UNIVERSAL HUMAN VALUES

Unit I

Part A

1. What are the content of value education?

The subject that enables us to understand ‘what is valuable’ for human happiness is
called value education. The scope of value education includes all dimensions
(thoughts, behaviour, work and realization) and all levels (individual, family, society
and nature – existence). Accordingly, the content of value education will be to
understand myself, my aspirations, my happiness; understand the goal of human life
comprehensively, understand the other entities in nature, the innate inter-
connectedness, the coexistence in the nature- existence and finally the role of human
being in this nature/existence entirely. Hence, it has to encompass understanding of
harmony at various levels and finally, learning to live in accordance with this
understanding by being vigilant to one’s thoughts, behaviour and work.
2. Give an example for human aspirations.
Our basic aspirations are happiness (mutual fulfilment) and prosperity (mutual
prosperity). Happiness is ensured by the relationships with other human beings and
prosperity is ensured by working on physical facilities.
3. Define natural acceptance.
Natural acceptance is process to understand ourselves first. Natural acceptance
implies unconditional and total acceptance of the self, people and environment. It also
refers to the absence of any exception from others. In other words, Natural acceptance
is way to accept the good things naturally.
4. What is right Understanding?
Right Understanding refers to higher order human skills – the need to learn and
utilize our intelligence most effectively. In order to resolve the issues in human
relationships, we need to understand them first, and this would come from 'right
understanding of relationship'.
5. What is animal consciousness?
To live only for physical facilities is called ‘animal consciousness’, while to live with
all three: right understanding, relationship and physical facilities leading to mutual
happiness and mutual prosperity is called ‘human consciousness’.
6. What is value education?
Character oriented education that impart basic values and ethical values in person
mind is called ‘Value Based Education’. The subject that enables us to understand
‘what is valuable’ for human happiness is called value education.
7. What is meant by physical facility?
This includes the physiological needs of individuals and indicates the necessities as
well as the comforts of life. Suvidha implies that it is looking for physical comforts
and all the sources of attaining such comforts.
8. State any two characteristics of natural acceptance.
It does not change with time
It does not change with place
It does not change with the individual
It is uncorrupted by likes and dislikes or assumptions or beliefs
It is innate, a part and parcel of our being; we don’t need to create it
It is definite
9. What is the role of education?
Education is required to correctly identify our basic aspirations, understand the values
that enable us to fulfil our basic aspiration, ensure the complementarity of values and
skills, and to properly evaluate our beliefs. It also facilitates the development of
appropriate technology and its right utilization for human welfare.
10. Define happiness.
Happiness may be defined as being in harmony in the situations that I live in.
11. Define unhappiness.
The state or situation, in which I live, if there is disharmony / contradiction in it, it is
not Naturally Acceptable to me to be in that state / situation” is called unhappiness.
12. What is meant by aspiration?
A hope or ambition of achieving something is called aspiration.
 Part B
1. What is value education? Explain the need of value education briefly.

Character oriented education that impart basic values and ethical values in person
mind is called ‘Value Based Education’. The subject that enables us to understand
‘what is valuable’ for human happiness is called value education.

Value education is important to help everyone in improving the value system that
he/she holds and puts it to use. Once, one has understood his/ her values in life he/she
can examine and control the various choices he/she makes in his/ her life. Value
education enables us to understand our needs and visualize our goals correctly and
also helps to remove our confusions and contradictions and bring harmony at all
levels. It also helps remove our confusions and contradictions and enables us to
rightly utilize the technological innovations.

Values form the basis for all our thoughts, behaviours and actions. Once we know
what is valuable to us, these values becomes the basis, the anchor for our actions. We
also need to understand the universality of various human values, because only then
we can have a definite and common program for value education. Then only we can
be assured of a happy and harmonious human society.

2. Explain the guidelines for value education.

The subject that enables us to understand ‘what is valuable’ for human happiness is
called value education. In order to qualify for any course on value education, the
following guidelines for the content of the course are important:
Universal: It needs to be applicable to all the human beings irrespective of cast, creed,
nationalities, religion, etc., for all times and regions.
Rational: It has to appeal to human reasoning. It has to be amenable to reasoning and
not based on dogmas or blind beliefs.
Natural and verifiable: It has to be naturally acceptable to the human being who goes
through the course and when we live on the basis of such values it leads to our
happiness. It needs to be experientially verifiable, and not based on dogmas, beliefs or
assumptions.
All encompassing: Value education is aimed at transforming our consciousness and
living. Hence, it needs to cover all the dimensions (thought, behaviour, work and
 realization) and levels (individual, family, society, nature and existence) of human life
and profession.
Leading to harmony: The value education ultimately is targeted to promote harmony
within the individual, among human beings and with nature
3. Define self-exploration? What is the contents and process of self-exploration?
Self-exploration is
a process of dialogue between “what you are” and “what you really want to
be”.
a process of Self-evolution through self-investigation.
a process of knowing oneself and through that, knowing the entire existence.
a process of recognizing one’s relationship with every unit in existence and
fulfillin it.
a process of knowing human conduct, human character and living accordingly.
a process of being in harmony in oneself and in harmony with entire existence.
a process of identifying our Innateness (Swatva) and moving towards self
organization (Swatantratã) and Self-expression (Swarãjya).
The Content for Self-exploration
The content for self-exploration has two sub-parts:
a) Desire: What is our basic aspiration?
b) Program: What is the way to fulfil this basic aspiration?
If we are able to get the answer to these two things, practically all our questions are
answered.
The Process of Self-exploration
Whatever is stated here is a proposal; do not assume it to be true or false, right or
wrong.
Verify it – verify it on your own right, on the basis of your natural acceptance. This is
the first part of the process.
The second part of self-exploration is experiential validation. It means trying
to live according to the proposal. In living, there are two parts – one is the behaviour
with other human beings and the secondis work with rest of nature. When we are
behaving with human being on the basis of this proposal, wewant to verify whether it
leads to mutual happiness or not. If it leads to mutual happiness, it is a right proposal;
if it does not lead to mutual happiness, it is not a right proposal. Similarly, when we
are working with rest of nature on the basis of this proposal, we want to verify
 whether it leads to mutual prosperity or not. If it leads to mutual prosperity, it is a
right proposal; if it does not lead to mutual prosperity, it is not a right proposal.

4. Explain right understanding, relationship and physical facility?

Our basic aspirations are happiness (mutual fulfilment) and prosperity (mutual
prosperity). Happiness is ensured by the relationships with other human beings and
prosperity is ensured by working on physical facilities. Relationship refers to the
interpersonal relationships that a person builds in his/her life – at home, at the
workplace and in society. Physical Facilities includes the physiological needs of
individuals and indicates the necessities as well as the comforts of life. It means the
feeling of having or being able to have more physical facilities than is needed.
Today we are unable to have fulfilling relationships all the time: in family,
outside family, and as a society – in the world at large. If there is a problem in
relationship, we feel uneasy, it bothers us. Even if we are interacting with someone,
and something we said or did offends them, it makes us uneasy; i.e. we want mutual
fulfilment in relationship. Similarly, we want to feel prosperous, but end up working
only for accumulation of wealth. We want to enrich nature, but are exploiting it,
destroying it. But our natural acceptance is that we want to live in harmony with
nature.
The reason behind these problems is that we have to focus on one more aspect,
i.e. right understanding. Right Understanding refers to higher order human skills – the
need to learn and utilize our intelligence most effectively.
In order to resolve the issues in human relationships, we need
to understand them first, and this would come from ‘right understanding of
relationship’. Similarly in order to be prosperous and to enrich nature, we need to
have the ‘right understanding’. The ‘right understanding’ will enable us to work out
our requirements for physical facilities and hence correctly distinguish the difference
between wealth and prosperity. With nature as well, we need to understand the
harmony in nature, and how we can complement this harmony.

Thus we can say that when we use right understanding with relationships it gives us
mutual fulfilment because if we have right understanding, then we can be happy in
ourselves and work to have fulfilling relationships with humans and mutual prosperity
with nature. If we do not have the right understanding, then we have problems. Thus,
our happiness depends on the fulfilment of these three basic requirements.

Right understanding + Relationship = Mutual fulfilment.

Right understanding + Physical facilities = Mutual prosperity.

5. Explain the meaning of happiness and prosperity. What is the prevailing notions
of prosperity?
The state/situation in which I live, if there is harmony/synergy in it, then I like to
be in that state or situation.”
i.e. “To be in a state of liking is happiness.”
When we are in such a state of happiness – we experience no struggle, no
contradiction or conflict within and we enjoy such a state of being. And we wish to
have its continuity. On the other hand, when we experience feelings such as failure,
disrespect, lack of confidence, being doubtful in ourselves or about others, we feel
unhappy as they are states of conflict. These are the states when there is lack of
harmony, either within us or between us and others. We do not wish for a
continuation of these feelings within and want to try and change them – we can call
this unhappiness. We can thus state unhappiness as:
“The state/situation in which I live, if there is conflict/contradiction in it, then I do not
like to be in that state or situation.”
i.e. “To be in a state of disliking is unhappiness”
Thus, we can define happiness and unhappiness as
“To be in a state of harmony is happiness.”

Prosperity: is the feeling of having or making available more than required physical
facilities.
To ascertain prosperity, two things are essential:
(a) Correct assessment of need for physical facilities, and
(b) The competence of making available more than required physical facilities
prevailing notions of prosperity
 At the level of the individual – rising problems of depression, psychological
disorders, suicides, stress, insecurity, psycho-somatic diseases, loneliness etc.
 At the level of the family – breaking of joint families, mistrust, conflict
between older
and younger generations, insecurity in relationships, divorce, dowry tortures,
family feuds, wasteful expenditure in family functions etc.
  At the level of the Society – growing incidences of terrorism and naxalism,
rising communalism, spreading casteism, racial and ethnic struggle, wars
between nations,
attempts of genocide, fear of nuclear and genetic warfare, etc.
 At the level of nature – global warming, water, air, soil, noise, etc. pollution,
resource depletion of minerals and mineral oils, sizeable deforestations, loss of
fertility of soil.
6. Explain the content of value education.
The subject that enables us to understand ‘what is valuable’ for human
happiness is called value education. The scope of value education includes all
dimensions (thoughts, behaviour, work and realization) and all levels (individual,
family, society and nature – existence). Accordingly, the content of value education
will be to understand myself, my aspirations, my happiness; understand the goal of
human life comprehensively, understand the other entities in nature, the innate inter-
connectedness, the coexistence in the nature- existence and finally the role of human
being in this nature/existence entirely. Hence, it has to encompass understanding of
harmony at various levels and finally, learning to live in accordance with this
understanding by being vigilant to one’s thoughts, behaviour and work.

7. Explain the basic requirement to fulfill human aspirations.

When we try to find out if we have fulfilled our basic aspiration, it is not
always so affirmative. There is quite a gap between our basic aspiration and our state
of being. When we reflect on all the effort we are making, we can easily see that we
are generally working for accumulation of physical facility!
The basic problem is that we have assumed that ‘happiness and prosperity will
automatically come when we have enough physical facility’. This is something we
need to explore in our own life. Where are we putting in our effort? If continuity of
happiness and prosperity is not achieved by just accumulating physical facility then
what else is essential to do? Let’s try to find out by asking this question to ourselves:
Is the unhappiness in my family
▪ More due to lack of physical facility or
▪ More due to lack of fulfilment in relationship?
 When you explore into it, you will find that the major reason for the
unhappiness in the family is the lack of fulfilment in relationship and not just the lack
of physical facility. Now to look at the investment of your effort, find out:
▪ How much time and effort you are investing for physical facility, and
▪ How much time and effort you are investing for fulfilment in
relationship?
Generally, most of the time and effort is being invested for physical facility,
assuming that everything is going to be fine when there is enough physical facility,
and there will be no unhappiness in the family.
The problems are more due to lack of fulfilment in relationship, and we are
investing major part of our time and effort for physical facility.
With this discussion, the conclusion that we want to draw out of this is a very simple
one:
For human being physical facility is necessary, but relationship is also
necessary.
When a human being has lack of physical facility, (s)he becomes
uncomfortable and unhappy. Once (s)he gets the physical facility, (s)he forgets about
it and starts thinking about many other things. For ensuring fulfilment in relationship,
it is necessary to have right understanding about relationship.
8. Define prosperity. How can you say that you are prosperous?
The feeling of having or making available more than required physical facilities is
prosperity. Almost all of us feel that wealth alone means prosperity and try to explain
this phenomenon on this nonexistent or half fact. We are trying to achieve happiness
and prosperity by maximizing accumulation and consumption of physical facilities. It
is becoming anti-ecological and anti-people, and threatening the human survival itself.
For prosperity, two things are required-
i). Identification of the required quantity of physical facilities, and
ii). Ensuring availability / production of more than required physical facilities.
We can be prosperous only if there is a limit to the need for physical facilities. If there
is no limit what so ever be the availability the feeling of prosperity cannot be assured.
Secondly, just assessing the need is not enough. We need to be able to produce or
make available more than the perceived need.
9. Explain the characteristics of natural acceptance.
(a) Natural acceptance does not change with time: The natural acceptance does not
changewith time. It remains invariant with time. This can be easily verified. For
example, our
acceptance for trust or respect does not change with age. People hundred years ago
also had the same natural acceptance. We can try to verify this within our span of
observation.
(b) It does not depend on the place: Whether we are in New Delhi, New York or Abu
Dhabi, if we address our natural acceptance, the answer would still be the same!
(c) It does not depend on our beliefs or past conditionings: We may be told
frequently not trust people of other religions or castes, but is it naturally acceptable to
us? No matter how deep our belief or past conditioning, as long as we ask ourselves
the question sincerely, as long as we refer deep within ourselves, the answer will
always be the same.
(d) Natural acceptance is the same for all of us: it is part and parcel of every human
being,it is part of human-ness: Let’s start exploring into this. We will find that no
human being finds disrespect acceptable in relationship. No matter who the person,
however bad or good, one always expects respect in relationship. For example, let us
say a person ‘A’ disrespects ‘B’. This man ‘B’ may bear a grudge against ‘A’ and set
out to “teach him a lesson”. This is because ‘B’ does not find disrespect acceptable and
when he does not get respect, it offends him. This may actually end up leading to a
large scale conflict!
Natural acceptance is there in all of us. It is within us, all the time and we can refer to
it, access it to know what is right for us. We only have to start referring to it. Each
proposal in your life needs to be evaluated on the basis of your natural acceptance.
10. Explain the program for continuous happiness.

The expanse of our living is at the following four levels:

1. As an Individual human being
2. As a member of a family
3. As a member of society
4. As a unit in nature/existence
We are living with all this expanse of our being, at these four levels; of course, we may or
may not be aware of it.
Therefore, the programme for ensuring the continuity of happiness is:
To understand the harmony at all levels of being: and being To live in harmony
1. At the level of the individual human
2. At the level of family
3. At the level of society and
4. At the level of nature/existence