Encyclopedia Brittanica to the Bhagavad Gita
I arrived in the United States in 1963 and enrolled at the University of Alabama to study Chemical Engineering. That’s the year when Vivian Malone, an African American student, was first admitted to the University of Alabama. In the early sixties, there were still separate restrooms and benches on local buses reserved for African Americans in Alabama, but we Indian students didn’t face significant problems.
Today, I am an 81-year-old Indian-American academic who has lived in the United States for sixty years. I served on the University of Louisville faculty in Chemical Engineering from 1975 to 2008 and served as Department Chair during 1985-90.
In the eighties, I had a colleague – a Cypriot Greek-American called Phoebus M. Christopher. He and I would often discuss the rise and decline of cultures. I‘d say that the phenomenon of rise and decline is cyclical, and he would respond by saying as scientists, we must find evidence to support it.
We found corroborating evidence for our theory in all 23 volumes of the 1993 edition of Encyclopedia Britannica. It had narratives about individuals from specific cultures in Greece, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States) with data pointing, for example, to the rise and decline of Greece. It also pointed to ominous signs for the United States, Great Britain, and Germany.
The cyclical nature of excellence
In 1993, Phoebus and I self-published an article, On the Cyclical Nature of Excellence. I was invited to make a presentation on the topic at the Chamber of Commerce & Industries in Pune in February 1994, and at the end of my presentation, someone in the audience remarked in Marathi, You are not telling us anything new. These concepts are already mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita.
At the time, I had no idea what the Bhagvad Gita was all about but in the ensuing decade, it became my bedside reading.
As it turns out, numerous lessons in the eighteen chapters of the Gita can transform individuals and societies. In 2015, Jim Kowall and I published the book, The Nature of Ultimate Reality and How It Can Transform Our World (amazon). It took us 18 chapters to fully explain the scientific framework for individual and societal transformation. Jim is a triple board-certified American physician who also holds a doctorate in Theoretical Physics.
Lessons from the Bhagavad Geeta
All civilizations rise and decline as a natural course; the rise and decline of nations is cyclical.
The rise and decline of civilizations occur due to the transformation of the three components of the mindset, S, R, and T over time (S stands for Sattvic, R stands for Rajasic, and T stands for Tamasic.)
As the S component of a society increases, society rises, but S cannot increase indefinitely. When it reaches its peak, the T component takes over and the society begins to decline. The T component cannot increase indefinitely either, and, when it reaches its peak, the S component takes over and the society begins to rise again. This transformation of the mindset leads to the repeated rise and decline of societies over thousands of years.
The Bhagavad Gita does not explain why such a transformation of the mindset should occur, but we can be certain it does. Going by the societal polarization, the societal level of internal and emotional excellence may have taken a hit in the last decade. There is no logical explanation for why.
The way to postpone decline and accelerate rise is to enhance the societal level of emotional excellence, and meditation is the pathway to progress.
Lessons from the Kumbh Mela and the Dabbawalas
In the absence of an adequate level of emotional excellence, the best of the best strategies for achieving exemplary performance do not and cannot produce the expected results. Boost emotional excellence and the performance will zoom.
In 2019, I published an article, “The Secret of Exemplary Performance,” in Insights to explain these ideas further. The pursuit of higher levels of emotional excellence is a well-posed scientific problem but it is not an intellectual exercise. A person with a high level of emotional excellence remains centered in the face of extenuating circumstances that are part of life.
For example, if you stub your toe, what is your instant (reflex) reaction? Or, if you are driving, mindful of all the traffic rules, and someone cuts into your lane nearly causing an accident, what is your reflex reaction?
The lesson here is that required positive changes have to come from within, and meditation is the pathway to progress. Progress can be audited since emotions can now be measured.
A few years ago, I made presentations at several institutions in India and measured the emotional state (stress level and energy) of participants. My stress parameter was far lower and my energy level was much higher than those of the participants from more than six institutions in India.
Over the years certain discoveries have come to me that have changed my life. I owe them to contemplation and meditation. No chemical engineering subject, or any science, could have led to these discoveries.
I feel the lessons they teach will bring myriad benefits to individuals and organizations, accelerate India’s rise, and postpone America’s inevitable decline.
How discoveries happen
Contemplation can lead to discoveries that are in the domain of existing knowledge. Such discoveries amount to connecting the dots in the ocean of existing knowledge, and I call them Type I discoveries. When the focus of attention is further enhanced, as in deep meditation or prayer, new discoveries can occur, which are not possible based on existing knowledge. In Sanskrit, such discoveries go by the name, Shruti, meaning revealed/heard, and I refer to them as Type II discoveries.
In ancient times, Indian sages made profound Type II discoveries, such as the Vedas and Upanishads, by transcending reason. An example of Type II discoveries in modern times is some of the work of the mathematician, S. Ramanujan.
Transcending reason through meditation can lead to new discoveries in the hands of researchers for the solution of some of the most intractable problems facing humanity such as global warming, renewable energy, desalination, etc.
Who would have thought Chemical Engineering principles would someday lead to a framework for external and internal excellence toward a better and more peaceful world?
Image: A painting of Vyasa at Mana. By Nahsik01 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53486001. wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122704369. Vyasa. (2023, September 19). In Wikipedia. https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vyasa