History of the Alice Project – Interview with Valentino Giacomin – by Hariom Rai
When did you arrive in India ? What was your feeling?
I arrived in India 25 years ago. When I got off the airplane, the first thing I felt was “I'm home!” I was struck by the smell of the earth, very much like that of the fields I was so familiar with. I was quickly told that it was a “karmic feeling”.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“It means that India was your country in a previous life”, replied a pandit.
I then thought that the story about reincarnation sounded like a trick reserved for naïve tourists, but I accepted it like a beautiful fable.
Many things were familiar to me in India . The environment, the lifestyle, the farmers and their work, the religious character of the people…very much like my own town in Italy . Fifty years ago, it was exactly like the Indian villages. Poorly-built houses with earthen floors, hand-pumps for water, the use of animals to work the earth (plough, transport of products), family-arranged marriages, strict segregation of women, high illiteracy level, a profound respect/fear of Nature, widespread belief in the existence of spirits, great religious.
However, there were also essential differences. In my country, animals were considered little more than mere objects. Cows, for example, were in no way sacred. A cow was only considered to have commercial value. It was, therefore, used – indeed, mercilessly exploited – to do work in the fields, produce milk, for reproduction and, finally, when it aged, it was slaughtered without pity.
As a boy, I remember the desperate laments of the mother cow when my father would take away her calf and send it to the knacker's. Normally, an obese man would come to our house, inspect the calf, tie it up, weigh it as if it were a sack of flour, then would negotiate the price with my father. After that, the poor calf would be mightily hurled into a truck together with other animals mooing desperately because they ‘sensed' their end was near. Meanwhile, the mother cow would continue to lament its own suffering due to the loss of its calf.
For days, the animal would express its sorrow for the disappearance of the calf. “It's only an animal”, my father would say. “Animals don't suffer. They don't feel any emotions like we do. They only have instincts”.
I felt there was something I was missing in that whole tragedy. My father's explanation wasn't totally convincing. Nonetheless, there was nothing in the culture of my village which was in contradiction to my parents' explanations. “Only humans have souls! Therefore, only they can experience salvation. Civilized beings use the power of reasoning. We in the West are very fortunate because we are civilized and we don't believe, like the Africans or the Indians, in spirits or reincarnation!”
In school, students laughed at the superstitions of a people who believed in the idea of a river representing a Deity. I remember that when they spoke of India , there was mention of the ‘sacred cows'. “Indians die of hunger but they let the cows roam freely!” was the usual sarcastic comment made by the teachers. And, of course, there were the usual references to the caste system and arranged marriages as if these didn't exist in Italy and young people were able to choose their partners freely – I'm referring to my generation! My sisters, for example, have all had their marriages arranged in the sense that their husbands had to be, first of all, accepted by my parents. I remember that one of my sisters (I have three) fell in love with the young owner of a shop near where she worked. Their relationship would have ended up in a happy…and wealthy marriage but my mother opposed it. “You have to marry a farmer and land owner. That way, you will always have security in life!” My sister was forced to leave her shop owner fiancé and she finally married a farmer like my mother had said.
What do you think about the caste problem, in India ?
What can I say about the caste system? Just look at whom the children of rich parents go out with in the Western democratic countries. Who their friends are and whom they marry. In the west, we have a caste system based on money and wealth and not on differences in the religious realizations attained (as it used to be according to the teachings of the B. Ghita).
Thus, students had an idea of India , which was totally incorrect and very far from reality. By the time I discovered the truth about India , I was an older man but still able to react to the stereotypes and the false information which left this great country (in all senses) in a rather bad situation.
What caused your opinion to change?
I was about thirty years old and had just lost my job as director of an opinion weekly. For nearly two years, the newspaper had waged hard battles against corrupt politicians and terrorist extremists. In the end, our editor was elected to parliament and the newspaper was left without any money to carry on. I found myself unemployed and with about ten court actions against me for slander (I was responsible for the newspaper).
Given the reputation I had acquired as a ‘revolutionary' running a critique magazine, no other paper was willing to give me a job (at the time, printing presses were controlled by rich industrialists who were very unsympathetic to democratic values and freedom of opinion.
I therefore found myself forced to accept all the spare time in the world and all sorts of time to reflect and think. Depression is a ‘must' under these circumstances. I ended up in the hospital diagnosed of psychosomatic illness and that's when I was converted. One day, while I was strolling down the corridors, I saw a man behind a white screen. “What's the matter with him?” I asked the nurse.
“He's dying”, she replied.
“Dying?” I asked incredulously. For the first time, death had come into the picture. I observed the man. He was alone. No relatives were with him. His breathing was that of…the dying. A brief intake of air, then an endless pause, then again a short breath…
The nurse seemed to read my thoughts and said, “He's not really in deep pain. He's in coma”.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“He was a rich businessman!” replied the nurse. She used the past tense as if he had already died.
I thought, “This is the end that awaits all of us. One day, I will go through the same as this man. One short inspiration, one endless pause…in coma! What does being ‘in coma' mean? Where is his conscience? What does this nurse know about the conscience and the mind? Is he really not suffering?
Then a key question appeared in my mind. “Who can help this man in such a dramatic moment in his life? After all, who knows how much the poor guy has done for his family so they may have a comfortable life, a beautiful house, wealth, respect…and now, what is left of all that? What profit can he take, in such a crucial moment of his life, of all he's studied, worked, accumulated during his life? Who and what will help me when I find myself in the same circumstances?”
I can remember vividly that a certain word came to my mind: yoga. Perhaps due to the fact that the word produced a major change and an important conclusion. Only yoga can help a man's conscience when he is about to die. I knew almost nothing about this important discipline but I immediately associated it with India , ‘sacred cows' and the ‘caste system'. I realized that while I knew practically everything (all negative) about the ‘sacred cows' and the ‘castes', I knew practically nothing about India 's treasures and its ancient wisdom, such as yoga.
That is how, once discharged from the hospital, I decided to look for a valid address where I might find a ‘course on yoga'. I didn't realize then that the path to yoga meditation is a complex one and offers numerous options: Antar Mouna, Japa, Ajapa Japa, Chidakasha Dharana, Yoga Nidra, Prana Vidya, Trataka, Nada meditation, Gyana Yoga meditation, Kriya Yoga, Chakra Location and Dhyana, Tantric meditation…
I ended up in a small town in Tuscany where a course on Buddhist yoga was being held. That was the start of a long journey researching and looking for the answer to the question I had asked myself that day in the hospital corridor, “Who can help us during the loneliness we experience at death?”
What did you discover in your journey for the Truth?
First of all, I discovered the negative path as it is called here in India or “neti-neti” That is, “neither this nor that”. I also discovered that Wise Indian Men have known the answer for thousands of years. The mathematics we study in school and even less at university won't be of any help. None of the subjects studied by students in order to pass class X will be of any help.
These subjects are of no use at the moment of death. They are also of little use during one's life except for reading, writing and the arithmetic required by a bricklayer or a housewife. So, if these subjects are not useful at a time when we are most in need, what sense is there in dedicating so many years of effort, sacrifice and study? On the other hand, can a student who is being asked to study subjects which are largely useless, be happy?
Are you saying that the traditional subjects that we study in our schools are useless?
I'm saying that we cannot find happiness studying math or geography. If it were true that the traditional curriculum, which primes on the academic subjects, produces happiness, then the West should be a true paradise. If we read the newspapers and the statistics, we will easily see that it isn't true. Every year, we hear of students going mad and killing teachers and classmates. Nearly 25% of primary school students experience concentration and depression-related problems. The American model not only has produced poor results at home, but it is also exported through the power of the multinationals and the media (television and newspapers). In Japan , home of materialism and efficiency based on a very strict, competitive and totally lay school system, (devoid of Dharma), there are almost 30,000 suicides every year.
What about India ?
India is very quickly following the footsteps of the suicidal Anglo-american cultural model. A survey appeared in India Today . There were extremely alarming data about today's generation. Let's have a look at some of these:
• “Adolescent obesity is like an epidemic”, admits an endocrinologist. In Delhi and Chandigarh , one in every four teenagers is obese, while a study of schoolchildren in Chennai shows 18 per cent boys and 16 per cent girls are overweight. The Indian students seem to become more obese than American and UK !
• 40 per cent of Delhi schools has high cholesterol and diabetes problems.
• 35 per cent has bad eyesight.
• 40 per cent students suffer from anxiety , stress related emotional disorders due to academic pressure, lack of family support.
• Teen suicide rates have trebled in the past 25 years.
• Nearly 32 per cent of urban teens have alcohol and 25 per cent smoke.
No data on AIDS is given but the research done by private NGO's seems to indicate that the problem is reaching alarming proportions. For example, it is certain that a major part of the Darjeeling youth is addicted to drugs. Many are proved to be HIV positive.
Where did the paradise promised by our school system go? What's the sense in insisting on an academic curriculum which doesn't produce happiness but instead increases competition, alienation, anxiety and depression?
What does the academic curriculum lack and what is Alice Project's proposal?
Project Alice was born out of the aforementioned existential crisis and the Tibetan yoga course, which took place twenty years ago. It was a proposal to the Italian Public School Board and an attempt to find an answer to the educational crisis-taking place in post-modern society in order to help the younger generations to avoid a major crisis at particularly difficult moments (for example, the death of a relative, the loss of a job, a serious illness, an economic crisis….).
That's how Project Alice was born. It included a program including yoga and mathematics; meditation and laboratory work; analysis of the mind and factorial, physical and meta-physical analysis; science and astrology; allopathic and ayurvedic medicine; re-enforcement of the I and its transcendence; verbal and written expression and silence as a value; learning to speak and to listen…
Are you experimenting Alice Project in India for the first time? What are the main concepts of Alice Project?
Absolutely, not. For at least ten years, the Alice Project team worked within the Italian Public School system in order to show the harm produced by a non-integrated, one-sided educational system (only mathematics, for example, and no Dharma) and to propose an alternative.
As previously mentioned, what was found lacking (and is still lacking) in our schools in the West – and now also in the East – is the spiritual aspect, man's non-materialistic dimension. Manohar Joshi, ex Human Resources and Development Minister said in an address to Indian students living in America , “While a state based on religion is a theocracy, a state based on dharma would have equal respect from all religions.”
Ghandhi's biggest error was to secularize Indian schools. He did it to avoid religious conflict among students and out of respect for religious liberty. My country imitated Ghandi not too long ago eliminating the religious nature it had always had. Before the reform was carried out, every single day of the calendar had a religious connotation as well as a geographic one. Every season was assigned a certain religious ritual or commemoration. For example, spring was associated with Easter, roses, the reciting of the Rosary, which is a prayer to the Virgin Mary recited over and over. Winter was associated to Christmas and so on.
The same was the case for India . Life was not separate from the religious, from spirituality.
What is your criticism of secularism?
With secularization, the best of our traditions was over and done with. All religious symbols were taken away from the schools. Prayers before and after the start of class were no longer said.
Some years ago, in India , there was a bitter controversy over a proposal made by the aforementioned Minister. He had suggested that a prayer to Saraswati, the goddess of Wisdom, be reintroduced in Indian schools.
Why should anyone be afraid of a goddess? What harm is there in a Christian or a Muslim reciting a Hindu prayer?
Yet, today more than ever, those prayers that belong to a religion, which is not ours, are considered to be heretic, blasphemy, and pure sin. Thus, schools in both the West and the East have not only eliminated religion from their curricula and their educational methodology, but they have also done away with spirituality; Dharma. Students are forced to keep a part of themselves outside of the classroom. During class, the student wears a mask and only part of his brain and his soul actually listens to the usually useless things that are being forced upon him by the teachers.
Any message for our teachers and principals?
I would now like to ask the principals of our schools in Varanasi , those who continue to allow the use of the bamboo cane to beat those children who haven't studied or who are undisciplined, “Do you really think you will make future generations of good citizens in this wonderful country through the use of the cane and sadistic behavior?” Who really believes that a child who can memorize an entire chapter from a book or who can recite all the possible trigonometric formulae will necessarily be a good citizen? Or a happy and realized human being? If that were true, the West should indeed be a ‘paradise on earth' with all its mathematics, sciences, technology and all of its rational thinking. As we have mentioned before, it is certainly not the case.
I wish to cite Minister Joshi once again, not because he belongs to a particular party, but because I believe he has said highly sensible and profound things. Again about America , where the model for many European schools – and now also for many Asian ones as well – has come from, he said the following:
“ The materialistic view of the world has not succeeded in creating a harmonious society and has increased sufferings and tensions among the individuals and nations also… Those societies that place a particular emphasis on consumerism have harmed the environment and this is being felt across the world !”
India's wisdom has once again shed some light on the reigning confusion in the West but, what is being done to avoid the ‘Americanization' of this country, which, according to Osho, once was the cradle of all religions and spirituality for the entire world? At this point, however, it must be said that as in all situations where there exist two clear poles, we tend to make the same mistake over and over again. The West and the East must not be seen in terms of black and white. Each of the poles has its own positive and negative aspects and it is precisely the negative aspects of each of the poles, which we must not be tempted to imitate.
How does Alice Project fill the gap between West and East?
Alice Project has seized the very wisdom of India and has tried to put a stop to the self-destructive rat-race and to the madness which characterizes the young generations. We needn't invent anything. It's already in the Holy scriptures of the Hindus, Buddhists and Jainists. In our schools in India and in other countries, we are trying to re-introduce that which is sacred, the religious symbols, mythology. In other words, we are trying to tell our students that there is not only a personal dimension (awareness of the I) but there also exists a trans-personal dimension that goes beyond rationality, science, mathematics and chemistry. The great yogis of the past were not so unfortunate to have studied in our modern schools. If they had, I doubt very much that they would have liberated themselves from ignorance and the suffering of Samsara.
Can you offer an example?
There is a very nice story about the life of Maharsi when he was young. One fine day, tired to death of the trash culture (expression often used by wise men like Krishnamurti, Osho, Lama Yeshe, etc.) around him in school, he decided to use the money his parents had given him to pay for the month's school tuition, to buy a one-way ticket to freedom. He left his useless books and he went off to a sacred place to meditate precisely about those same questions I asked myself as a mature man in a hospital corridor.
Our students' expensive and heavy books do not contain the answers to the problems of life, death, the mind, about the chemistry of our thoughts and our emotions, about why we suffer and why we live. Again, those answers are to be found in other books which our students do not know about, which do not help to pass an exam and which they will never know about.
Alice Project is recovering those books, no matter what religion they come from, and is proposing their use among our students side by side with the mathematics and the other curricular subjects. Conflict among our students of different faiths is avoided through the use of a universal language, of common and transversal truths which can be accepted and which, at the same time, can be found in all religions.
How can you manage to integrate all religions in your school?
For example, all religions speak of love, compassion, respect for life, for other beings. All teach that God is beyond the ego, beyond the limits of our egoism. All speak about man's wish for happiness and an honest life.
We are trying to make use of this common ground in our work, to make it possible for our students to meet in a shared sacred space. The idea is not to take the students to church, or to a temple, or the mosque. Yoga teaches to erect Ayodya within one's own heart. There is in fact a universal language which everyone can understand which is the language of silence. Bush and Saddam may also meet one day in this silence. One needn't study in order to teach this universal language. It doesn't cost anything. One needs only to practice. Thus, silence forms part of the subjects we study side by side obviously, with yoga, Vipassana meditation, philosophy and religious anthropology.
Unfortunately, the heavy load of curricular trash subjects (once again, it's not my own expression) makes it difficult to carry out our educational project in an ideal way. This year, some of our students in Class X have failed their exams. It is true that they are weak in Mathematics, but they are very strong in yoga, concentration, meditation, social work… The materialistic school that Joshi mentions has rejected them. Now I ask myself, “ Whom will this great country's future depend on? Some ambitious guys who knows everything about logarithms or Raju, a simple village boy from Singhpur who knows enough Mathematics so as to avoid being taken by shopkeepers, but who on the other hand, knows quite a bit about the nature of the mind, the symbolism of Trimurti or the value of Bakti Yoga? A boy who greets the sun every morning, offers flowers to the various deities who protect the school (Buddha, Saraswati, Ganesh and the Virgin Mary) and who can cure hepatitis by making an infusion with leaves from a wild tree that grows in the school garden. A boy who no longer goes fishing in the small pond in his village, no longer kills snakes and worms not only because he has learned that they are useful for the earth and the fields, but because his teachers have also explained to him – in contrast with what my Christian parents thought – that all creatures in this world have a soul, that they suffer and wish to be happy just as we do.
Raju knows that the heaps of dirt along the road on the way to Mughal Sarai, the poisoning of the Holy River to Shiva in Varanasi, the disappearance of drinking water fountains, the increase in the crime index, are above all, due to modern man's polluted mind as a result of his having forgotten his Divine origin. At the Alice school, he's been taught that everything is sacred because every single thing or being has been created by Brahma and that Brahma himself was created out of Vishnu's dream. Therefore, Raju, his buffaloes, his friends and enemies are of the same nature as Vishnu. Once he has understood this, Raju and his classmates have begun to understand the message transmitted by the Indian wise men, the meaning of yoga, the symbolism of the temples, of the statues, of the mantras and of the holy epic poems (Mahabarata, B.Ghita): truth is within you, look for the hidden treasure inside your heart. That is how Raju's contaminated mind has begun to transform and how even his immediate external environment has changed. Now there are trees and flowers around his school and he takes care of them lovingly by defending them from the voracity and ignorance of the goats and from the jealousy of the villagers who don't really love his school or any of the things it teaches.
Raju forgot a mathematical formula on his State exam and failed. The so called secular scholastic system that India upholds seems not interested in any of Raju's secrets or in his recipe for happiness because deep down, it is afraid of this wisdom. The materialistic school is afraid of Raju's interior wealth. Its main aim is to produce, expressed in Minister Joshi's terms, alienated, unhappy, depressive, competitive people as they exist in America , Japan , Singapore … It just so happens that any school system devoid of values can kill. How many students take their own lives every year for not having lived up to the expectations of such a system?
We in Project Alice would like to teach all the students in the world the value of meditation, of social work, of praying to make life worth living. None of this is to be found in the mathematical formulae, which caused Raju to fail, but in the Holy texts that form the mystic tradition of this country. Unfortunately, these texts have long disappeared from the heavy school bags carried by our current students… Project Alice is trying to fill the void.
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Alice Project
Ghurahoopur
Sarnath
Varanasi
221007
UP
India
valentino1@rediffmail.com
v_giacomin@hotmail.com
Tel. +91-542-2595062, mob-09935681530
Fax. +91-542-2595379, 2585380
Bodhgaya + 91-9934637148, Mob.09431278699
Updated Oct 2006
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