Universal Human Values

Module-1

Universal Human Values: These are the principles or beliefs that re considered to be important
and applicable to all people regardless of their cultural, religious or any geographical
background. In other words, it is about human being living with clarity, happiness and
responsibility, about human society living with trust and about living with co-existence in
nature. These values include ethical behaviour, understanding human aspirations, human
conduct, right understanding of knowledge, etc. Some of the examples of UHV include
honesty, respect, justice, love, compassion, empathy, integrity.
However, these fundamental human values would vary in forms of expression in
different cultures. For example, the fundamental human value of respect may be expressed by
shaking hands in one culture and by bowing down in another culture. What is fundamental here
is the value of respect.

Need of UHV: Only after understanding UHV, he/she can be in harmony within and participate
meaningfully with other human beings (in family and society) as well as with the rest of the
nature. This is the basic need of UHV.

Importance of Human Values in the Prevailing Education System:

The base of any society is developed through education. Of course, education is not just the
formal education, but it also includes the impact of the family and the society at large.
The prevailing education system is based on a materialistic world view. This modern
world-view is trying to understand human happiness in terms of physical facility alone and in
that sense, it is incomplete. It is preparing the students for a materialistic society.
The impact of this perspective is quite damaging. It undermines the traditional wisdom
that human being has a higher purpose than just materialistic development. It can be seen today
that the problems are not due to the mere lack of physical resources but rather the lack of feeling
of relatedness amongst people and more significantly the lack of understanding of human
purpose. Traditional societies have aspired for higher human goals in terms of truth, love,
compassion in every human being.
Thus, UHV has been implemented in the present education system, so that the students
can have a right understanding about these values, can explore them, find out the importance
of values and make efforts for ensuring them in their life.

Guidelines for Value Education:

1. Universal: The values that we have learnt from our parents, teachers, our forefathers
are applicable to each and every human being and to every nation.
2. Rational: These values are rational i.e. we know that some of the values are right for
us, while some values are not. It is not based on blind beliefs.
3. Verifiable: If we live as per those values and find that these values are leading to our
mutual fulfilment i.e. we are able to achieve our desired result, then these values are
correct, which means we can experientially verify those values.
4. All encompassing: These values deal with our thought, behaviour, action and
realization. At the same time, it leads to all levels i.e. at the level of self (individual),
family, society and nation.
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Content of Value Education:
The value of an entity is its participation in the larger order of which it is a part. The context is
always the larger order. For example, a piece of chalk is a unit. The classroom is the larger
order for this unit. The value of chalk is that it can be used to write on the blackboard for the
desired functioning of the classroom.
Now, my participation as a human being in the larger order means to ensure the feeling
of respect, trust, love and mutual fulfilment in the relationship. In this way, I am happy in
fulfilling my role and it is fulfilling the other as well. Thus, the value of human being is to
ensure mutual fulfilment in the larger order starting from within, then extending it to family,
society and then to nature.
Accordingly, the content of Value Education is to understand human being, human
aspirations, happiness and prosperity, understand the goal of human life comprehensively,
understand the other entities in nature, the harmony in the nature and finally the role of human
being in this nature.
Hence, it has to encompass understanding of harmony at various levels namely
individual, family, society, nature and its existence and finally learning to live in accordance
with this understanding by being vigilant to one’s thought, behaviour, work and realization.

Basic requirements for fulfilling Human Aspirations:

Happiness and prosperity are the basic human aspirations and we always want to have a happy
and a prosperous life. But when we ask ourselves whether are we able to achieve it, the answer
is not so obvious. There is a quite gap between our basic aspirations and the state of being. The
reason underlying behind is that in today’s world, people are generally working for the
accumulation of physical facility. The basic problem is that we have assumed ‘happiness and
prosperity will automatically come if we have enough physical facility’.
Thus, there is something that we need to explore in our own life by asking these two
questions:
1. Is the happiness in the family is more due to lack of physical facility? If yes, then how
much time and effort is invested in fulfilling it?
2. Is the happiness in the family is more due to lack of mutual fulfilment in the
relationship? If yes, then how much time and effort is invested in fulfilling it?
If we have the right understanding about these feelings, then we are on the right direction.
Now, let us look at the physical facility in terms of animals and human beings.
For animals, we see that animals need physical things to survive mainly to take care of their
body. For example, a cow will look for food when it is hungry. Once it gets the grass, it eats it
and sits around to chew at leisure. Animals do not desire other things like knowledge or a
peaceful animal society.
On the other hand for humans, if they are hungry, they look for some food. Once they
have it, they do not normally sit around and relax. People have other needs, other plans like
going for a movie, watching TV, reading a book, spending time with family and friends, and
so on. The list is endless. Thus, it is easy to see that while physical facilities are necessary for
us as human beings, they are not complete by themselves to fulfil our needs. Our needs are
more than just physical facilities.

PHYSICAL FACILTY Animals (Necessary and Adequate)

Humans (Necessary but not adequate)

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Besides physical facility, human beings want relationships i.e. relationship with family, with
friends, with siblings, and so on. When we have a problem in these relationships, it troubles us,
we are bothered by it. Thus for humans, there are two needs:
1. Relationship
2. Physical Facility
In relationship, we want mutual fulfilment. But does this mutual fulfilment stays with us or the
other person continuously. The answer is not so affirmative, because there may be arguments,
fights, difference of opinion at some point of time. This makes us unhappy.
From physical facilities we acquire prosperity. Prosperity is the feeling of having more
than required physical facility. For physical facility, wealth is required. But are we satisfied
with the wealth today or do we want more? How much is this more? From this question, it is
obvious that we may have wealth, but we are not able to feel prosperous.
These are some of the problems as stated above, which are always present. The main
solution to these problems is the need for right understanding. As long as we live with wrong
assumptions, we shall continue to have the problems in ourselves and have problems in
relationship, and that is why we are not able to be happy and prosperous at the same time.
Thus, there are three basic requirements to ensure happiness and prosperity in one’s life
which is categorised priority wise as follows.
1. Right Understanding
2. Relationships
3. Physical Facility

Process of Value Education: Self-exploration

Human values can be understood by an appropriate process of self-discovery, because they are
potentially there in each and every human being. There is already a natural acceptance for
values in a human being. It is only that we have to discover them or become aware of them.
Thus, the process of value education has to be that of self-exploration and not giving religious
advice or telling someone what to do and what not to.
Whatever is found to be valuable must be stated as a proposal and every student is to
be encouraged to verify it on his/her own right. The process of self-exploration has to be in the
form of a dialogue between a teacher and a student to begin with, then within the student
between ‘what I am’ and ‘what I really want to be’, which is the natural acceptance.
Self -exploration is the process of seeing the reality on one’s own right by their own
investigation, observation and analysis. If the proposal is naturally acceptable to you, it is a
right proposal, otherwise it is not a right proposal.

The following points to appreciate self-exploration and its purpose are:

1. It is a process of dialogue within. It a process of dialogue between ‘what I am’ and
‘what I really want to be’. ‘What I am’ has to do with my desires, my thoughts,
expectations, etc, that is going on in my imagination, whereas ‘what I really want to be’
is my intention which is the natural acceptance. If these two are same, then there is no
problem which means we are in a state of harmony within. On the other hand, if these
two are different, then conflict or contradiction come within us, which implies we are
in a state of unhappiness. So, there is something that needs to be explored within us.

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 2. It is a process of self-evolution through self-exploration. The self-exploration leads
to our own improvement, our own self-evolution i.e. we become qualitatively better. It
is not about exploring outside us, but inside us.
3. It is a process of knowing oneself and through that knowing the entire existence.
Self-exploration leads to know ourselves better. If I don’t know myself and not sure of
myself, how can I be sure of what I want and what is valuable or necessary to me. Once
we are able to know ourselves correctly, we can understand the people we live with, the
family we are born in, the people in the society with whom we interact and finally the
nature.
4. It is a process of recognizing one’s relationship and fulfilling it. Once we start
knowing ourselves and everything beside us, we shall understand our relationship with
them. We live with family and society, we live with nature i.e. with animals, birds,
plants, etc. and on the larger scale we may say that we are in a relationship with the
space (air, water, etc), stars, planets and so on. But do we know our relationship with
all of these entities. If we do not understand these relationships, it will lead to problems.
Suppose due to lack of understanding, if we believe that animals might breathe away
all the air and hence all animals should be killed so that there is enough oxygen for
human beings, it would be disastrous. For example, the problem of misunderstanding
in relationship, wars and crime in society, the problem of pollution in nature, all these
are lack of right understanding. This understanding will be complete only through the
process of self-exploration.
5. It is a process of knowing human conduct, human character and living
accordingly. We all want to have a definite character, a definite human conduct. We
are not satisfied with having an indefinite conduct, though we are living with
indefiniteness. For example, we can’t be sure of how we are going to be this very
afternoon or what will be our mood tomorrow morning. Sometimes we are not even
sure about what mindset we are going to have the next moment. Thus, we need to
explore.
There is a need to understand this definite conduct in a human being and how it
can be ensured, which can be achieved by the process of self-exploration.
6. It is a process of being in harmony with oneself and in harmony with entire
existence. Through the process of self-exploration, we can establish a relation between
‘what I am’ and ‘what I really want to be’. This enables us to be in harmony within
ourselves. Through the same process, we are able to explore into the harmony in the
entire existence.

Content of Self-exploration:
It has two sub-parts.
1. Desire: This is related to ‘What is my basic aspiration?’
2. Program: This relates to ‘What is the process to fulfil the basic aspiration?’

Process of Self-exploration:
Whatever is found to be valuable should be stated as a proposal. It has to be verified on one’s
own right on the basis of natural acceptance, which is the first part of the process of self-
exploration. It should not be assumed to be true or false on the basis of (a) scriptures i.e. what

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is written, (b) on the basis of others i.e. somebody tells you something that he/she believes to
be true.
The second part is the 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
second one is to work with the rest of the nature. For the first part, if we want to verify whether
it leads to mutual happiness, then it is a right proposal, and if not, then it is not a right proposal.
Similarly, if one tries to verify for the second part, whether it leads to mutual prosperity, if the
answer is yes, it is a right proposal, otherwise it is not a right proposal.

Understanding natural acceptance on the basis of right understanding:

Natural acceptance has to do with something fundamental, something related to our purpose,
something related to our basic desires.
The characteristics of natural acceptance are the following:
1. It does not change with time.
2. It does not change with place.
3. It does not change with the individual.
4. It is definite.
5. It does not depend on our beliefs.
6. It is a part and parcel of our being, i.e. we do not need to create it.
Right understanding through self-exploration can be recognized as follows:
1. It is assuring.
2. It is satisfying.
3. It is universal.
If any of these criteria is not fulfilled, it means it is not the right understanding, which means
we have to continue exploring ourselves.
Self-exploration ultimately results in right understanding of the entire existence, i.e.
‘realization of our co-existence’, ‘understanding harmony’ and ‘mutual happiness in
relationship’.