Ready, Study, Go!: Smart Ways to Learn

Preface (Bawa)

The first time I failed came as an absolute shock to me.

Not seeing your roll number on the list of graduating students is a truly terrible feeling. There are people whooping with joy all around you, and all you feel is that terrible sinking sensation in your stomach and a constricting heaviness in your chest as you begin to accept the horrific reality of failure and how you are going to face the world from then on.

I had been a fairly good student throughout my life, scoring in the upper sixties at the very least, sometimes even hitting the nineties. This time, however, I had not prepared enough. These were my final year exams for a bachelors’ degree in mathematics and I had relied on clearing one of the papers by copying from a friend. It didn’t quite work out, and I lost a year by seven marks.

It was quite a jolt, and after I finished punishing myself – no music, no friends, no TV, no computer games, etc., for about a month – I pulled myself together and decided to really study.

The next time I gave the exam, in October, I missed first class by seven marks. To prove a point to myself, I retook the exam the following year in May, this time becoming the college topper. I also helped two friends clear the exam, one who had failed five consecutive attempts and the other who was giving it for the first time. Both got first class.

After that, I dabbled around for a bit until a good friend of mine took me to meet his buddy, who was studying at IIT Bombay. Until that point, I had never ever even considered applying to IIT because I had thought that studying there required a very different mental make-up from the one I had.

When I did meet a few people studying at IIT, I found them to be normal (or very near it)… I suddenly found myself thinking that if those guys could manage to get to the hallowed halls of India’s most prestigious technical institution, I should be able to do it too!

It was too late for me to give the JEE and do a B.Tech., but a master’s degree seemed well within my reach.

The entrance exam was such that absolutely anything could be asked. Right from school to B.Sc. levels – and so I set about mastering my subject with determination. I had just a few weeks to accomplish the task, but managed pretty well, ranking fifteen in a group of more than 2,000 people who took the entrance exam.

My troubles began after the first few lectures I attended. It turned out that IIT was not much different from any other educational institution. You were supposed to make notes of what the professor wrote on the board and vomit it on to the answer sheet during exam time. Accurate vomiting got better grades.

It was not all bad, however. There were glimmers of wonder in the otherwise pedestrian teaching at IIT-B and some brilliant teachers rekindled the love for learning that the others systematically tried to extinguish.

To be able to get good grades in almost every subject notwithstanding the brilliance (or lack of) of the teacher teaching it was a formidable challenge. I managed to flunk yet again, but by the time I finished my master’s degree, I had a few professors encouraging me to do a PhD with them and a few others saying that I should go to the US and that they would give me glowing recommendations for the same.

I had also through bitter experience learnt how to learn. I had learnt the art of studying.

This book contains my secrets.

All the very best!

Jai Gurudeva!

Bawa

Preface (Dinesh)

Iloved school. Every single year I would get the award in school for not missing a single day. I used to enjoy learning. Learning new things gave me kicks even before I experienced alcohol or meditation.

In Grade 12, I missed getting into IIT where my elder brother was already studying. I dropped a year, didn’t take admission anywhere and studied exclusively for the IIT JEE. It made family members and sundry relatives extremely unhappy and nervous at the idea of losing a year, but I stuck to my decision. IIT JEE was one of the toughest exams in the world where more than 3,00,000 students appeared and just around 3,000 were selected. The coming year I managed to get through by sheer hard work.

IIT hit me hard. I had always been in the top ten of my class and in IIT I was somewhere near the bottom. I got pitted against the best of the best. I did manage to get in, but I got the extremely unglamorous metallurgy and material science specialization. I challenge anyone to find a more boring thing to study.

I took keen interest in sports and extracurricular activities. I volunteered with the Art of Living Foundation. I remained an average student and managed to get through and graduated. Amazingly though, I landed the most coveted job through our campus placements which was paying me more monthly than what my dad earned in a year and way ahead of my batch mates or my brother who had done MS and started working in the US. I could ascribe that to the life skills I learnt from being mentored by Bawa and volunteering for Art of Living.

I didn’t take that job, as it would mean I would have to leave India and I was too much in love with my country to consider that. I really wanted to contribute to India and first make a difference to the people around me.

I worked with Infosys for a little more than a year before I became a full-time faculty with the Art of Living.

From dropping a year to getting the best job on campus to becoming Art of Living’s youngest teacher was quite a journey. More than a decade later, Bawa and I, under the guidance of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, created the YES!+ course – Youth Empowerment and Skills – for young people above the age of eighteen. It is Art of Living’s flagship programme for youth and is offered in more than 100 countries worldwide.

We used to have one constant question from students almost everywhere. How do I concentrate on my studies?!

I must confess, I didn’t have the answer to that, but Bawa did. He agreed to write a book about it but only if I helped. Though we started with the idea of answering just that one question, we quickly realized, through our own experiences and discussions, that effective studying could never be an isolated activity. There was so much that surrounded it – fitness, the ability to work in groups, handling relationships, dealing with failure, leading teams … the list is long.

The result was this book.

You are holding in your hands the distilled knowledge of what we learnt through our victories and our failures over the last twenty-five years.

We had a fabulous time. Now it’s your turn.

Ready, Study, GO!

Jai Gurudeva!

Dinesh

The Seven Levels

We exist on seven levels. These are the Body, Breath, Mind, Memory, Intellect, Ego and Self.

We usually club the mind, memory and intellect into one unit and call it the ‘mind’. For many people, ‘studying’ seems to be a function of just this ‘mind’ (the mind-memory-intellect combo). They are quite wrong. Effective studying happens only when all seven levels of our existence are being nourished properly. Just as a good building is not simply the roof, floors and walls – but is a fantastic combination of those and many other elements such as the slope of the land, the climate, and the materials being used – truly effective studying happens only when all seven levels are taken care of.

The body is the gross aspect of a living being. If you don’t have a body, chances are you will not need textbooks or any other tip or tool described in this book to study. The body needs to be well taken care of. Proper exercise, yoga and a good diet will contribute big time towards great grades. An unhealthy body can greatly hamper your ability to study and perform well.

We all breathe. The breath is the only physiological function of the body over which we have some level of control. We can breathe faster or slower. We can hold the breath for a bit. Every emotion that we experience triggers a breathing pattern and conversely, a particular breathing pattern will usually trigger an emotion. Positive emotions are typically associated with long deep breaths and negative emotions trigger short, shallow, sharp breaths. Some sort of control over the breathing helps maintain a sense of calmness in adverse situations, allowing us to take good decisions. This is the essence of the science of Pranayama.

The mind is what we use to experience the universe around us, through the five senses. At any moment, there is a tremendous amount of stimulus being received by our senses. If we were aware of every last bit of it – if everything around us could impact us – then we would go crazy in a few seconds. The mind filters out stuff that is irrelevant and extraneous, making us experience only the things that are important.

Have you ever worn a watch after a long time of not wearing anything on your wrist? Did you notice how when you first wore it, you kept feeling it there, but in a few days you barely notice it? That’s the mind kicking in. To begin with it feels the watch as alien and something new, so it gives you the experience of wearing it. Later, once it has ‘accepted’ the watch as something that is constantly there, it makes you become almost unaware of it.

The mind is incredibly powerful at manifesting things you want. But it is also very innocent and cannot differentiate between a desire and a fear or an aversion. Have you noticed how when you don’t like someone and you don’t want to see them, they keep ‘coincidentally’ meeting you or getting in touch with you? This is your mind at work.

Making an intention clear is a delicate art. For example, instead of saying ‘I shouldn’t fail’, you should say ‘I should get great grades!’ The mind will latch on to the most powerful words – ‘fail’ or ‘great’ in this instance – and manifest that for you. It will actually create situations around you that will make this happen. For the same reason, you should not have many intentions at the same time. This confuses the mind and nothing or very little happens. When you can get the mind to work for you, you become almost unstoppable.

The intellect is your decision-making faculty. The intellect judges and discriminates. The memory stores past experiences. The intellect looks into the memory and then judges whether a particular thing should or shouldn’t be done.

For example: you are near an ice cream shop. The intellect goes into the memory and sees that the last time you ate ice cream it felt wonderful. So it says, ‘Go on, eat it, eat it!’

Say you are near fire on a cold day. The intellect goes in the memory and sees that some time ago you had been burned by a fire, which caused you pain; at the same time, it also remembers how nice and cosy you felt near a fire when it was cold. So it says to you, ‘It’s OK to be close to fire for the heat, but don’t go too close; be careful.’

The intellect also doubts. When there is stress, the intellect goes into ‘doubt mode’ and all good judgements go for a toss. Doubt can severely hamper your studying ability and your chances of success in the world. There are three types of doubts.

Doubts about yourself and your abilities – I am not good enough; I don’t think I can do this; I am hopeless; I cannot make any friends; I am pathetic at relationships, etc.

Doubts about the world in general – everyone is out to get me; I am not safe; no one likes me or loves me, etc.

Doubt in what you are doing – there is no point in studying this; this cannot possibly help me in the future, etc.

These are life-debilitating thoughts and can very quickly turn a happy, successful person into a nervous wreck.

Because of stress, the memory can get into the bad habit of clinging on to negative experiences you have had and then ‘eternalizing’ them. For example, getting stuck in a rut over past mistakes or failures, instead of drawing inspiration and hope from past achievements. Statements like ‘I always fall sick during exams’, ‘No one loves me or cares for me’ are examples of this. Be careful of releasing those intentions into the universe; the mind will manifest them for you.

The ego is that sense of ‘I’ that you have. A healthy ego is inclusive and loves to succeed along with others. It also learns from failure and mistakes and makes you genuinely concerned when others fail. It makes you feel big and generous. A healthy ego likes to give credit to others when credit is due and takes responsibility when things are going wrong. It puts a glow on your face and makes you smile more.

A sick ego is exclusive, born out of fear and feels jealous of others’ successes. Instead of learning from mistakes, it blames people and situations. It feels glee when others fail. A sick ego makes you feel small and stingy. A sick ego will refuse to take responsibility for failure and will almost never give any credit to others who contributed to your success. A sick ego makes you feel old and tired, and you hardly smile.

It is of critical importance for the mind to be calm, for the intellect to be doubt-free, for the memory to be clear and for the ego to be healthy. Then, one can perceive reality clearly and take rational, intelligent decisions. Only through awareness of yourself and the various building blocks that make ‘you’ can you truly succeed. The easiest way to bring about this awareness is by learning and regularly practising meditation.

The Self cannot be defined. It’s your very core. A glimpse of who you truly are can happen when you meditate. This brings great energy and stamina and you can achieve stuff you never ever dreamed possible.

When the seven levels are healthy and synchronized, then success comes almost effortlessly. Good luck follows you.

The Supercalifragilisticexpiali­do­cious Body

The odds of you being you are so remote that it’s an absolute miracle that you are indeed you.

One calculation puts the odd at 1 to 10²⁶⁸⁵⁰⁰⁰.

That’s a big number. It’s far bigger than the number of particles in the universe. In fact, it’s much bigger than the number of particles that would be in the universe if the universe itself were made up of particles, each of which was a universe!

Think about it. First of all, your parents had to have met and liked each other enough to get intimate. They would have needed to have sex at the exact moment they did. If your mom told your dad, ‘Not tonight, darling, I have a headache’. Poof! You vanish. And it goes further than that; since you are made up of the genetic information from your dad and mom, their parents would have needed to have met and have had sex when they did for your parents to be even born … and so on until the beginning of time. ‘You’ are an adventure four and a half billion years in the making!

Out of around 250 million sperm, you are made of that one sperm that managed to reach the egg deep inside the fallopian tubes and fertilize it first. You started life by being the champion in the only race that really matters, the most important race you would ever run (or swim). You (and me), all of us, started as winners!

The prize for winning that race is called Life.

We live our life in this vehicle called the body. The body is made of stuff that would put any science fiction or fantasy you could care to name to shame.

Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents.

More than 1,00,000 chemical reactions take place in your brain every second.

An average human being is made up of seven billion, billion, billion atoms. There is a lot of you!

You have more than 1,50,000 km of arteries, veins and capillaries inside you.

Human bones are as strong as granite. A one-inch block of human bone can hold nine tons of weight.

The human eye can distinguish ten million different colours. If it were a digital