TRUE EDUCATION : 10. SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

 

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Sunday, October 25, 2020. 08:51.AM.

(Keynote address given at a conference on education in Delhi on October 21, 1983)

Post-10.

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The Mahabharata is the problem and the battle of existence. It is the day-to-day conflict we are facing which is embodied in this masterly epic we call the Mahabharata. The human individual – yourself, myself, and everybody – is the Arjuna, and Sri Krishna, who gives the answer, is something we are not seeing with our eyes. We have not found our Krishna, though we are here as Arjunas. Perhaps if these Arjunas who are here in this world were to find their Krishna, there would be no need for these seminars and these discussions; perhaps there would be no necessity for any kind of argument and deliberation, because there would be no problems. There would be no problems because each one would understand the other in the light of what each one is basically.

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The system of yoga, with which many of you may be acquainted, is the art of understanding each one, each person, each individual, each thing from its own, his own, her own point of view. The looking at a person, seeing a thing, empirically observing a particular unit, an item by itself, is not yoga because it is not union. Merely observing a thing is not coming in basic contact with the rootedness of its existence, and so empirical observation and experimentation, which is the technology of modern psychological science, and which is perhaps also a part of educational psychology, will not be adequate to the purpose of the solution of human problems, though we can have our education for getting a job. We are located in an empirical world of space, time, causation and transition; in that sense we are empirical, so our science is empirical, our psychology is empirical, and there is nothing but that even in the commercial field.

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But we are not only that. We have hope which seems to lift us above even the mortality of the whole earth. We do not want to believe that our hopes will be vanquished merely by the death of this physical body. Which person on earth will be able to work for any value whatsoever in this world, knowing very well that death is at the elbow? If we know that there is no guarantee for human life, and any moment can be the last moment, who would be so eager to do anything in this world? Who would lift a finger to do anything if it is certain that the next moment is not secure?

To be continued ...

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