Publisher’s Note

Why Cloverleaf: Journal of Education in Evolvement and All Encompassing Spirituality?

The question as to 'why Cloverleaf?' ---is intimately linked with the question as to 'why its publisher, Spiritual Heritage Education Network (SHEN) exists?'

The answer for both questions is the same namely:---the historic existence of grave human and environmental problems faced by humanity today.

Born in India in 1937, I was 10 years old in 1947 when the country was partitioned in two. The partition was based upon religion. A Muslim majority country called Pakistan was carved out of a Hindu majority India in the month of August in 1947.

India is and always was a pluralistic country where diverse people lived together in harmony, free to practice their own religions. They coexisted for centuries in ‘peace’ but, perhaps, they never succeeded in building lasting bonds of humanity between the different communities.As a result, unrest on both sides of the partitioned land resulted in large scale rioting, butchery, rape, and homelessness in a shameless orgy of religious hatred.

That identity madness that accompanied the partition affected me deeply moving me to discover and facilitate a possible solution.

We were told in 1947 by the so called 'civilised world' that the identity savagery in India was an act of barbarity by the uneducated hordes of India and things would improve with the advent of modern education. But has the human condition improved in India in the intervening years? Are human conditions any better in the 'civilised' world” where modern education originated and has spread far and wide?

Events between 1947 and now all around the world, indicate that the hearts and minds of humanity are no closer today than in the India and Pakistan of 1947. This is evidenced by the mental health crises all around us resulting in mindless shootings, rapes, murders, inhumanity and terrorism galore. The outcome expected of education did not materialize because the education which we have been pursuing fails to address the raising of human consciousness towards perceiving a common humanity. Instead it has fueled an endless greed for having more, rather blinding us to our humanity and fragmenting us in strong and conflicting camps of “us” vs “them” viciously mistrusting and conflicting with each other.

Modern science and technology have reduced the world to a global village where people travel far and wide to live in pluralistic communities and communicate across the globe with the speed of light, but the human mind is still a prisoner of the past where we lived in isolated and often conflicting communities each  with their own tribal values. The human mind is way out of synch with the reality on the ground. Living together may be necessary to broaden the horizons, but it is not enough for the harmonious meeting of the hearts and minds needed, to live as human beings with love and compassion.

Today, humanity is fragmented into conflicting interest groups based upon identities defined by religion, culture, language, nationality, region, race, gender, gender orientation, color of the skin, and so on. The strong are hogging most of the resources and the weak are starving because we lack the fellow feelings to share. There is injustice and inhumanity all around. There are problems galore because of human fragmentation.

SHEN has been founded to take up the cause of helping humanity through an insightful education to rise above our limited identities in favor of a global human identity: we are human beings before we are anything else.We are one human family living in one wider global community sharing one common wealth. It is hoped that it will better prepare us to face the grave human and environmental crises that we face today.

Cloverleaf is being launched to disseminate the goals of SHEN.

Shiv Talwar, President (info@spiritualeducation.org)

Spiritual Heritage Education Network Inc. (http://spiritualeducation.org)

Kitchener-Waterloo, ON Canada

September 12, 2016