Assimilating the Human Possibilities Vision

The Human Possibilities Vision, gifted to us by Swami Vivekananda calls upon every person to unfold his or her full potential as a person, and thereby be fulfilled. How do we help millions of ’vision-hungry’ people recognise and assimilate this life-affirming message of Vedanta?

- SRINIVAS VENKATRAM

I

Over a century ago, Swami Vivekananda reminded us that each soul is potentially divine and the goal of life is to manifest this divinity within.

The challenge ahead of us is translating this compelling vision into new models of education, new models of work, new models of living, and new models of institutions and society.

The Science of Human Possibilities is the pathway or means to translate this vision into reality.

II

To understand the term ‘science of human possibilities’, let us begin with the core axioms.

Axiom 1

Inside each human being lies infinite potentiality and the more we manifest this potentiality, the more fulfilled we are as human beings.

Axiom 2

When this potentiality (in a seed form) becomes manifest, it translates from a dormant potentiality to an active possibility. The real challenge therefore is to enable human beings to translate more and more of their dormant potentialities into active possibilities. A second, equally important challenge is to nurture and develop the active possibilities so that they are fully manifest as unique capabilities and contributions associated with the individual.

The axioms, by themselves, are fairly simple and known widely to anyone familiar with Ramakrishna-Vivekananda literature. The real question is: how to translate this vision into millions of transformed human beings across India and the rest of the world?

This means that the real bottleneck is not understanding these axioms, but assimilating them, thereby reshaping our engagement with ourselves, with others, and with society at large.

III