Acharya Mahaprajna
Modern education is object-oriented. It concentrates on the object - that which is to be known; it does not concentrate on the subject - the knower. Thus we know so much about the external world but very little about ourselves.
Man's basic needs are physical - those that keep the body alive. Without ensuring physical survival nothing else can be achieved. It is therefore not surprising that education is aimed primarily at it. It ensures that the educated person is able to earn his living and to nourish and feed his body but man is not merely body. Besides the body, there are the senses, the mind, the language faculty, intelligence and the breath of life. These are the ones that can be perceived. The imperceptible part is far bigger. Let us for the time being ignore it since there are many people who may not believe in its existence. But even the perceptible elements are not inconsiderable. The mind's scope is extensive and so is that of intelligence. The power of the senses is enormous and so is that of the language faculty and the breath of life. These entities are right there in front of us. Could it then be that education would confine itself exclusively to man's physical needs? In fact, it is not so. Even modern education is not so restrictive. Many educationists have made specific provisions for mental and intellectual development along with physical development. This is according to them the totality. Being themselves men of the world they cannot normally be expected to transcend these barriers and to look into and be aware of the imperceptible.
It is a great pity that in this entire process of education the primary and the secondary have exchanged places. The subject, the power, is primary; the object, that which is to be known, is secondary. The cause of all transformation and of development is man. There is nothing in the world which can change or develop without there being an animate being behind it. There can be no knowledge and no light without man. How surprising then that there is such gross ignorance of man, the primary cause of existence! It is like recognizing the image or the reflection and ignoring the real object. It is on this point that modern education can be faulted. It ignores the knower. The interesting fact is that from all quarters one hears the complaint that the present-day education is deficient. Educationists, politicians, administrators, all mouth the same feeling. No one is able to pinpoint the deficiency. All the commissions and committees - since independence notwithstanding, the real solution to our educational problems continues to evade us.
One of the most keenly felt needs today is for discipline. The rulers, the teachers, the parents, everyone wants the students to be disciplined, but it has so far proved illusive. This then is the major problem today; how to inculcate discipline in our students.
As has been noted earlier, modern education is quite effective in developing the learner's mind and intellect. How can then its failure to produce disciplined youth be accounted for? To answer this we must understand that whereas education remains confined to the reaches of the intellect, discipline comes from far beyond them. They represent, as it were, two opposite banks of the river. Every individual has two polarities, two river banks - those of intellection and discipline. Between these two flows the stream of life. The former encompasses all activities pertaining to knowledge, whether they are related to the keenness of the mind or the sharpness of the senses. But the domain of discipline belongs to the latter. However, one has to cross the stream to reach the other bank of discipline.
It surprises many to see the educated people resorting to anger, dishonesty, theft and oppression. In reality, there is nothing unnatural about it. Education has quickened the intellect which enables people to argue and to reason and these make him selfish and deceptive. Paradoxically, the tendency to serve one's own needs even by practising deception on others is a direct result of one-sided intellectual development. Quite naturally, therefore, one finds intellectuals, scholars and judges falling a prey to the above evils, traders indulging in smuggling and adulteration and Government employees accepting hush money and bribes. Within the framework of the social mores warranted by their education such abberations are not treated as objectionable. The utilitarian principle (something akin to pragmatism) dictates its own logic. Depending upon utility or usefulness at some places women are encouraged to bear more and more children and there even prizes are awarded to the most fertile women. At other places it is found useful to control population and, therefore, to discourage conception. Utility might even require the extermination of the aged from society. None of these things are illegitimate since the legitimizing principle in their case is utility.
Viewed dispassionately and scientifically, anger, distraction, erroneous decisions, cowardice and various complexes are not blameworthy in the context in which they arise. All those who remain glued to their side of intellection, unaware of the other side, viz. discipline, cannot but act the way they do.
Our education then is lame. It has screened off the other bank. All the evils that we witness today occur from this lameness. Maybe modern educationists would refuse to accept the imperceptible, the spiritual as a legitimate part of their domain. The prescribed limits of the present-day educational philosophy would not let such things be included in the official courses as part of regular curriculum. What then is the way out? Shall we forever remain doomed, grappling with problems but never finding their solutions?
The strange thing is, as we said earlier, that we are all the time talking of radical reforms while refusing to create conditions in which alone lasting reforms can be possible. It is necessary today that every student who passes out of a school or college should carry with him the conviction that whatever he has learnt is incomplete and that it can be complete only after he has learnt the Science of Living or Jeevan Vigyan.
It is no accident that countless men and women find themselves under severe emotional stress and mental tension despite all their riches and achievements. Education has failed them but even if educational authorities refuse to give them complete education, they have no cause for despair. As individuals they have a right to take independent decisions and to discriminate between things useful and baneful for them. Let everyone after completing formal education think that what he has gained is a mere one per cent. For getting the remaining 99% training in self-discipline through the cultivation of the Science of Living is necessary.
Here it would not be out of place to remember the profound teachings of the great monk Jayacharya. He laid the greatest emphasis on self-discipline, agreeable and pleasant temper, and control over emotions, urges and passions; so much so that if an illiterate person had these qualities he was rich to the extent of ninety-nine parts out of a hundred, the hundredth part being formal education. What good are education and scholarship if they are unaccompanied by that adornment which alone makes life meaningful and complete - self-control? Today many big politicians and scientists are engaged in practices that pose a serious threat to humanity, to its very survival. Never before has such madness been witnessed in history. The world has been brought to a point of crisis where it is only a mathematical line that divides life from death. There is a universal feeling of insecurity and fear, even madness. It should be absolutely clear that the only remedy for this pathological state lies in disciplining the self, in other words, in self-restraint.
In the scale of values self-discipline of self-restraint occupies the highest place. It is, however, impossible to achieve it without the practice of meditation. All meditational techniques and methods of spiritual development are in fact a means of achieving self-restraint. It is only when the self has been successfully disciplined that conditions become ripe for achieving perfection in other arts and sciences. Both believers and non-believers in religion should know through experience that for leading a peaceful and happy life it is vital to practise self-restraint. It should be clearly understood by all that schools and colleges impart knowledge only of the external world, the world of matter and of physical objects. It is truncated knowledge. For making it whole one has to learn the nature and content of the world of consciousness, the psychic world.
It is a common observation that people are fast losing their faith in religion. This need not intrigue anyone, for it is so natural. Religious institutions have failed their followers. People want light but they see none of it. In fact, quite often places associated with light emit nothing but darkness. Can anything be more ironic than that what are deemed to be lighthouses should start spreading darkness? It is time the religious institutions became true places of spirituality and meditation so that they brought about a radical transformation in our inner chemistry, in our emotional and psychic being. Should such a thing happen, there would be a near division of functions between educational and religious institutions, the two together and in unison becoming an effective instrument of shaping the new man. It is natural to be sceptical, though, of the possibility of the religious institutions ever fulfilling their true function. Today these institutions have become so cribbed and confined that they regard their sole responsibility as nothing more than organizing religious discourses and giving sermons. One looks out in vain for that sublime climate in which true faith, dedicated practice, renunciation and self-mortification would thrive.
We*have given serious thought to the many problems that plague the world of education and have concluded that every student should devote about a year to the Science of Living for developing self-discipline, after finishing his or her formal education. We have no doubt that if such a plan could be implemented, society would be able to find a lasting and real cure for the maladies in the present-day education, without the need for state intervention. It would be the greatest endeavour of the people to attain self-discipline, not on an individual but on an institutional basis. And in achieving it the world of religion also would have made its enormous contribution.
