All human beings aspire for a happy, fulfilling life. For a human being, there are two important questions pertaining to this What is my aspiration? (What to do?) and How to fulfil my aspiration? (How to do?).

It is essential to understand what a happy, fulfilling and successful life is. We are living in a skill domain. It is also necessary to learn the skills to actualise our aspirations. Values and skills should go hand in hand. Both values and skills are required. There is an essential complementarity between the two. The priority is values, then skills; i.e. first understanding ‘what to do’ and then developing the skills for ‘how to do’. And of course, checking if this results into a fulfilling life!

The following guidelines are important for Value Education

1.Universal: It has to be universally applicable to all human beings for all time and all places. This implies that values should not change according to sect, creed, nationality, gender, etc.

2.Rational: It has to appeal to reasoning; and not be based on dogmas or blind beliefs. It has to be open to address the related questions. It cannot be a set of sermons or do’s and don’ts.

3.Natural and Verifiable: It has to be 'naturally acceptable' to the human being and there needs to be every provision in nature for its fulfillment. It needs to be experientially verifiable, and not based on dogmas, beliefs or assumptions. It is not merely an intellectual exercise or information transfer.

4.All Encompassing: It needs to cover all dimensions (thought, behaviour, work and understanding) and levels (individual, family, society and nature/existence) of human life.

5.Leading to Harmony: It ultimately needs to promote harmony within the individual, among human beings and with the entire nature.

The content of Value Education is to understand human being, human aspirations, happiness; understand the goal of human life comprehensively; understand the other entities in nature, the innate inter-connectedness, the harmony in the nature/existence and finally the role of human being in this nature/existence.

The process for value education has to be that of self-exploration, which includes two things: verification at the

level of natural acceptance and experiential validation in living. Self exploration is the process to find out what is valuable to me by investigating within myself, what is right for me, true for me, has to be judged within myself. Through self exploration we get the value of ourselves.

It is a process of seeing the reality on our own right, by our own investigation, observation and analysis. Through this process, we are trying to understand the reality that exists and our participation with it; this participation is what we are calling values. Further, self-exploration is a process of dialogue. It is a dialogue within your own Self.

Natural acceptance has to do with something fundamental, something related to our purpose, something related to our basic desires. When we ask a question related to these, we get a definite answer from our natural acceptance. For example,

• Is happiness naturally acceptable or is unhappiness naturally acceptable?

• Is it naturally acceptable to live in relationship or in opposition?

• What is naturally acceptable – to nurture your Body or to exploit it?

For all these questions, we get a definite answer when we refer to our natural acceptance.

Experiential validation 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 is work with rest of nature. When we are behaving with human being on the basis of this proposal, we want 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.

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.

* Right Understanding: This refers to higher order human skills – the need to learn and utilize our intelligence most effectively.

*Good Relationships: This refers to the interpersonal relationships that a person builds in his or her life – at home, at the workplace and in society.

*Physical Facilities: This 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.

Physical Facilities include 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.

Happiness may be defined as being in harmony/synergy in the state/ situation that I live in. “A state or situation in

which I live, if there is harmony in it then I like to be in that state/situation. The state of liking is happiness.” Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure or joy. Happiness may be described as consisting of positive emotions and positive activities. There may be three kinds of happiness: pleasure, engagement, and meaning. In other words, freedom from want and distress, consciousness of the good order of things, assurance of one’s place in the universe or society, inner peace and so forth. Happiness is the state of mind, where we feel good in most of the walk of life.

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-

1. Identification of the required quantity of physical facilities, and

2. 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.