The art and science of Learning

 

                                                The art and science of Learning

A westerner asked me once why you Indians celebrate too many festivals.

 

He asked me to explain in a way that he can easily understand and convey to his children too "What is Vijayadasami?"

I said it is a sort acknowledging, accepting, and celebrating the 'Concept of Learning the art and science of Learning'.

Learning about life in all its splendours and living a life of learning with all its aspects through various symbolic ways and different ways of worship etc.

A sort of Valentine's Day for Learning.

 

The romance and joy of learning. Vijaya Dasami. 

I have read even one interpretation of Rigveda by a well-known scientist and a great follower of Shri Aurobindo wherein he writes Saraswathi refers symbolically to the physiological flow of fluids in brain which contribute to the abilities of perception.

 

So, let us try to learn humbly from the works of scholars something about brain, mind, and human limitation of using them and the limitations of intellect itself to understand, interpret and determine everything concerned with human life.

 

The greatest paradox is that the human mind can explore, experiment, and execute extraordinary things  and at the same time is also incapable of dealing with very ordinary things.

 

The following links which I wrote and some reproduced at different times to throw light on the various facets of the working of human brain.

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.com/2016/05/brains.html?m=0

Learning starts out of curiosity; saunters through imitation and limitation; steps into conscious observation and stops to savour into expressing whatever is learnt through some medium and in some way.

Ironically the very process of excessive spawning of multitude of expressions through social media throws up enormous variety which extinguish oversimplification and over generalization and renders orchestration of mass opinion ineffective.

Though all opinions emanating from or through social media need not be sane or sublime but nonetheless give room for everyone to express what they want and that is perhaps the very reason for its popularity.

I believe in and relish gathering knowledge and learning from sources emanating from a wide spectrum of individuals some internationally renowned spiritual leaders, scientists, unsung and unnoticed heroes, because I follow many things and put them all in the cauldron of desultory hobbies whose contents and ingredients change with every dawn as I have weakness of enjoying many wonderful things that life offers, the many colours and fragrance of multiple splendours of nature like the butterfly that hops from flower to flower and like the butter fly, I feel they do play a very important role in evolution of life.

" God is UNITY but always works in VARIETY" RALPH W.EMERSON

Hurdles to learning.

The criticisms and suggestions that we encounter may be very nice and useful but unfortunately not implementable in all regions or societies, especially weaning away some of them from  entrenched  religious doctrine oriented traditions and excessive adoration of the past etc.

As proposing and penetration of new ideas and systems becomes tougher in terrains occupied by luddites of various hues and colours like status quo addicts, confirmation bias admirers and venerators of their own past tinged with inherent insecure xenophobic reactions. These are hurdles to learning.

 

But sooner or later the inevitable changes will inundate life as a part of evolution beyond and despite all resistances.

We should welcome articles in the realms of socio-political economics into categories like the unexplored, worth exploring and the unknown to bring in a big pool of idea bank from which the administrators can choose their cup of tea.

 

Social Media Knowledge and understanding

 

Of late there has been lot of debates about lack of understanding and more knowledge in the social media.

 

It is good and incidentally several years back Aldous Huxley wrote a wonderful but long essay on this topic ‘Knowledge and Understanding’ and surprisingly one may find a  pdf of half the essay in Sri Ramankrishna Mission site.

 

 

Coming back to the subject.

It has become normal to confuse information for knowledge.

Knowledge for experience and thought.

Ideas formulated based on these for wisdom.

 

The problem is as these may inadvertently lead to an arrogance which may create unassailable prejudice, petrified presumption and start projecting what we know or think we know or presume as some great piece of tool or panacea to decipher the puzzle of life.

 

The most important facts of humility are that our perception or understanding based on whatever  may be the source of knowledge my be inadequate or could be defective or at least may not be totally prefect and therefore there is nothing that can be construed as a panacea in this world.

 

Education is the enlightened awareness and acceptance of facts of inevitable evolution of everything and experiencing life as a flow.

 

Either  all or some of them as they emerge through the churning process of life where they express the multiple dimensions of everything and the various dynamics of each dimension emanating from inherent attributes as well as a reaction to external impacts.

 

Life is an unmapped atlas where we are not even sure whether all pieces of the jigsaw puzzles are there to create a shape.

 

Lot depends on proceeding on unbiased observations beyond or besides or if necessary, even without existing loads of knowledge because the existing bunch of knowledge could also act as a conditioning factor if we are not alert and totally divert our understanding of anyone or anything.

 

Besides all these there are also factors like our attitudes towards multiple interpretations, ideological identity-based inhibitions to accept certain things, attitudes, and overall perspective towards what we encounter etc.

 

 

That is why it becomes a necessity to not to take on extreme positions in anything and instead maintain a balanced view.

 

 

Extreme positions can blur the view from seeing the multiple possibilities that may exist everywhere.

 

Phenella writes in “The Unwritten Comedy”.
“To be ignorant of many things is expected
To know you are ignorant of many things is the beginning of wisdom.
To know a category of things of which you are ignorant is the beginning of learning.
To know the details of that category of things of which you are ignorant is to no longer be ignorant.”

 

 

“Everything changes as you move through three stages of awareness:
first, that beliefs are the result of conditions;
second, that beliefs are the cause of conditions;
and third, that beliefs are themselves conditions.”
― Eric Micha'el Leventhal

 

 

 “All of us have our own inner fears, beliefs, opinions. These inner assumptions rule and govern our lives. A suggestion has no power in and of itself. Its power arises from the fact that you accept it mentally.”
― Joseph Murphy, The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

 

 

We, most of us, swing as a pendulum between excuses and justifications with a keenness to convince others and end up coming with answers like these: - A tourist guide who, when once, a lady asked him “How a row of fine rock formation was piled up”, said “they have been piled up here by the glaciers”. When she anxiously asked him “Where are the glaciers?” he replied “Madam, they have gone back to get some more rocks”. Such replies are often the result of ignorance, half-knowledge, or impatience or all of these.

 

 

The problem with human beings unlike other species is that we are consciously aware, and we can also collect, store, and retrieve data and reuse them. This faculty along with our intellectual thinking and reasoning powers hamper us from having humility to accept the mere fact that there are many unknown as well as unknowable elements to life as a whole and even in our individual lives.

 

 

 

We either act or react according to what we want, what we can and what we are destined to. At different times either one of these three predominates i.e., what we want, we can we are destined to do.

 

Knowledge, Information, Thoughts, Ideas and Teachings are ingredients,  

Understanding is making them into a tasty, cooked food,

Grasping and Interpretations are the utensils used for cooking,  

Learning is the process of cooking a tasty, easily digestible, nutritious food.

 

Evolution of civilization as well as sophistication of civilized evolution both depend on adaptation, adjustments, accommodation, and assimilation of multiple ways of life and valuing the variety and virtue of variety passed onto us down the ages through various mediums, the first most effective and, perhaps the chief among them being books which recorded the sounds, spoken words, thoughts, ideas, and events. Both our individual self and social self are shaped by how we largely relate with others, things, and our overall circumstances and how our contexts relate with us. 

 

Life is after all not mere chronology of existence but a meaningful topology of relationships. 

 

Life is not confined to and carried on within the matrix of mind and matter, but it creatively works through communicating the connectivity between these two and how these two relate with everyone and everything.

 

 

Actually, a greater number of people read more topics on various platforms starting from print media like newspapers, pamphlets, text books, books of various genres to heavy reading through electronic media in the form of mails, social media messages, E-books etc.

 

But then, what must be known really is:-

 

What they read?

Why they read?

How they read?

How they use or benefit from what they read?

How much they read?

 

 

The answer to the above questions will provide information that may enable us to know about the interests and intentions; to understand the influence and impact; to grasp the intrinsic importance; to interpret  the importance of intrinsic values; to entertain with imaginations; to indoctrinate through injecting sensational ideas and sensitive and biased judgmental opinions ; gradually to educate everyone to evaluate [with contextual relevance] the utility or futility of all that is being read; to discern , to observe  intelligently; to achieve academic excellence ; to learn  to internalize great ideas and instructions; to expand the  spectrum of our conscious awareness wider  to perceive with philosophical perspective; to peruse everything with ‘proper measurements’ and finally to enlighten us to engage in creating in a scholarly, scientific and sane way with a sense of responsibility and sense of balance the sources of synergy through creative and effective communication.

 

 

Certain terms have been underlined and rendered in bold letters [almost as a wordle] because they are in fact the preferred and prioritized outcomes of most readings and book centric learning.

 

We all must humbly accept that we learnt some or all the above underlined aspects; or still in the process of learning or perfecting or enhancing the quality and quantity of what we have already learnt.

 

It was mostly through our reading them in books or listening to and learning from those who have read and passed them on. Learning is a lifelong process.

 

 

So, as Dani Johnson says, “Never stop being teachable. If you think you know everything, you will never learn anything.”

 

Inquisitiveness and inquiry are the eternal springs of human psyche, and it is through this stream that flows from the springs that traces of ignorance are washed away.

 

Writer/creators of other art forms are humble, curious, and unbiased observers of synergy and synthesis, either occurring as an aspect of evolution or consciously effected through a culture of compassion, that enable to understand better the inter connectivity, interrelatedness, and interdependence of living as a whole.

Reality and the real reasons of life or living are not uniform or predefined and hence, are not that easy to grasp because besides what has been stated above life is involved in the constant process of churning called living which is dynamic in the cauldron of social life [ the multiple shapes , size, and  material of which this cauldron is made of is also not fully known].

Add to these what is the kirn- staff or churning stick [that is evaluation tool used to churn] is also not known.

 

 

So, reality is reality with all its multiple facets and faces; dimensions and dynamics; polarities and probabilities; positives and negatives; victors and victims and so on.

 

We try to grasp it, give it various names depending on how we perceive and relate based on our attitudes and perspectives.

 

After all life is a constant process of learning and adjustment wherein, we can neither deny nor defy the importance of anything or anyone.

 

Evolution goes about its jobs unmindful of whatever we do or do not do, that decides and determines everything including our birth and death as biochemical organisms which are bound to decay or to die or to reorganize or to be reborn or to recreate into something else eventually.

 

While innards and inherent qualities are inevitable and beyond our choice, at least, our utilization of strengths /reactions to shortcomings can be sane and more sensible in short, our MINDSET, and that is what must be the attempt of any subject, be it philosophy, spiritual science, or pure science.

 

Evolution has ensured that human beings as a species have moved from kuru disease contacting cannibals to cyber gurus.

 

So, it becomes obvious that we cannot analyse anything through any templates of ideological fixations or subject it to satisfy socio- political or socio-cultural or religious justifications.

 

We must also know that everything has its own inherent attributes, intrinsic values, internal mechanism, and logic for its existence besides, beyond, exclusive of and unmindful of human intellectual justifications, acceptance, acknowledgement, social or religious approvals, political support and therefore, it is purely absurd to extrapolate anything with specific ideological fixations.

 

Education and learning are  not confined to classrooms.

 

With schools and colleges closed during Covid many talking of missing learning and education!!!

 

We tend to not only visualize, verbalize but also conceptualize and resort to a presumptive stereotyping a whole lot of terms which are in a wordle with one big aspect of life called ‘education’ like: - classroom, academic qualification, institutions, teachers, communication skills, knowledge, understanding, learning etc.

 

Though every one of these terms may be part of learning and education, if we zoom any specific part as representing the whole, then we may be doing injustice to learning and enfeebling the enormity of education.

 

We must know and understand that learning is neither confined to classrooms nor is it limited to being of some service to others at home or office nor is it confined to mere academic excellence and so on, rather beyond and besides these learnings and EDUCATION must

 

Evolve to experience, to experiment, to explore, to evaluate and to get enlightened,

 

Develop discretionary skills to decide, to decipher the different dimensions and dynamics of life.

 

Understand the underlying causes and unravel the characteristics of as many things as possible.

 

Create confidence and clarity to connect with contextual relevance and communicate effectively.

 

Accommodate all possible and relevant frames of references to analyze all things beyond mere academics.

 

Think beyond and besides time tested templates and to tread beyond trends, taboos, and traditions.

 

Internalize intrinsically important values and interpret in tune with inherent attributes and contextual relevance.

 

Open the horizon of opportunities with open mindedness and synergy to seamlessly,

 

Nurture the natural interrelatedness, interconnectivity and interdependence of everything and everyone.

 

With closure of educational institutions many have been discussing about how to make children learn as if classroom is the only place of learning.

 

 

In my honest opinion learning happens mainly: -

 

Out of curiosity generated observation and listening.

Out of impulse to imitate what or whom we consider as interesting and appealing.

Out of fear and/or love through the manifestation of these emotions, with varying degrees of intensities like obligations, rewards, punishments, likings and so on.

 

So, that way almost 90% plus real learning happens only outside the classroom and besides the syllabus.

 

However, basic literacy to enable one to learn in a systematic manner or methods or processes may be imparted inside the classroom.

 

Classrooms can at best instil, motivate, and direct to get informed, acquire knowledge, indicate the methods of understanding and allow individuals to explore the possibilities of interpretations without restricting the number of or range of frames of references.

 

Some unique features of human species over the rest like conscious awareness and ability to internalize are very useful tools to learn better, more and use whatever one has learnt.

 

In our enthusiasm to promote certain technological advancements let us not belittle human activities

 Childhood's treasury of learnings . 

Innocent curiosity, intense observations, playful imitations, delicious daydreams, incredible imaginations, far-fetched fantasies are  part of childhood's treasury of learnings which get any normal child's mind instantly involved, intensely internalized but everything without any obligation and hangover. Learning meanders through all of these are we grow. 

As one grows the acquired knowledge, accumulated thoughts, acquired or adopted biases, impulses, instincts, intuitions, various levels of understanding, experience gained through churning of life in all its actions, interactions, reactions and so on , most of these calibrated and lead to conditioning through the ideological, religious, political and socio-cultural milieu-based influences and impacts. There are components of  Collaborative intelligence, Creative intelligence, Existential intelligence, Intrapersonal intelligence, Naturalistic intelligence, Emotional intelligence, Interpersonal intelligence, Musical intelligence, Body-kinaesthetic intelligence, Linguistic intelligence, Logical-mathematical intelligence, Scientific intelligence, Spiritual intelligence, Spatial intelligence, Predictive intelligence, Visualization intelligence, Conceptualizing intelligence, Philosophical enquiring intelligence to seek meanings and grasp the unknown and vaguely perceived aspects of life etc.  

 In addition, we have as part of all the above or existing besides all the above critical thinking, analysis, and creativity all of which manifest in the process of learning, understanding and expressions. 

All influence and impact our perceptions and perspectives; ideas, identity and interpretations; extrapolations and expressions; reasoning, excuses, justifications and our conceptualization of ideals.

 Almost all of these are parts of overall learning, understanding, and thinking. Each one may manifest in various degrees at different times or in different topics and situations. 

 So, human intelligence as a whole or even parts of it cannot be over simplified, over generalized, and not at all be homogenized.

Hence, cannot be replaced through any short cut methods or means or tweaked through any of the much-hyped technologies or software though they may help in speeding up lot of repetitive, routine, mundane tasks and manual work and spatially shrink expanse of area of monitoring etc.

Gather knowledge from as many sources as possible-like a butterfly that hops from flower to flower.

I have without any exaggeration more than 1000 books and articles all very interesting, factual, sane, superb, and most importantly highly scientific on different types of craving of the human body physically, emotionally, and psychologically and most of which are the result of explainable but not necessarily easily controllable and/or correctable.

However, evolution, as it must and as it does always, either with or without our active participation or defective indifference, keeps exploring, expressing the secrets through some unprejudiced probing souls or enlightened wise spiritual beings. Surprisingly many things that happen to us or that we make to happen are decided by many factors, but of these at least some are determined by certain hormones and genes and are scientifically provable but yet only some scientists and only certain quarters of knowledge hubs make them known or available as the rest are curled up in their comfort zone of narrow spectrum which sometimes is eulogized as focus and specialization. Life when perceived however well through any micro analysis will miss the overall splendour of macro view.

Certain facts of science which are very important to know and interesting to know are therefore left uncommunicated and later on when that causes problems, we regret why we did not know.

Knowledge is power but blocked knowledge is dangerous.

For example, it is the genetic makeup that would kill pregnant chettiyar community women if she is administered scoline because one of the 24 sects of Chettiyars, are fatally allergic to this anaesthetic administration. Multanis in Pakistan, certain tribes of across the globe this defect.

One of the major objectives of learning is to acquire WISDOM

                              Facets of Universal WISDOM

 

 

Universal wisdom may be like this whether sanctioned or sanctified by either social mores or religious morality.

 

Wisdom is the workshop where works of evolutionary trends and experiences of everyone in it emerge to express wisely the essence of everything to enlighten everyone.

 

A wisdom which prioritizes living in the present context and along with practicing certain time-tested values which have relevance in present context but with global perspective to bequeath a liveable planet, a lovable society with lovely infrastructures and improved living conditions;

A wisdom that evaluates everything and everyone with contextual relevance and based on the inherent attributes or merits of what or who is being evaluated without extrapolating any  presumptions, opinions, judgments, perceptions, expectations, ideologies, doctrines, identity-based ideology and so on.

 

A wisdom which is willing to make minor adjustments, small compromises, spontaneous cooperation to create compatible and conducive atmosphere with humility devoid of any egocentric pride.

 

A wisdom with the realization and a perspective that must be aware that life is a constant process of learning of the multiple dimensions of many things and the various dynamics of those dimensions involving the constant interaction and interrelationship with everyone and everything.

 

A wisdom that is willing to accommodate multiple methods or means of life with some overall tolerant attitude embedded on humanitarian concerns towards all human life and environmental or natural concern towards all other species.

 

A wisdom that gets its clarity of understanding through a churning process that takes into consideration several aspects from the practical to the philosophical to all fantasies of the mind.

 

Probably, in brief, we may summarize in a A to Z free verse format as follows.

 

Learning involves:-

 

Assimilating to ameliorate awareness and avidness to access knowledge.

Building a bigger bank of ideas beyond blinkered biases and beliefs.

Childlike curiosity that observes without the carry bag of conditioning.

Developing diligent discretions to decipher in depth dynamics of differences. 

Exploring, experimenting, expressing, and evaluating everything as it evolves.

Facing facts to follow the flow of facets of functional life further from fixations.

Grasping great ideals to grow out of ideologies of identities and grow up.

Harbouring humility and hopes in heart and head with humanitarian values.

Imbibing imitations, inspirations, imaginations-all ingredients of intelligence.

Journeying inwards and joining outward knowledge to create a judicious mix.

Keeping keenness to know the kaleidoscopic kingdom of knowledge.

Living life with lateral thinking and lively engagement in listening.

Measuring meaningfully and mapping the world of  mind and matter.

Noticing nuances and necessities of living in the now in tune with nature.

Operating with open mindedness to obtain optimum outcomes of opportunities.

Perceiving to prioritize, to plan, and to philosophically face life’s problems.

Questioning to qualify to quantify the quests to lead a life of high quality.

Researching to revisit, to reason and to review how we relate with all.

Seeking to synergize with sense of balance scientific temper in society. 

Thinking beyond templates to tread through trends, taboos, and traditions.

Understanding the unexplored to unravel  unknown universe of things.

Valuing variety and various hues of life.

Widening the wisdom to know the worth of ‘whys’ and ‘whats’ of  life.

X-raying in and x-axially to expand our vision.

Yoking the yin and yang to get what we yearn for .

Zero in on the zeitgeist of the present times.