Today’s Education And Its Effects

 

1. Spiritual knowledge is the primary and highest knowledge, any other knowledge whether intellectual or social is secondary. It is only with the knowledge of the spirit that the faculty of want, which is the main cause of our miseries, is annihilated forever. So helping a man to attain spiritual knowledge is the greatest help that can be given to him, then comes intellectual knowledge.

2. “Ignorance is the main cause of all evils and miseries we see around us. Let the men have light, let them be spiritually strong and educated, then alone will misery cease in the world, not before. We may convert every house in the country into a charitable asylum, we may fill the land with hospitals, but the misery of man will still continue to exist until man’s character changes.”

3. Ignorance, inequality and desires are the three causes of misery and each of them follows the other in inevitable union.

4. Our final aim is the ‘knowledge of self’ which only will liberate us from all sufferings and miseries. Worldly knowledge can’t give us that ultimate freedom or bliss which we are looking for but can become only a means to that end, hence attainment of more and more knowledge of the world is not our primary goal.

5. The knowledge which makes us to realize God is the supreme knowledge, and this idea we find in every religion that is why it claims to be the supreme knowledge. Knowledge of sciences covers only a part of our lives but the knowledge which religion brings is eternal and infinite as the truth it preaches.

6. Spiritual Knowledge is what makes for the human progress. It is the source of all material and intellectual progress, the motive power behind, the enthusiasm that pushes mankind forward.

7. It is a tragic paradox that we are dying of thirst when the perennial Ganga of Vedantic wisdom is flowing nearby! Today, we are virtually suffering from ethical, moral and spiritual malnutrition. The result is that nobody is happy. Everybody is blaming and cursing each other. Whereas the poor is suffering from physical malnutrition, the others are suffering from spiritual malnutrition. To combat the former, others can help us but for the latter, we have to help ourselves by proper education. In the words of Swami Vivekananda, ‘Bring light to the poor; and bring more light to the rich, for they require it more than the poor. Bring light to the ignorant and more light to the educated, for the vanities of education of our times are tremendous!’

8. Our nation has a rich reservoir of vision, ideas and inspirations to draw upon and to successfully undertake this mighty task of spiritual enlightenment of the people. In this field at least, unlike in some other fields, it is true to say that our nation is starving in the sight of plenty! This spiritual nourishment is available to our people in the tested and perennial elements of our own philosophical and spiritual heritage, and in the energetic and pervasive human orientation given to that heritage in the modern times by our great teachers and thinkers such as Swami Vivekananda and Mahatma Gandhi; and also from the dynamic and universal, humanistic and scientific elements in the modern western heritage.

9. Today, without the knowledge of the spirit, all intellectual knowledge is only adding fuel to the fire, only giving into the hands of the ignorant and selfish man one more instrument to take away what belongs to others, to live upon the life of others.

10. The aim of all secular learning is material advancement only.

11. Learning without moral or spiritual values is useless. Today, it is meaningful only to fatten oneself more at the physical level. Only that is considered as knowledge which gives more money, more pleasure, more comforts, that is all. But does such an idea of knowledge make you a better person? Not at all, except in a few cases. In most of the cases excess of knowledge and money have become allied with more wickedness and more petty-mindedness.

12. Today, many of us have jettisoned righteousness in our pursuit of wealth.

13. Proper education will prepare us to avoid stagnation at physical level, which means spiritual death, and will help us to outgrow of this level. Human life must be a continuous movement to achieve higher and higher levels of truth and not to be arrested and made stagnant at the sensory level, otherwise life will cease to be life and will become a curse. We have to stir up the water of life, remove the clogging materials, and make it flow as a healthy stream of human energy, revealing greater and greater dimensions of truth, beauty and goodness. Proper education will free and elevate us from this stagnation.

14. Secular knowledge without spiritual wisdom makes one selfish and
arrogant, inclined to misuse all forms of power to exploit others.

15. Secular education narrowly conceived leads to selfishness and exploitation. It ends in bread-winning and money-making. Education is meant for the spiritual development and enrichment of man. It is only possible when education is conceived on spiritual lines and imbued with spiritual purpose. Bread-winning is not neglected in such an education but it forms a small though an important part of such an education which is the education of the whole man. It frees men and women from superstitions, fear, wickedness and narrow-mindedness and helps them to realize their inborn divine nature. In modern times true education is that in which science and religion shake hands. Such a combination will result in all round human development and welfare. It will help in the complete manifestation of the glory of human nature, lighting up every aspect of human life, individual and social. It will dispel all kinds of darkness from human life, physical, mental and spiritual; the first by health and wealth, the second by secular education and the third by religion.

16. We want that our individual and social life is imbued with human values of love, peace and joy. This kind of qualitative enrichment of human life can only come through spiritual growth and education and not through growth of income, political awareness or wide diffusion of secular knowledge. These are all necessary but not sufficient; spiritual knowledge is necessary to make them happen.

17. The western bread-winning education is making the strongest inroads on the Indian religious convictions. Education is for life, not for living (for earning). But unfortunately today, people seem to be more interested in the meat and not in the milk of this cow of knowledge.

18. Our education is more informative than formative. The emphasis is on equipping oneself to earn a living and not on drawing the personality out of the student. One is equipped only to attain the material well-being of self by multiplication of wants and satisfaction of the carnal and lower mental cravings of the animal in man. It does not help to control the baser instincts of man and to imbibe the qualities conducive to unfold and develop the faculties of head and heart, the correct sense of values and the element of self-restraint.

19. Education should aim at developing strength of mind, control of sensory system and self-discipline.

20. Education should help to inculcate in us the higher values and not to make us egotistic, petty-minded, quarrelsome, violent and criminal-minded.

21. We have to give to our people the modern secular education taking adequate care that it does not destroy their long and hard-earned humanness and does not turn them into literate animals. We have to be careful not to give it a chance to impair our inborn culture of the soul, the virtues of love and service, capacity for renunciation, yearning for peace, hospitality, forbearance, politeness and faith in self and others which reveal the inner-growth of a human being which the modern nations of the world are desperately craving to attain for their own people.

22. Life is truly life, not when measured in term of years, but in terms of quality and richness.

23. Today, the weakness of our education system is reflected in all the problems afflicting our society, not only in corruption and other social malpractices but also in our narrow and fissiparous political tendencies and regional loyalties, our low rate of economic growth, the selfishness and cynicism of our educated class, all-pervasive social unconcern and administrative irresponsiveness and inefficiency at all levels. These are the bitter fruits of our wrong education, narrowly conceived as the means only to money-making, comfort, power and pleasure. This is materialism in its crudest form, the tyranny of the senses over the spirit of man. This over-valuation of money has led to the devaluation of man.

24. Through education man becomes capable of taking over his evolution from the hands of mother nature by training his organic capacities and increasing their range and power, quantitatively and qualitatively. It helps him to define and clarify the direction of his evolutionary movements, to set his goals by exercising his nature given faculties of far-sight and fore-sight, to select and adopt, correct and modify, his paths and achieve not only physical survival, organic satisfaction and numerical increase which biology considers secondary at the human phase (relevant and primary at the pre-human phase only) but also helps him in the psycho-social evolution considered as the true goal of all human evolution. But this knowledge energy factor can be a danger not only to oneself but to others also if it is made to function as a servant of self-centredness.

25. Unfortunately today, the more educated a person is, the more he uses his brain for pleasure-seeking and not for lifting life to a higher level. Nature has intended this higher brain to be the instrument of human emancipation and not only for the satisfaction of material desires.

26. If even the educated people act and behave like dogs (work for the satisfaction of the senses only) then there is no need of education for them as dogs never need to go to school.

27. Swamiji provides a social mirror to all our educated people to took into, in order to identify themselves, whether they are alive or dead, whether they are traitors or patriots. If our education has sharpened our intellects, it has failed to expand our hearts, it has failed to inspire us with the humanistic passions and impulses. What is knowledge worth, if it is not yoked to love? When knowledge is yoked to human concern, it shines as character and character is the foundation of the will of a society. That combination alone can achieve human development. It is here that we have failed and it is here that we have to correct ourselves. If we can do it and work hard, we shall be able to get all the benefits of the synthesis of knowledge and wisdom, of scientific culture of the west with tested elements of our own national cultural heritage. This will give us a national character, combining spirituality with practical-efficiency.

28. All our educated people need to get re-education from Swamiji; they should be given lessons in self-discipline and character development. Character development consists in orienting one’s energy of will, intellect, money and power to the good of all other beings. That is real education as well as real religion. Swami Vivekananda had termed it man-making, character-building and nation-building education and religion. Religion to him, is only continued education from the sensory to the super-sensory level but not to the super-natural, as there is no place for unscientific notions in Vedanta.

29. What higher objective can an educated citizen of India place before himself today, asks Swami Vivekananda, than the development of character through the service of his fellow-men, the utilisation of his talents for ensuring the happiness and welfare of the millions of his less fortunate fellow citizens? He held every educated man a traitor who does not think for the millions living in hunger and ignorance.

30. ‘Avidya’ does not mean illiteracy and ‘Vidya’ does not mean mere literacy. One is illiterate if one does not feel for others, does not work for the good of others, does not care for the inconvenience and welfare of others beyond one’s genetic caste and racial group.

31. Every youth, full of zeal and vitality, can develop in himself a new energy called spirituality and its fruit, character-energy, which is the most profound energy in the world. What is electrical energy or nuclear energy in comparison? They are very ordinary compared to the supreme energy of character which comes from spirituality. We can hold a bomb in our hands or throw it on the people or property and destroy them; but we can also use it for the good of man as well, to blast a rock or to make a river flow in a new channel. Behind either of these actions is the human mind, the human consciousness. Behind the first action is a psychic energy unrefined, and behind the second action is the same energy refined. This refinement is the product of the science of religion, of the science of spiritual growth. In our young people today we need both these energy systems flowing together. From education, they will develop the power to control nature outside; from religion, they will develop the power to control nature within.

32. A glorious destiny for the world is assured if the youth of the world are inspired and helped to develop the capacity to process, refine and activate this inherent spiritual energy and to translate it into human actions with the help of the humanistic impulse coming out of it.

33. Through a sound system of education inspired by spiritual values, we should develop a national character. This is the only way that we can build up the greatness of India on the greatness and stature of Indian character, and not merely on her economic and military strength. We are to build the future edifice of our free state on stable foundations. These stable foundations can be supplied by religion and religion alone. Citizens inspired by spiritual and ethical ideals will find joy in giving their best for the health and strength of the society and the state.

34. True education is the light of knowledge coupled with human concern, with love, dedication and service – the spontaneous by-products of spiritual growth.

35. Today, our country very badly needs a change of attitude, as talent and intelligence are there in plenty in our people. This attitudinal change will come by a widespread diffusion of enlightened-citizenship awareness in them and it is the function of education to help this diffusion. Nothing else can achieve it. No political slogans or administrative tricks or structural changes can do it, they will rather make the situation worse. We have the remedies for these problems in our philosophy of Vedanta which can withstand any critical and rational scrutiny in any country in the world. Swami Vivekananda was very much sure that if we can teach it, it would yield the desired results. He said: ‘Teach yourself, teach everyone, his real nature; call upon the sleeping soul and see how it awakes. Power will come, glory will come, goodness will come, purity will come, and everything that is excellent will come, when this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity.’

36. The past is gone, never to return, but the future is still in our hands to be shaped according to our will. If we can inculcate the enlightened-citizenship awareness into our education, we can hope to achieve a measure of national health very soon, as education is the root system of the national tree and by watering the root alone we can water the whole tree. Bringing health and dynamism in our education is urgent and vital. We must instill the basic virtues of democratic national life with concomitant humanistic orientation into our school children.

37. The real progress of the nation can be brought about only by a right type of education which will endow people with a humanistic impulse and spirit of service and not only with wealth.

38. It is time that we take energetic steps to infuse ethical and spiritual values in our education, so that we may regain our spiritual health even while engaged in the struggle to become a progressive, materially advanced modern nation. This is the only way to make a truly modern and humane society.

39. Merely talking and writing about the evils of our society do not help us much; anyone can do it. It may be the role of other disciplines like politics, but not of education; lighting a candle is more important than shouting about darkness. To prevent maladies from afflicting the society should be the sole goal of education.

40. The main purpose of all education – spiritual and secular, is to enable human beings to acquire the capacity to have a grip on the world around them and not to be swept away by its forces. Education, giving a right and adequate philosophy of life, will make us capable of meeting new challenges of carrying heavier life burdens naturally, spontaneously and cheerfully.

41. Education should equip us with knowledge to manipulate our work and life situations to attain our goal of freedom. Today, we don’t manipulate them, they manipulate us, hence we are no better than animals.

42. Along with physical and intellectual growth, education should also aim at spiritual growth which inspires an ethical sense and human concern for others. When this truth is grasped firmly and applied effectively, it will create a new type of humanity which will substitute aggressiveness and violence by peaceful co-existence, competition and exploitation by co-operation and service in the society. We have this philosophy and technique of its application with us as a national heritage, what we need is only to utilise it.

43. Education is meant to help us in our spiritual growth and to become decent citizens who can live in peace with the other members of the society.

44. We should try to instill positive and strong thoughts into the minds of our children from the very childhood. It is the right time that we introduce the subject of human excellence in their education to make every child aware of it as life’s aspirations come in the guise of the children.

45. If we are to maintain true peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war then we shall have to begin with the children.

46. As all the possibilities of future man are in the children, so we should inspire our children to lead a purposeful life of thought and action, devotion and dedication, with hearts to God and hands to work.

47. Though intellectual knowledge helps us to avoid and check mistakes but beyond that it has no function. As at best it is a secondary help so we should not try to build anything on it. The real goal is love, feeling and experience of love. Does your education help you to love your fellow beings? Is it inculcating in you the feeling of oneness, whetting your yearning to get to your final destination of divinity and freedom? – then it is really of some value. If not, you may be an intellectual giant ever born yet you are nothing, but a dry intellect. Do you not know from the history of the world where the power of the prophets lay? In the intellect? No. Did any of them write a fine book of philosophy or logic? Not one of them. They only spoke a few words. Feel like Christ or Buddha and you will be like them. It is the feeling that is the life, the strength, the route, without which no amount of intellectual excellence can help us to reach God. Intellect is like a limb without the power of locomotion. It is only when the feeling enters and gives it motion that it moves and works.

48. “You may make thousands of societies, political assemblies or institutions but they will be of no use until there is that sympathy, that love, that heart, which feels for all; until Buddha’s heart and Krishna’s thoughts are brought to their practical use, there is no hope for us.”

49. According to late Bertrand Russel, “Mere (intellectual) knowledge has no motivation of its own; the source of it is in the field of emotions and sentiments in man. Something must stimulate knowledge; otherwise, it will remain static and unable to influence human actions”.

50. It is one of the evils of modern civilization that we are after intellectual education alone and take no care of the heart. It only makes a man ten times more selfish which leads to more misery. When there is a conflict between the heart and the brain, let the heart prevail because intellect has only reason to support whereas heart has inspiration as its basis. Just as intellect is the instrument of knowledge, heart is the instrument of inspiration. A man of intellect may be devil and intelligent at the same time but a man of heart can never be a devil as no man of love and emotion was ever a devil. It is the culture of the heart that will lessen the misery of the world.

51. Today we need in our people growth of heart and feeling side by side with the growth of intellect and knowledge.

52. Today, we want a brain joined with a heart of love and mercy. What is wanted is the combination of the greatest heart with highest intellectuality, infinite love with infinite knowledge.

53. Purity is the primary quality of a teacher of metaphysics. In case of other sciences, he needs to possess only an intellectual equipment but in spiritual science there can not be any light in the soul that is impure. Hence in the teacher of spirituality, we must first see what he is and then what he says.

54. Intellectuality is not the highest virtue; morality and spirituality are the things for which we should strive. The main object of our education should be to help us to constantly evolve mentally and spiritually, as self-development is the only thing which is going to remain with us forever. All other things, which are only means to this end, are not only not important but will all leave us on the way one by one.

55. Most of the time we stress too much on the I. Q. (Intelligent Quotient) factor and neglect many other vital aspects of human personality. The most intelligent men may not necessarily be the most efficient, the most virtuous, the most humane. Human efficiency cannot be measured by this single parameter.

56. A pedant may not be prudent as many of us know too much but are convinced of too little.

57. Modern education and the civilization based on it has led to too much of cynicism in this modern age. It makes man too full of informations but devoid of insight into the value of anything. The cynical attitude devalues all things of value and drains out life of all its worth and meaning. It is dried of all emotions and feelings and is just logical. Therefore, only reason and intelligence cannot be the sole guide to a fulfilled life.

58. Cynicism spells the spiritual death of a man; it scorns all values. It is the final nemesis of all civilisations which are rooted in thorough intellectualism. It has afflicted, more or less, every civilisation in the past but has become a more pronounced attitude of modern civilisation. It sets in when man becomes spiritually weakened by over emphasis on intellect and organic satisfactions and neglects the ever-present datum of the divine spark in man and nature. Man then loses the spiritual capacity of digesting experiences; he, on the other hand, is digested by his experiences, and this results in cynicism. Many intellectuals the world over have developed this cynical attitude today; they have lost the precious element of ‘Sraddha’ and have become victims of its opposite, ‘Asraddha’.

59. Our modern secular education is turning out intellectuals who tend to become cynical and scornful of all values except money, power and pleasure, who are mental giants but moral pigmies. We witness today, knowledge and material security going side by side with emotional instability and inner-insecurity. Behind the nourishment of body lies the malnutrition of mind and heart.

60. When the intellect and senses become the masters, the soul becomes the subject.

61. Education is not the amount of informations that are crammed into our brain and run riot there, undigested all our life. We must have life-giving, man-making, character-building assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart the whole library. If education is identical with information, then libraries are the greatest sages in the world and encyclopaedias are the Rishis.

62. “Education is not just filling the mind with a lot of facts but getting complete mastery over one’s mind i.e. acquisition of the power to concentrate and deconcentrate, the power of attachment and detachment. If you are equally powerful in both, you have attained your real manhood. You cannot be made miserable even if the whole world tumbles around your ears.”

63. To me the very essence of education is concentration of mind, not the collection of facts. It is development of power of concentration and detachment.

64. Our education has lost its depth because it does not train our minds. What it gives us, is some smattering of information but not true knowledge. It only stuffs our brains without giving any culture. This has to be changed. It should lead to solid knowledge, both inside and outside. This will never come about unless we use our education to train our minds in concentration, precision in thinking and speaking and applying knowledge to practical situations. Side by side, we should try to realize our inborn divinity. That is true education, even a little awareness of which can give us a high character and trustworthiness that we are missing very badly today.

65. Education is meant to draw the latent faculties of man. Merely stuffing of information into the mind and making it a lumber room is not the aim. Recognising and bringing out the diverse talents and geniuses in a man is the motive behind all education. Our idea of education is the manifestation of the inner-personality of man. It should teach us to blend idealism with realism, the highest principles of human welfare with the demands of the practical world.

66. Through concentration of mind everything can be accomplished, even a mountain can be crushed to smithereens.

67. Power of a controlled mind increases in the same fashion as the power of water by construction of a dam. Once you achieve a higher level of consciousness and mental control, you don’t get affected by adverse circumstances. You can withstand them calmly instead of breaking down as happens with weak-minded persons. Your reaction and attitude towards adversities of life will totally change as by detaching yourself and looking at them like an observer, you will remain mentally stable. You would not be overwhelmed by them. For it is in the mind that you feel all sorts of pains, frustrations, anxieties and fears, so once you are able to control your mind, all these circumstances will lose their hold on you. But in most cases, we do not control the mind but it controls us.

68. A directionless mind normally succumbs to its lower and baser nature and becomes the victim of all types of vices and bestial instincts.

69. The present system of education is all wrong. The mind is crammed with facts before it knows how to think. Control of mind should be taught first. First of all it is the mastering of mind that should be taught and then facts. It takes people a long time to learn things because they can’t concentrate their minds at will.

70. We have to do only so much for our youths that they may learn to apply their own intellect for the proper use of their hands, legs, ears etc. as it will finally make everything very easy. By our present system of education we are ruining their brains by cramming a lot of subjects into them.

71. The education which we are giving to our children is one-sided, weakening. It is killing them by inches. The children are made to cram too much of useless matter and are incarcerated in school rooms, fifty or seventy in each class, five hours together. It is forgotten that nature can never be cheated and things can not be pushed too early. In giving education to children the law of growth has to be obeyed and we must learn to wait.

72. A child born today stands ten times greater chance of being admitted to a mental hospital than to an University because we are driving our children more effectively than we are genuinely educating them. Perhaps this is our way of educating them which is driving them mad.

73. To me, apart from secular education, religion as a subject of study seems to be absolutely necessary. We can see it in its effects. It is the greatest motive power that moves the human mind. No other knowledge can put into us the same mass of energy as true religion. I do not deny that men, on simply intellectual grounds, can be very good and moral. There have been many great men in this world perfectly sound, moral and good, simply on that ground. But the world movers, men who bring a mass of magnetism into the world, whose spirit works in hundreds and thousands, whose life ignite others with spiritual fire – such men, we always find have that spiritual background. Their motive power comes from religion. Religion is the greatest motive power for realizing that infinite knowledge which is the birth right and nature of every man. In building up character, in making for everything that is good and great, in bringing peace to others and peace to one’s own self, religion is the highest motive power and therefore ought to be studied from that viewpoint.

74. A religion which leads to spiritual development of man is one of the most potent source of cultural upliftment and qualitative improvement of the human civilization. Apart from general secular education, religion forms the other important factor for raising the cultural level of our social life. To be really beneficial and effective, secular education must be accompanied by the spirit and values of the science of religion which will impart dignity, strength and an inner-enrichment to man in all stations of life, otherwise man, after solving all his problems and achieving security and welfare, will become a problem to himself. Therefore, Vivekananda stressed on “Elevation of masses without injuring their religion”. Can we give them back their lost individuality without making them lose their innate spiritual nature?

75. “There should be a religious element in education as it is the innermost core of life. If you want to give secular knowledge without religion, vain is your attempt in India. It will never have a hold on the people.” At the end of his intellectual tether, man has never ceased to become religious.

76. Our higher education has not produced one single original man in the last fifty years because religion has not been treated as its core. Therefore, along with history, geography, science and literature, we should teach them the profound truths of religion.

77. Education, science and religion have a common objective and relevance namely human development both external and internal. They need to flow together to irrigate the field of human life and produce the desired wealth of human excellence.

78. A sense of human dignity must come to all in our country and especially to our working classes. This calls for combining secular and political education with spiritual education. By spiritual education we do not mean education in the creeds or dogmas of religion but education for spiritual growth, same as the secular education is meant for physical and mental growth. If economic development only is stressed, we get some sort of physical nourishment and physical growth. If secular and political education only is stressed, we get intellectual nourishment and mental growth. These two constitute only partial, and not full development of man. By such a partial development, man can achieve good results in the short run but it will come a cropper in the long run; it will result in quantitative enrichment along with qualitative impoverishment. If we adopt the Indian approach shown to us by Vivekananda and Gandhi in modern times, it will lead to human development of our people in all respects.

79. In education, the training of human mind for total human development by handling the world around us and also handling oneself in a masterly way should be tried at.

80. Today, education to the student means merely passing an examination and securing a job and to the country means turning out engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, clerks and host of other social functionaries. It is good but we should also not ignore its long term objective of qualitative improvement of mankind by progressive assimilation of the finest heritage of past and present, east and west which will produce citizens in whom the diverse qualities of the spirit, faith and reason, the sacred and secular, meditation and action, so long at loggerheads with each other will find a happy synthesis, giving each man an experience of complete fulfillment.

81. We consider a man educated only if he has passed some examinations or can deliver good lectures. An education which does not help the common people to equip themselves for the struggle of life, which does not bring out the strength of character, a spirit of philanthropy and the courage of a lion – is it of any worth? Real education is that which enables one to stand on one’s own feet. The education that we are presently getting is only making us a race of book-worms who work like machines and live a jelly-fish life.

82. A merely book-centred education does not help either in the growth of knowledge or the strength of character. Unfortunately, that is the present state of our education. We have started thousands of schools and hundreds of universities and colleges but we have so far failed to improve our education qualitatively making it man-making; on the other hand it has degenerated than what it was before our freedom. It is more conveying of static informations than stimulation of thinking, more stuffing of brain than training of mind. This type of education leads to stagnation of mind which in turn leads to stagnation on the social level, making our attitudes, interests and sympathies, self-centred and narrow. It makes us mentally short-sighted and weak, whereby the spirit of resistance against injustice, oppression and humiliation and the capacity to forge a united will for surmounting the obstacles before the country, do all vanish and resignation and complacency descend on the people.

83. To know and not to act is equal to not knowing. If you have not acted then you have not known.

84. For Swami Vivekanand education is the training of the mind and the assimilation of ideas leading to dynamism of character and development of personality and not as mere book-learning or stuffing of the brain, resulting in the stagnation of one’s personality. Our education today is only book-education and makes our students more like the ass that carries a load of sandal wood on its back knowing only its weight but not its value.

85. What is education? Is it book learning? No. Is it diverse knowledge? Not even that. It is the training by which the current and expression of will are brought under control and become fruitful.

86. The fate of our present education is like books on a donkey’s back. If it is given for donkey’s years it will not yield any result.

87. Too much stress on book-knowledge does not lead to the training of mind, assimilation of ideas and development of character-efficiency. To study logic but to think illogically, to study grammer but to speak ungrammatically, to study civics but to act and live without any civic sense, to study science but to remain innocent of the scientific spirit and temper, to study history but to ignore its lessons and warnings – that for want of national unity and vision and due to caste and other divisive loyalties, we have lost our political freedom again and again and suffered untold humiliations, is to remain like the bookworm who is aware of the weight of knowledge in one’s head but not of its value for his life or the nation’s destiny.

88. The present state of human society vividly demonstrates that our
modern higher education can be only called costlier education because its products are not higher minds but meaner minds. In this state, we strike the match-stick of our life but no fire or light of knowledge and character comes out because the match-stick of our mind is very wet. It has to be made dry to manifest the fire and light within. It has to be trained to persevere for truth and character-excellence, to develop capacity for clear thinking and the unfoldment of the truth within.

89. For the realization of truth we must go beyond intellectual knowledge which cracks the moment, reality if forced into it.

90. The four values of education which Swamiji emphasised are knowledge, strength and fearlessness, compassion and large heartedness and practical-efficiency.

91. Can it be called education which is slowly making the man a machine? It is more blessed even to go wrong impelled by one’s free will and intelligence than to be good as an automation.

92. Does higher education means mere study of material sciences and turning out things of daily use by machines? The use of higher education is to find out how to solve the problems of life.

93. In fact, the mechanisation of man has already gone very far today through too much reliance on modern physical science and the philosophy of materialism it fosters.

94. The purpose of our education today ought to be to turn out citizens who are citizens of this age and not of a bygone age. Citizens who breathe the spirit of this age which has so much to contribute to the fulfillment (perfection) of the human civilization.

95. True education would bring on the scene of India’s national life a new type of men and women, with tremendous faith in themselves and in the people of India, in their past history and future destiny, with a will to work and the capacity to co-operate with each other in place of talking and shouting; not of selfish, cynical and grumbling type that we have been turning out in thousands since our independence.

96. The present division between the secular and the sacred is a new superstition, not warranted by our Upanishads and traditions, for according to them acquisition of knowledge is a continuous process. In fact spiritual education is complementary to secular and not contradictory. Is it not strange that Naren and many others, educated and intellectual, had to sit at the feet of the uneducated Sri Ramkrishna to continue and complete their education.

97. Education has come, but the culture of mind has tarried, and education without culture makes for cleverness, crookedness and even crudeness. These can be remedied only when we take the next step in education namely, marching towards spiritual growth through the same education continued to moral and spiritual dimensions.

98. What we understand by ‘Progress of civilization’ about which we boast so much? To us it seems to mean the successful accomplishment of desired objects by fair means or foul, but in truth, it is in the development of the culture of the mind and the heart.

99. Ignorance is the lowest state, knowledge the middle, beyond knowledge the highest.

100. Instinct, reason and inspiration are the three instruments of knowledge. Instinct belongs to animals, reason to men and inspiration to God-men. But in all human beings the germs of all these three instruments of knowledge are more or less present.

101. Wisdom is not to be confused with theoretical learning or correct beliefs, for ignorance is not an intellectual error but spiritual blindness. Wisdom is different from scientific knowledge also.

102. All secular knowledge whether of science, literature or arts including knowledge of the Vedas have been relegated by the Upanishads to the category of the ordinary (Apara) knowledge. Accordingly, that alone is supreme(Para) knowledge which helps to destroy spiritual blindness and reveal the ever present spiritual reality behind man and nature.

103. There is a difference between intellectual knowledge and spiritual wisdom. In words of Bertrand Russel, “The human race has survived hitherto owing to ignorance and incompetence; but, given knowledge and competence combined with folly, there can be no certainty of its survival. Knowledge is power, but it is power for evil as much as for good. It follows therefore, that unless man increases in wisdom as much as in knowledge, increase of knowledge will be increase of sorrow!” So, knowledge must mature into wisdom.

104. Wisdom can accompany, fulfill, enliven and creatively stimulate knowledge at any level, primary or secondary, undergraduate or post-graduate. Without a little of this wisdom, knowledge can become in the long run not a blessing but a curse to oneself and to the society; a breeding ground for pride, selfishness, exploitation and violence on the one hand, and alienation, loneliness and psychic breakdown on the other. These afflict society and civilisation and lead to their decay and death. Modern civilisation is going on that way already.

105. Wisdom is matured knowledge. Wisdom is not the work of the mind, only its expression comes in the mind.

106. Wisdom is knowledge and power chastened and purified by compassion and sense of human responsibility. The great thinkers of India have churned the butter of wisdom out of the milk of human experience and imparted to its culture certain eternal values; the values of peace and gentleness, humanism and fellowship, tolerance and universality.

107. Wisdom is the integral unity of faith, reason and will. It is enlightened reason.

108. Disciplining and training of the energy of intellect and emotions form an important ingredient of human education. Education should help us to develop our discriminative faculty and this is the unique function of human mind. All humanistic and ethical values, when disciplined and refined becomes, what the Gita calls, Budhi, enlightened reason. That is how knowledge matures into wisdom, without which knowledge may be harmful. Knowledge, refined by discrimination, confers moral strength and fearlessness which mere knowledge cannot give. This is the energy that helps man to resist all temptations, monetary bribes and other sensual pulls and walk steadily on the path of justice, rectitude and fair-play.

109. Let us try to grow in wisdom with secular knowledge.

110. It is character training through intelligent self-discipline which makes human energy socially oriented. Then that energy becomes positive and creative; otherwise it becomes negative and sterile and finds expression in crime and all sorts of anti-social practices. What is the difference between a god, and a demon? So far as the knowledge is concerned, both have it in equal measure. But one thing is missing in the demon namely, morality. Man becomes a god when he has morality along with knowledge. Without morality, knowledge may become destructive and harmful. With the little change in the psyche of our youths, they would be the salvation of our country; but as it is, many of them are the despair of our society. Mere changes in police set up, alteration in the law here and there and induction of new laws will not help us when we find that even the most educated youths hailing from high-placed families and with high-official connections are resorting to crime. Something certainly is wrong with the direction of the energies that are within them. They are constantly stimulated by their personal ambitions only.

111. Jealousy, self-centredness, love of ease, lack of social awareness and work-efficiency, too much talking and too little working; these have become our present social traits. The only remedy to these is proper education.

112. Only a disciplined mind has the capacity for practical application of knowledge. The basis of all wealth – economic, mental or spiritual is the discipline of the mind. It is the product of intelligent and honest hard work. Love of ease, physical or mental, is anathema to wealth and welfare. But unfortunately the educated class in India, except a few, love wealth, ease and comfort more than knowledge. Knowledge leads to the culture of mind and heart. Both Laxmi (the goddess of wealth) and Saraswati (the goddess of knowledge) will ever remain far from those who prefer ease and frivolity and not the austerity of knowledge and self-discipline.

113. A nation advances in proportion to the spread of education and intelligence among the masses. In my view, the chief cause of India’s ruin in the past has been the concentration of the whole of education and intelligence in a handful of men, by means of social pride or royal authority. If we have to rise again, we shall have to spread education among the masses.

114. Multitude of our people bear the mark of arrested growth due to continued neglect and oppression, first by the invaders coming from outside and later by the oppressors bred within the nation. This has made India a creature of history from being its creator as she was for long time. This was the price India had been forced to pay for its continued neglect and oppression of the common people. Swami Vivekananda summoned modern India to reverse this trend and give back to the masses their lost individuality and restore to them their human dignity and glory. Says he, ‘trodden under the foot of the Hindu, Musalman or Christian, they (common men) have come to think that they are born to be trodden under the foot of everybody who has money enough in his pocket. They are to be given back their individuality. They are to be educated.’

115. If total human development is our national goal and if the nation is dead-set to achieve it, education is the greatest instrument. But as that human factor is missing from our education, it is unsuitable to achieve that human development. In our teachers and students there is very little evidence of concern for the nation, instead there prevails a callous and carefree attitude vis-à-vis our pressing human problems, coupled with a frenzied attitude for flimsy personal or group problems, leading often to the sterile activities in the form of flare-ups. There is no thinking at all in them as to what is going on in the country or about its pressing human problems. An education that does not orient the attitudes and sympathies of students and teachers to the development of their brethren, to the banishing of mass poverty, illiteracy and backwardness, is a costly luxury for a country like ours.

116. Self-centredness leads to frustration; frustration generates indiscipline which results in a tendency of law-breaking. There is more of the instinctive-animal than the rational-man evident in our people. When they will realize their citizenship status as teachers and students, then our educational institutions will be transformed into centres of creative energy and instruments of healthy social change and progress.

117. Most of our teachers are not awakened to the reality of their high status, to the truth of their inalienable entity as free and responsible citizens of free India, but behave merely as performers of a paid-function. They are aware of themselves simply as job-seekers and job-holders and nothing else. A sense of mission and self-respect flowing from citizenship is lacking in their lives and in the functions they perform. What a great tragedy! What great work can one ever be called upon to do than that of imparting light and life to the millions of his own people who have been sunk in the darkness of ignorance for ages.

118. Our education should be nationally oriented, oriented to the service of man without respect to caste, creed, colour, sex or social status. Our present education makes us apathetic to our duties as true citizens. It makes us self-centred and egoistic. Our educated class hankers after jobs which offer high salary without any work! They are unconcerned to the cause of the nation or the people. Their only ambition is to fulfill their material desires by using their intellectual qualification. They have no time to feel for the nation or its people.

119. Our current education is filling the country with self-seeking people ever trying to use their freedom for their self-interests. This is why a mood of frustration prevails now in every field of our national life as frustration is the long-term end of all self-centredness and human unconcern. Today we are much worried as to what is going to happen tomorrow?

120. Today, our education is making us selfish and self-centred, to amass wealth or to climb the social ladder and fatten ourselves. Education is to yoke human efficiency to character and social vision. By introducing short-term and short-view politics in our education system, we are misdirecting and wasting the energy of our youths for destructive purposes. This trend must be reversed so that in place of politics vitiating our educational system, education endows politics with the much needed serious and long-term view of our problems.

121. Our education today is suffering from the mercenary attitude bereft of any sense of social responsibility. A positive and wholesome influence of the political parties on education in place of current vitiating and harmful influence, will do our education a lot of good. It will strengthen the ever present positive and elevating elements in the character of our young people, instilling in them a love for knowledge and excellence of character, both of which have become serious casualties during these post-freedom years. Such students, imbued with knowledge and democratic virtues, will then slowly fill all our politics, administration, education, industry, the defence services and other professions. How strong then the sense of nationality would be in our country?

122. Our education has not been properly integrated with our national purpose and goals. Our nation needs the services of thousands of forward looking creative-minds who will become effective agents of social change. It needs numbers of trained minds, patriots endowed with the spirit of dedication and service and not mere job-hunters and careerists; in short, individuals with double-efficiency, of the energy of knowledge and the energy of character. And education is the source of this vital energy.

123. Our educated youths have to become the vanguard of the nation’s march to destiny. They have to develop a free and responsible outlook which alone can make their acquired education creative, dynamic and socially effective. Such students will then become not just individuals in search of their own private careers and destinies, but persons whose hearts pulsate with the aspirations and struggles of the millions of their countrymen. Their education will enable them not only to emotionally identify themselves with the joys and sorrows, victories and humiliations of their people, but also to dream and work for a better life for their fellow beings, free from poverty, ignorance and oppression.

124. For past several centuries, due to pressure of historical circumstances, we have completely neglected human development in India even awareness of the very problem itself. That is why we have inherited a society so riven with diverse hierarchies where millions at the bottom feel only the crushing weight of the social pyramid but none of its blessings, and this has brought them down to the near-animal level of life. Human dignity has been violated again and again for centuries in India. In such a context, human development cannot be viewed only in economic terms. The economic approach has to become a part of the wider approach, of an all round human development through education widely conceived. Human dignity is achieved by man through spiritual and intellectual awakening accompanied with economic growth.

125. For the first time in our long history, we are free not only to hope but also to realize an all round development of our people. To achieve this, both intellectual and spiritual energies have to be exercised through proper education comprising of developing thought and personality-efficiency within and work and productive-efficiency without. This double-efficiency is the essence of the man-making education which can only restore our sunken millions to the state of human dignity and worth. Education and religion can only entitle us to claim and realize our manhood. They help us to develop the power to identify and solve human problems through the training of mind in purposive thinking, social feeling and actions. This is the energy that we have to develop in our people particularly our youths today, so that they cease to be passive spectators of human suffering by merely throwing up their arms, but make all sincere efforts to solve the urgent national problems with their trained minds and hands.

126. Today, our youths are more intelligent, vivacious, alert, more fearless and straightforward; these are all great character assets but they are deficient in social sense, in social responsibility, in concern for others in the society. They have grown more intolerant and aggressive. The result is they have become a problem to the nation. The old with their feudal mental make-up are hardly fit example for our youths. Much of our youthful energy today suffers from purposelessness and aimlessness. If continued for long, it will spell disaster to the society and its units. To make it creative, we will have to infuse the ideals of renunciation and service in our youths. It will reverse the present downward trend and mood of despair with one of confidence and hope.

127. We have to make our students aware of the vice of jealousy, our incapacity for conjoint action and to inculcate in them the qualities of manliness, character, practical-efficiency and the spirit of service for their fellow beings. They must be trained so that their ‘Rajas’ quality is not dominated by the ‘Tamas’ but by ‘Sattva’. Our present education system has neither the virtue of ancient Indian system nor of the modern Western system, but the weaknesses of both.

128. Our current education is grossly irrelevant to meet the challenges facing our nation. We have to reorient it to our national will and purpose by inspiring it with our inherent national wisdom. Without that national orientation, our education and educated people have become a serious burden and problem to the nation. Most of the wickedness and evils, corruption, bribery, smuggling and other social injustices and malpractices, come from our educated sections. Education is meant for national development and the solution of its human problems but our education, instead of solving any problem, has itself become a problem.

129. Nation-building must be based on the prior achievement of man-making. A nation is built out of men and women endowed with a sense of worth and dignity within themselves.

130. Today, we need the training to discipline and harness our enormous human resource for positive and constructive purposes, for betterment of the society, and that is the function of education in a free society. The purpose of education in a free society is to inculcate the habit of calm, collective and purposeful thinking. Our problems today cannot be solved by passionate shouting but by patience and perseverance.

131. The mind of a man is an infinite reservoir of knowledge. All knowledge, past or future is within man, manifested or unmanifested, and the ideal and object of every system of education should be to help man to manifest the perfection already in him.

132. Education is the lighting of one lamp from another lamp.

133. A single candle can light hundreds of other candles without diminishing its life. Happiness and knowledge never decrease by sharing.

134. The ideal of all education, all training should be man-making, character-building, controlling of mind and senses. But instead of that, we are always trying to polish up the outside. The aim and end of all training is to make a man grow. Education should aim at hastening this consummation.

135. Until the inner-book opens, all outside teaching is in vain. Education, to have any value, must lead to the opening of the book of the heart.

136. Education aims at mental maturity. But most of our educated people are like moustached babies! They are physically very mature but mentally they are like babies – dependent, weak, demanding and bereft of any sense of personal dignity and responsibility.

137. To carry over the irresponsibility of the childhood to the adult stage when one becomes invested with the privilege of franchise is a serious matter both for the individual and society; it is the evidence of the shortcomings of the educational process of that society. Education is a primary means of inculcating the sense of responsibility in the citizens. If education fails to do it then democracy becomes endangered.

138. Education must evoke courage and strength to overcome human frailties. It must provide us with a sense of manhood along with traditional virtues of love, self-restraint, sacrifice, service and character.

139. Our education today is producing physically strong, intelligent and strong-willed but morally very weak persons. It should aim at moulding minds and building characters.

140. Education must impart a sense of social responsibility. At present, we are becoming individuals through our secular education; we experience its sense of freedom and we want to express it. But we misuse it and misbehave in doing so because of our sense of freedom is bereft of the sense of social responsibility.

141. Responsible citizenship is the only remedy for all the problems of our nation. But this is dependent on a sound system of education, what Vivekananda called man-making education. To rouse the citizens to the awareness of their own worth, dignity and responsibility and to make them the powerful and effective source of the strength that sustains a society, is the true purpose and role of education in a democratic setup. Such a society will provide the right environment for the development of character and personality of all its members. Education, true education – spiritual, institutional and social, is the one source of strength for a free nation.

142. In all advanced countries there is a high level of general education instilling a high sense of social responsibility and character-efficiency. The love for one’s country and the vision of its glorious destiny have a galvanic effect on the minds of its people, generating energy and enthusiasm, which makes a citizen the dynamic centre for social change and development. It also infuses into a man the sense of personal worth and dignity and makes him work with a feeling of privilege and joy for the country. One does not have to coax a worker to do his work as he has enough self-respect to execute the job allotted to him to the best of his ability. In India, on the contrary an average worker has the tendency to be lazy and negligent of his duties and needs a good deal of prodding and much supervision; if left to himself there is no certainty that he will give his best to the work.

143. Today, we in India do not have enough sense of honour. Instead of spontaneous self-adherence we rather prefer to be coerced into moral or lawful behaviour by outside compulsions and controls. We need constant monitoring to ensure whether we are behaving correctly or not; the result is that we need so much of control and regulation by others. We have yet to experience the glory and excellence of man as man and not what money, power or pedigree invest him with. Love for easy money has destroyed our love for virtues. No nation achieves greatness in that way. For all free men, personal honour is of greater worth than money and other possessions. In this respect, we were more free when we were politically unfree. After independence, we have given higher status to money than to man in our country. Man, the creator of culture and civilization, of wealth and power, of science and arts, is getting submerged in wealth alone which is the least of his products. He has to be redeemed and resuscitated, and that exactly is the work of education. If man in India does not get this education than whatever may be her economic or other advancements, she will be building her national edifice on sand. The Western nations became advanced only by redeeming man and putting him on the pedestal of glory. Behind their advancement – scientific, material or social, is the advancement of their men and women, educated in self-respect, co-operation and practical-efficiency. We in India often copy their institutions and methods but we hardly care to educate ourselves in their character-efficiency or social spirit, in their sense of personal honour or dignity. They may not claim to be religious or aspire to be saints; they may not be enthused in the name of God; but they have a sense of social-responsibility, respect for man as man and his dignity. The greatest achievement of the Western people is their character-efficiency and humanism, respect of man in their own person as well as in others. They have grasped the spirit of manliness, which according to India’s own philosophy, the Vedanta, is the first step to true godliness. We in India have yet to grasp even the importance of this first step, in spite of our boasted religion and man-making education, which our nation needs the most today.

144. It is conviction in the heart, re-enforced by knowledge in the mind that makes for energy, drive and dynamism of character.

145. Education should generate deep convictions within and a tremendous will-power to translate visions and ideas into reality.

146. Through proper education our national mind is to be trained in Sraddha, out of which will come the creative power of imagination and the critical power of thinking. We need development of the power of independent thinking and decision-making in our educated classes.

147. Our present system of education is nothing but a perfect machine for turning out clerks. Not only that, it is making them destitute of Sraddha and faith.

148. “Our education is negative. The school boy learns nothing but has every thing of his own broken down – want of Sraddha is the result. The Sraddha which is the keynote of the Vedas, which emboldened Nachiketa to face Yama and question him, through which this world moves – the annihilation of that Sraddha. The ignorant man devoid of it, the doubting self, runs to ruin. Therefore, we are so near to destruction. The remedy for this is the spread of true education which will give self-knowledge. By that, I do not mean matted hair, staff, Kamandalu and mountain caves.

149. True education is that by which we can know ourselves, the Atma, God and truth.

150. The education that we are getting now has some good points but it has a tremendous disadvantage that the good things are all weighed down. It is not a man-making education, it is merely a negative education and is worse than death. The children are taken to school and the first thing they learn is that their elders are all fools and hypocrites and that all their sacred books are lies!

151. The spell of imitating the West is so strong on us that what is good or bad is no longer decided by reason, judgement, discrimination or reference to the Shastras. By imitation, other’s ideas never become our own, nothing unless earned is our own. Does the ass in the lion’s skin become a lion? Copycats never excel because affectation never fools anyone.

152. At moment, man in our country, after drinking the cup of western wisdom, thinks that he knows everything. They, having drunk deep of the cup of illusion, are not sane. To shine in the borrowed light of the great, is the one desire of the weak.

153. And after all their education what our youths learn is that all our religions or customs are bad and what the Westerns have, are all good. They look upon their own gold as brass and the brass of foreigners as gold! This is what modern education has brought about!

154. From the West, we should not take their cheap and flashy Coca-Cola culture but their scientific temper, work-efficiency, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and assimilate them to re-enforce our inherited virtues and graces.

155. Our educational process is one-sided; it has exposed to the people only the faults and foibles of our traditions without imparting any knowledge about its positive and permanent aspects. This has created an impression in our people that all our traditions are obsolete and there is nothing in them worth preserving. This has had, and is having, a highly harmful effect on the mind and character of the people and their work-efficiency, by undermining their faith in their inherent legacy and consequently weakening their ability and strength to assimilate the best in the modern heritage. This has to be corrected through education. Education should acquaint them with the life-giving, ever-abiding positive elements of Indian traditions which alone will help to forge a national character.

156. Today, our age-old and glorious heritage is being condemned and neglected by our own people. It has become a fashion these days to sneer at our ancient ideals and traditions and talk of recasting our society in the mould of other modern ‘isms’. But such attempts of supplanting our life-pattern by another, paying no heed to the natural blossoming of our innate character, can only result in degeneration. Already, we are witnessing the signs of its dreadful effect on our society. Disorganized and diffident, our society has become an easy prey to all predatory forces prowling about under the garb of various ‘isms’. How and what can, a society given to self-derision, weakened by all round disruption and dissipation, kicked and humiliated at every point by every and any bully in the world, teach the world? How can one devoid of the urge or the capacity to ennoble one’s own life, show the path of greatness to others?

157. Rejuvenation of eternal and ennobling values of life can never be reactionary or communal. To call it so only because it is old, betrays intellectual bankruptcy and nothing else. By this rejuvenation we mean the reanimating in our lives of those eternal life ideas which have nourished and immortalized our national life from times immemorial.

158. It is said, that looking into the past leads to degeneration and negativity and therefore, let us look into the future. But it is half truth as out of the past is built the future. We must look back to drink deep from the eternal fountains that are behind and after that we look and march forward and make India brighter, greater, and much higher than she ever was. Out of the faith in and consciousness of our past we must build an India yet greater than what she had been.

159. It is out of the past that future is moulded, the past will become the future, so it is a fallacy to think that constant looking back on the past has any degenerating effect on us. It happens not because our past laws and customs were bad, but because they were not allowed to be carried to their legitimate conclusion.

160. But we are not to become weak by any idle remembrance of our great forefathers but have to draw strength and experience from their great deeds and not merely to bask under the vainglory of their greatness as the only support of our national life.

161. The intellectuals, who are immersed in their unconscious doctrinal chauvinism and self-conceit, are used only to their own modes of thoughts and expressions, their own categories and vocabulary. They view any and everything emanating from the past as a kind of exotic flowering, fit for cultist or middle-aged relics.

162. Indian thought does not deserve a study just for its antiquity but for its extreme usefulness also, being the product of metaphysical exercise. Nothing that has ever impressed people can be wholly useless, though certain adjustments may be necessary to bring them in accord with the spirit of the age. According to Hegel, “The history of the philosophical thoughts in its true meaning deals not with the past but with the eternal and veritable present; and in its result resembles, not to a museum of aberrations of the human intellect but to a pantheon of God-like figures representing various stages of the immanent logic of all human thoughts”.

163. Today, we very much need to give up the awful habit of ridiculing everything, taking nothing seriously. It is the bane of the nation. If we are strong and have ‘Sraddha’ then everything else is bound to follow.

164. Animals have only a genetic inheritance, we human beings have besides genetic a cultural inheritance. Of the two, genetic inheritance is almost fixed and final but the cultural one is resilient and educable. That is why education is so very important. Every new generation adds its experience to this culture. Depreciation of this inheritance will lead to unrest and unhappiness in the society. We need to respect the positive achievements of our ancestors and join to it our efforts and experiences, for the present and the future, with a sense of responsibility. That alone will make our education adequate and total to meet the challenges of our times and make us ready to face the future with confidence.

165. The only way to growth is to take all the good that exists and to add something more to it. It is to adjust and modify the inherited tested beliefs of the forefathers according to the spirit of the age. If we can combine the love of what is old with the thirst of what is true, we may yet have a glorious and vigorous future as its past.

166. Education helps an individual to assimilate the culture and traditions of the race, enrich it by his or her own life and work and leave to posterity a richer legacy. Most people die in cultural debt as they take much more than what they give out.

167. The character of a man is what he has created for himself; it is the result of education that one has received and the social conditions that one has lived into.

168. Our first and primary goal is to change and reform ourselves and not the world. It will change automatically if we can change ourselves. We want the education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded and by which one can stand on one’s own feet.

169. The greatness of India and its culture must be matched by the greatness of its people; that greatness will not come from high intellectual degrees and diplomas but from the high character of the people.

170. But unfortunately today, culture has verily become another name for cheap entertainment. Singing, dancing, cinema and television have become important signs of culture. People wallowing in the depths of moral depravity have become signposts of our culture and are strutting about as our cultural ambassadors here and there. Are such people fit to be so of a land which has produced Rama and Krishna in the past and Vivekananda and Gandhi in modern times, who commanded spontaneous love and adoration?

171. We need to redefine the term culture as something much more than dance, drama and music in the light of our own philosophy of Vedanta, our own science of human possibilities.

172. Though we have never lacked in intelligence, natural and human resources and culture, but because of the character-deficiencies we have become victims of history for the past few centuries. Unfortunately, we have not got rid of them even now; nor have we fully developed those virtues which can help us on our onward and upward march as a free nation. We have not learnt to think clearly, to put national-interests before private gains, to work hard and efficiently and in team-spirit. In spite of the phenomenal expansion of our education, we have not achieved a commensurate increase in either personality-efficiency or productiveness. Our nation turns to our education to raise these questions and to find their answers.

173. It is the power of character that gives us the capacity for teamwork, putting our wills together. This is the way to make future India.

174. Character contains of two great sources of strength, one is clear intelligence combined with powerful will; the second is human orientation to that will. When you give an education which builds up this kind of personality, you develop a tremendous creative and positive energy within the people and when you combine your past glories and attainments with it, you will find dynamic persons, efficient soldiers in the great war of development of our country. That is how we can re-build India. Our ancestors have built it but some parts need repair and some have become useless today. We have to repair and add new parts to this building, commensurate with the needs of the modern age.

175. Behind the greatness of a nation lies two different forces namely, the force of creative intelligence and the force of character. We did not lack in intelligence as a people but in the absence of social-awareness, we failed to achieve character-efficiency.

176. Character-efficiency is the fruit of the trained mind while the stuffing of the brain produces mental stagnation and its attendant character deficiencies. Examination and job is not the goal. Modern education is a process whereby information just passes from the notes of the teacher on to the notebooks of the students through their pens, without entering the mind of either of them.

177. In absence of the positive attitude our national problems are multiplying everyday and are overwhelming our nation. We need to develop character, public spirit, citizenship-awareness, dedication and habit for hard work.

178. Education should inculcate purity of thought, words and deeds, a real thirst after knowledge, patience and perseverance.

179. If we want to educate a man and really do good to him, we must preserve and develop the priceless quality of self-respect in him. Teachers and parents, who destroy the self-respect of their wards through their thoughtless dealings, are the enemies of the society. When we are dealing with children we are not dealing with pots and pans but with delicate, vibrant, living personalities, with unformed minds; whatever we do sticks on and hence the need for expert care.

180. There is nobody in the world who knows nothing and there is nobody in the world who knows everything. Everybody knows something which you don’t know. He who knows, he knows, knows nothing.

181. The anvil of the temple of wisdom is the knowledge of our own ignorance.

182. “As long as I live, so long I learn,” – education so conceived becomes continued growth of personality, a steady development of character and the qualitative improvement of life. A trained mind has the capacity to draw spiritual nourishment from every experience, be it defeat or victory, sorrow or joy.

183. Arrogance is ignorance; pride is the eclipse of knowledge. Strange are the ways of ego; it does not touch the ignorant but clutches the learned and rich by their throats. It is the greatest enemy of all virtues.

184. In this age no one can remain in isolation. We need to open our hearts and minds to give and receive from each other. The man who says that he has nothing more to learn is already on the brink of disaster. The nation which says it knows everything is on the very edge of destruction because as long as we live so long we continue to learn. But when we take anything from others, we should always keep one thing in mind that we must mould it in such a way that it does not damage what is essentially ours.

185. Let ideas come from every part of the world but we need to assimilate and digest and make them our own after proper intellectual and spiritual scrutiny. If not thoroughly digested they will be harmful; whereas if properly assimilated they will lead to work and character-efficiency which are very much needed for the well being and progress of our country.

186. Education and physical labour should not come in conflict with each other. It is only when the two are combined that prosperity ensues. Genius may conceive but it is only the patient labour that will consummate.

187. Labour with hands in association with the labour of the intellect and heart – such a combination will produce intelligent and socially efficient individuals, unlike the usual academically intellectual ones, who have lots of information in their heads but no capacity for its practical expression. Knowledge gained through life and work, experiment and investigation can only be vigorous and fruitful.

188. True education will give us the services of a number of trained and clear minds, disciplined, patriotic, dedicated and efficient, to man our various public and private services who will use their job-opportunities to serve the nation externally and achieve higher levels of character and human excellence internally.

189. According to Swami Vivekananda there is no problem of modern India that cannot be solved by that magic word – education.

190. First of all, our education should aim at finding out the weak and strong points of our nationhood which has led to our political subjugation, social stagnation and fragmentation; and also to find out the raison d’etre of its spiritual strength, which not only enabled it to survive in the long history of the human race whereas some others fell into dust never to rise again but also enabled it to flame forth into an unprecedented renaissance in the last one and half century, when threatened by powerful world dominating western culture, throwing up in the process a galaxy of world moving personalities like of whom the world has never seen before.

Secondly, it must make us capable of understanding the strong points of the Western culture, whose stimulus woke us up to action from our age-long slumber of inactivity and complacency and made us eager and capable of facing the challenges of the times. At the same time to help us to understand the weak points of the Western culture which is driving our people to depression and desperation. Such discriminative minds will accept and imbibe science but will reject materialism; welcome technology to improve material conditions of human life but will reject such notions as there is no other human dimension beyond the physical one and that sensual-satisfaction is the aim and end of human life. Such notions of the West need to be reassessed in the light of our own philosophy of man, based on our age-old vast and verified experiences.

Thirdly it must give us a thorough idea of our contemporary India, its social and political state, the in-depth knowledge of the problems of those millions who live in abject poverty and misery without experiencing the dignity and glory of man whose cruel neglect is one of the main causes of India’s long political downfall.

Finally, our education must help us to combine the best of the East
and the West through a process of assimilation to further and complete the evolution of a progressive modern Indian society; and to help us to rebuild our nation on the foundation of strength, derived from the appropriate utilization of enormous natural resources of the nation through modern technology in combination with the enormous human resources of our nation.

191. Broadly speaking, we can discern six objectives which our education must try to inculcate in our people, our children viz –

a). The capacity to appreciate our cultural heritage and
based on that infusing in them the desire for enhancing
the same in order to leave to posterity a richer legacy.
b). The quality to become productive-units of the society
so that they become effective instruments for its
economic prosperity.
c). The qualities of courage and vision so that they can
protect their freedom and preserve its democratic
structure and can make it more expansive and
intensive.
d). The virtues which will make them emotionally stable
and enable them to live in peace, harmony and co-
operation with their fellow citizens.
e). The virtues which will engender universal outlook and
sympathies so that they can live in peace, harmony and
co-operation with the emerging world community.
f). The spiritual awareness and trans-social dimensions
of the human personality and realization of the same
through life and action.

It is only thus that our education will become a fit vehicle to continue the march of India from its impressive past to a glorious future.