Interview with Dr. Laj Utreja, Teacher and director of Institute on Global Harmony
IGH Guiding principles
Some of our values pertaining to harmony are:
- Encouraging and motivating even a single child in a value-based human-centric education equals motivating the entire manifestation for a universal system of global human conduct.
- True knowledge and true wealth are gotten only through intense practice and cultivation of dispassion.
- Unbounded freedom is meaningless. There must be freedom for selecting the type of life, practice of faith, endeavor for excellence, and personal fulfillment for mutual satisfaction
- Integrated social, economic, and political systems afford equal education, equal healthcare, and equal opportunity for all to create a just and harmonious society
- Political power without justice is meaningless. Policies must render just laws to regulate just economies so that just societies can flourish
Our Guiding Principles
Emphasis will be placed on the following core principles in imparting education:
- Cooperation unites people and brings order, a key element of harmony. Competition separates people and breeds greed and violence.
- Earnest, efficient and effective delivery of duties increases human potential. False sense of rights keeps people from personal growth.
- Excellence (perfection) is a human potential, which comes by developing skill in action (which can be gotten only by connecting to the source, the whole, or to the system) rather than incentive, which turns skill into an avenue for self-promotion and greed.
- Integrated social, economic and political system affords equal law, equal justice and equal opportunity to create a sustainable society.
- Transformation is possible by learning, reflecting and living until it is self-obvious and understood.
Our Commitment
- To create a sustainable future of humankind by transforming societies through self-transformation; and
- To create an Order of Global Human Conduct for an Indivisible Human Society
“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.” (Vince Lombardi)
What you would learn at IGH?
IGH is collective teaching and learning experience that would transform the very educational system, methods of imparting teaching and learning comprehension.
Come and co-develop the education system that you’d like your children to have.
What would you like to learn? If I were you, I’d say: the truth about me, the truth about the society, the truth about the world, and the truth about the environment.
The next thing I’d like to learn is: what would sustain me, my family, my society, my world and my environment.
The last thing I’d like to learn is: what should be my conduct with myself, my family, my society, my world and my environment.
Compiled altogether, I want to learn about truth, sustainability and justice.
Once you’ve learned about truth, sustainability and justice (becoming subject matter experts), start teaching about truth, sustainability and justice (become harmony teachers), and lastly pursue introducing truth, sustainability and justice (become curricula writers) in the educational systems all over the world.
Truth is the ultimate knowledge
Wouldn’t you like to appease your curiosity by finding satisfactory answers to your questions so that you are doubt free?
What does one need to know about the Truth
What really remains to be known after you know who you are, where are you coming from and what is your purpose?
An appeal with a solution
Come and be a part of collectively building a society, in which every person is resolved in the self (cause of all problems related to truth), lives in a complaint-free family that is prosperous (cause of all problems related to justice), and community that is fearless (cause of all problems related to justice) and lives in harmony with nature (cause of all problems of sustainability).
Come and collectively learn, teach and live to transform your societies by knowing who you are, knowing what sustains you and knowing your conduct with other human beings and the environment.
Of most importance is to come together and collectively learn to transform the societies by learning how can we restore and sustain arable land, potable water and clean air.
Come and collectively learn how to conduct with the self and the other human beings and environment so that justice is maintained
A life worth living
Wouldn’t you rather live in a society in which everyone trusts the other and treats every person with respect, shares a humor without any fear of being misunderstood, people work together to find solutions to their common problems, work and enjoy the time together as a festival on daily basis.
Perspectives
Do you really think someone can be smart enough to deserve hundreds of million dollars in compensation in a year and someone else could be as dumb as not to be able to live with human dignity?
The biggest mistake
Do you think people are out there just to knock you down, to kill you or to just get rid of you simply because you are a human being? Should this not be our duty to teach everyone what is it to be called a human being so that they live like a human being and not even worry about personal security and protection by making weapon(s)? All we need is to learn to live by the Golden Rule of Human Conduct and that is, “Do not do unto others, what you wouldn’t want done unto you.”
The only way to maintain justice
If I know the relationship between me and the other and if I know the value that binds me in that relationship and if I maintain that value in that relationship and the other does the same to mutual satisfaction, it would be justice served.
The only solution to curb aggression and violence
What would be better way of living: To give an opportunity to all having a dignified job that suits one’s interests and skills than to build weapons and guns?
Need responsible and forward thinking students and teachers
Join the initiative to collectively create the world you want to see.
The state of the world is replete with rampant corruption, hypocrisy, lies and misuse of wealth and power by the nation states and big businesses. This unsustainable human conduct has widened the already existing disproportionate economic gap between the Haves and the Have-nots and degradation of the environment. The situation warrants understanding of human condition, human purpose and human responsibility.
Responsibility is a human value based on existential principles. It is acquired or accepted to fulfill a need to honestly participate in a system of which one is a part. It is rendered based on individual ability to participate in the system.
Forward thinkers are those who can clearly see the wisdom of arresting the momentum of the prevailing environment of greed and aggression. This environment has gravely impacted our very resources that we depend upon for our preservation – arable land, potable water, and clean air.
Responsible and forward thinking teachers and students committed to create a sustainable future for all humankind are sought to teach, learn and share the right knowledge based on existential principles.
Introduction of the existential principles in education and society are necessary to realize the wisdom in correcting the current trend of competition, rights, incentives and fragmentation of knowledge leading toward an unsustainable trajectory. The situation warrants the need for responsible teachers and willing students.
A responsible teacher willingly accepts the challenge to participate in rebuilding our broken world for the greater good of human society in the face of adverse social, economic and political conditions.
Please call us, write us and join us to learn more to be a part of this first of its kind experiment based on an unprecedented theory of undivided human society and universal code of human conduct that would bring about the global social change by creating one teacher and one student at a time.
“We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question that divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.”
( Niels Bohr – Wikiquote)
( Niels Bohr – Wikiquote)
“He who cannot explain it to a 6 years old child, has not understood it himself.”
(Albert Einstein)
(Albert Einstein)
Let me introduce myself
Greetings! For some time now, I’d in mind to introduce myself. In the following few paragraphs, you’d read a brief description about me.
My name is Laj Utreja. I was born in New Delhi, the capital of the then newly formed nation-state India on August 15, 1947 carved out from the greater British India Empire. My parents, from a well-to-do family residing in the present day West Punjab province of the British India, being Hindus were forced to come to India as refugees under rather dire conditions. I don’t have to elaborate more on that – you all have read stories of the refugees. After 5 years of struggle, moving from one place to another, my parents finally settled in Delhi.
My childhood, with my siblings, and friends, was an ordinary, pleasant and event free period of my life. It was steeped in the loving care of my parents. My parents were a one stop shop, where all of my needs were met. We as siblings had no understanding of rights, besides the fact that our needs were met. Even though it was from the eyes of a child, yet, looking back, what I saw was a clear display of duty performed by each one of my parents.
As a child my favorite after-school activities were playing field hockey, acting in staged dramas, and reading books on general knowledge. I passed Higher Secondary Certificate from the Technical Higher Secondary School (THSS) in Delhi. It was the first time I sat through a competition (and I didn’t even know what it meant) to get an admission in the 9th grade. At THSS, I attended machine shop, electric shop and wood working shop, in addition to the other courses taught at regular higher secondary schools.
After Higher Secondary, I entered yet another competition for admission to Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT/K) where I earned a B. Tech. degree in Aeronautical Engineering. There, for the first time, meeting students from all around, I learned about India, its rich heritage and its diversity of different languages and cultures. I also learned a lot about the USA, because my instruction all through my major years was delivered by professors from the USA. Two observations were noticeable: 1. India is a land of diverse faiths, races, caste systems, genders, languages and dialects, and 2. it is important to make good grades and be at the top, if we’re to get a better job. Beginning summer 1966, after graduation, I worked for 2 years at the Civil Aviation Department in New Delhi. My assignment was to increase the performance of sailplanes using flight data.
With a desire for world travel, I applied to a few universities in the USA to secure an admission. In 1968, I got an opportunity to go to the University of Minnesota for graduate studies, where I earned an MS degree in Mechanics and Mathematics and completed all the requirements of a PhD undertaking. I later completed Ph.D. in Computational Fluid Dynamics at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In the meantime, circumstances necessitated that I take a job during the then slump aerospace industry. I worked for the aerospace industry, and had a small business with NASA and the US Army. I also taught at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Some of the professional areas of interest were Solid Rocket Booster Recovery System, Hollow-Nosed Cavity Infra-Red Seeker system, Space Debris capture concept, Hypervelocity guns, Aerodynamic analysis and testing.
Then, out of the blue, one of the tragedies hit me so hard that compelled me to seek who I am. That persistent thought sent me to places such as Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania, Self-Realization Fellowship in Anaheim, California, Prashanti Nilayam in Puttaparthy, Chardham in Uttaranchal, and Mount Kailash in Tibet. I’d notable experiences at all of those places. It is because of those self-searching journeys, that today I’m at peace with myself.
An appeal and request to students all over the world
An earnest appeal …
- My generation and several previous generations have not lived responsibly to assure human sustainability.
- You are the future of human kind, so assume responsibility to steer us in the right direction.
- You know that the Earth is sick. Here’s the proof: There is a global climate change; greed, selfishness and aggression have entered the psychosomatic makeup of most human beings. These things are making the planet uninhabitable.
- Only you through understanding can reverse the unsustainable trajectory of the sick Earth and its inhabitants being coerced and constrained by aggression of the nation states and greed of the big businesses.
- You can do so by knowing who you are – a unit of the Knowledge Order.
- Just like the Material Order, Plant Order, and the Animal Order, who are in harmony with each other, you can also create an Undivided Human Society under a Universal System of Human Conduct.
- This will create a harmonious civilization. And I’ll share with you a paradigm shift in education to do so.
- You can take the first step by joining the Institute of Global Harmony.
- I value your time to read this.
- The decision is yours.
Institute of Global Harmony (IGH) is an idea whose time has come
There are five proper nouns and/or phrases and an abbreviation in the above phrase that need to be explained:
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An Institute is an organization founded for a religious, educational, professional, or social purpose; it can be an organization providing residential care for people with special needs, such as an ‘an academic institution;’ or it can be an established official organization having an important role in a society, such as the educational, religious or political.
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