Education is a Process of Enlightenment - 6. Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday, November 16, 2021. 7:00. AM.

(Spoken on July 26, 1976.)

Post-6.

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Now, for this purpose we have to understand the structure of the universe as a whole. Great educationists of the past were also great philosophers because psychology is based on a metaphysical insight into the nature of things, and education is nothing but an expression of human psychology. Therefore, we can imagine how vast is the pursuit of education, or knowledge, and how little are our efforts towards its implementation. Now we are in a position to understand where we have made the mistake in life. We do not live in the world for the sake of physical comfort or convenience. The purpose of living is to work hard for the education of the spirit within, and the revelation of the spirit, which is the process of education, is total, integral, comprehensive, all-inclusive. When we gradually rise by degrees in the process of education, our whole personality evolves. So a correct psychology of education would be that which instils into the minds of children the basic principles of comprehensiveness, even at the initial stage. Too much specialisation and compartmentalisation in the branches of learning is not proper. Proper education would be, therefore, the purification of the total human individual.

Now, the ‘total human individual’ means everything that the human individual is made of. The human personality is made up of various levels of contact and experience. Outwardly there are the national, the social and the political fields of contact, and inwardly there are the biological, the psychological, the intellectual and the spiritual levels. The human personality is wide as well as deep, so in our educational processes we have to include the width as well as the depth of the personality at the same time. And when we progress in the process of education, we become wider and deeper at the same time. If one inch of width is gained, an inch of depth is also gained at the same time because every real growth is both outward as well as inward, so that the ultimate aim is to become so comprehensive that we are as vast as the universe, as deep as eternity itself. This is the ideal of what they call God-realisation or the ultimate realisation of the Supreme Reality. At present it may look like a theoretical ideal, but it is the ultimate Truth. We will realise that ultimately it is not merely a theoretical ideal, but a fact which manifests itself by small degrees in our practical life. Even a little jot of happiness that we have in life is nothing but an expression of that universality in some degree or the other.

In practical life, universality manifests itself as unselfishness. The more are we unselfish, the more are we tending towards universality. Hence, our unselfishness is the test of our happiness. To be unselfish would be to also include the features of other human beings in our life. So unselfishness is not really absence of the self but an inclusion of the selves of others in greater and greater degrees. Unselfishness means the negation of the demands of the egoistic self and the inclusion of the needs of others selves also.

So again we come to the point of considering the world outside at the same time we consider the needs of our inner life. It amounts to saying that when a person enters the field of education, one enters the field of the universe itself. We are placing our foot in the ocean, which is both vast and deep. So my humble prayer to you all is that in your organisational setup of physical education, etc., you bear in mind the needs of common life in harmony with the laws of nature as a whole.

To be continued .....

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