in one way of learning, and the precursor of a new way of
teaching. And if we guide ourselves by the didactic example of his disciple:
Visampayana, we will understand that the necessity for structuring and adapting
the teaching and its methodology to what he led as a gurukula, in order to be
able to teach the Veda to his disciples, is what we must know to do today with
our new students of the same tradition that Vyasa led.
Masters know how to see in advance the necessity to adpat to the new ways
of communication
My venerable Master: Shri Puja
Swami Tilak Paramahansa, had the clear vision of the modern man and thus,
beginning the eighties, he ordered us to buy one of those very expensive
computers with dark screen and green letters that used Floppy disk. The
objective was to call the Dharma. He said that the message travelled faster and
more effectively through a book, and that the book precede Him before He
arrived to a place to teach, to convey the word, and the book remained as a
guardian of the knowledge teached when he left. If he would have been living in
this time of ours of high technology, He would have been doing what we are
doing today. That is the powerful effect of planting a seed that later will
give its fruit. The precursor glimpses in a way, what the eyes of others will
be able to see. In the past, the students, with many dificulties went to find a
Master, went to look for being admitted in a gurukula, in an ashrama, to be
able to receive the teaching, and all this with big dificultties, today,
students come from all over the world, willing to learn, and they come back to
their homes and works because the time they have to receive the knowledge is
little and conditioned to the survival, but they wish to go on learning.
From long time ago, masters
travel to meet their students and sometimes students travel only few days to
meet their masters, but new technologies have opened the possibility to travel
without moving from the place of residence and the demand of learning and the
necessity grows. But the misery of the human being also grows, and therefore,
the necessity of healing minds and lives of men and women of the 21st century
is increasingly urgent, since the crisis that our world lives is not only
economical, is fundamentally human.
There is no disease equal to
greed. There is no enemy greater than anger. There is no sorrow that is greater
than poverty. There is no happiness equal to wisdom.
Belief in God has declined.
Dharma has disappeared. Atheism is on the increase. There is no respect for the
guru-preceptor. Devotion to God, respect for our ancient culture,
and tradition have been given
farewell. There is no patronage for true education. Only bread-earning
education has become the order of the day. These, alas! Are the signs of
modernity!
“I am in the Light; The Light is in me; I am the Light.”
Adapting to the new
Technologies is an impertive of the current times
We cannot fight against the bad
signals of modernity with an involutionist attitude, closing the eyes to
reality. My experience is that of being to the service of the Vedic School
founded by my Venerable Master 30 years ago.
The same as you can no longer dream of a life with bullock carts or
tonga (horse carriages), you can not dream of a life without cars, televisions
nor mobile phones, we cannot understand our life and manage it without
internet, nor computers, nor home automation.
The same as before the illiterate
was the one who did not know how to understand the letters and, therefore to
read, and consequently not knowing to use the book, to write the letters, to
use a pen, today illiterate is considered that who does not know to write in
computeres and manage a credit card, or checking account online.
We are present in the social
Networks, such as Facebook, webs… that represent us, give us information,
communicate our existence and activities, and create a interrelation among a
circle of friends, associates or virtual sangha. We teach like in ancient
times, following the process of svarana, smaranan, vichara, viveka, etc..
listening, remembering, analizing, discriminating and
we do it in person in the spirit marked as I said before, by Visampayana,
master-disciple relationship in the purest tradition of the gurukula, but we also do it through
videoconferences in which we teach the upadesha convened in Satsangha, not only
in person but virtually to
students and sadhakas wherever they are in this world, but also do
mentoring, advising, conforting, solving problems directly, carrying the
teachers in their tutelage of preaching the dharma, not only the old kamandalu but also the modern laptop.
We print in the print of Gutenberg the books of the Vedic Scriptures, but we
also digitalize in PDF of Adobe. We create files of videos and private TV
channels with simple resources that Internet eases such as Ustream and we help
to preserve the forests managing the whole of our administrative processes from
registrations to the Communications with the departments through mails, pdf,
webs, chat, etc…
We highly recommend our students to use personal
computers in their Studies of our Foundation and to bring them to the
satsanghas, when we teach theory classes about Shastras, Prakaranas y
Samdeshas.
We do not consider viable, today, the spreading of the
Dharma, the Vedic teaching, the humanist training without the use of new
technologies. We consider the learning of new technologies so vital for
students, who are receivers of the communication, as for teachers and
administrative staff who are the senders, that we plan our gurukula,
dedicating, without reluctance, economic funds and technological instruments,
since we have absolute confidence that we can only transmit the Dharma
effectively, using as didactic toos what we will call the computer base, that
is, computers updated with powerful microprocessors able to interact in
multimedia and through Internet in an increasingly wider field and in a longer
projection of the time. In the inversion called base audiovideo, in the use of
electronics, with TV flat screens, image digital treatment, high definition
electronical formats, data storage that gives guarantee of the preservation of
the information, and the base of telecommunication with different services that
the different spectrum of GSM even GPS allow us to move and communicate
actively.
We are conscious that we can be
questioned and critized by the sectors that understand that one is conservative
because one is inmobilist, involutionary, not modern, but we consider that the
readaptation and adequacy of the gurukulas, the methodologies of teaching and
the way of living of sadhus, yogis and seculars, etc. is vital and cardinal for
the survival in a world with serious crisis, and the worst is the crisis of the
scale of priorities, together with that of values and the economical. We are in
a world with a very serious identity crisis.
We feel proud of having reacconditioned, as many times
it has been done along the history, in our own tradition, to the times we live
because that who does not know to adapt and adjust and make oneself
confortable, not only looses his position in life, but also does not savor the
true essence of yoga.
SALUTATIONS
There is no other tradition
and culture most prepared for innovation and technology than the Vedic
culture. Having as name and ideal
the knowledge implies a great commitment with the evolution of the spirit and
the progress of the society.
Veda and technology is
science and they must be understood as two beats of the same heart.
I congratulate to Shri Veda
Gayatri Trust and the Dev Sanskriti Mahavishwa University for its great effort
in organizing such a significant event that will allow to find a unified path
for the development of the human being.
I invoke the blessings of all
the venerable Masters and the protection of the Divinity and all its blessed
powers.
My name is Swami Shankaratilakananda Saraswati, disciple of the most Venerable Swami Tilak
Paramahamnsa, Chancellor of the Vaidika Antarastriya Pratisthanam, Vedic
Foundation International for the spreading of the Dharma.
Entradas
