Vidyā or Education
The Sense of The Bhagavad Gītā
Education has a purpose other than merely reflecting the tendencies of the present age or the past, from which it largely draws its impetus for furthering itself as a beacon of hope for the future or projecting itself as a great yardstick of indisputable knowledge itself. The Oxford Dictionary defines Education as “The process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university”. If we are to sum-up Education as a mere process or reflection of a high authority or its confident mouthpiece, as seems to be the case now, foist on the minds and hearts of the peoples of a nation, such as ours, we are then indeed looking at a grim picture and a sad reality, and to extricate out of this awful morass, this one-way to road to moral as well as spiritual extinction as a race, is to find our own means to impart ourselves a sense of knowledge which cannot turned into a rigid system or reflection of a tyrannical state or the expression of a nefarious, systematic and cut-throat falsehood, masquerading as an indisputable intellectual knowledge.
A duplicity of knowledge masquerading as truth or as a direct derivation of the mind’s slavery to the Western culture and influence, by virtue of its inherent ignorance and borrowed wisdom, fails to lead men to a higher development of their faculties, and because it is inherently duplicitous, therefore it cannot retain anything of the originality of the Western synthesis, culture or temperament or appeal to the native Indian tribe steeped in the rich spiritual history and accomplishments of their forefathers; where it does not appeal or augment the natural growth of the individual, it is then forced onto him by a repeated cultural assault, by discrediting his past as a moonshine and worthless preoccupation of a few impractical bards and sages and by appealing more to his susceptible side and less to his native impulse and inherent Indian psyche. It is an effort of a concerted, a well-coordinated and a thoroughly thought-out campaign to discredit the ancient wisdom of the great Asian subcontinent by replacing slowly but steady the eastern synthesis and spiritual science native to the natural Indian. But such a campaign seems less harmful and more productive to the modern, scientific temperament, bereft of either the inner or higher sense, and it is even welcomed as a refreshing change and movement essential to sustain the race towards a competitive edge in society; it is also seen as a sign of self-advancement in the term of a dominant intelligence and scientific temper, in which there can be no room for moonshine or superstition, and none at all for the spiritual self-enquiry or its immediate forms, because they point to a direction and utility which neither our intellectual knowledge nor our scientific temper can understand or follow.
But we cannot argue our case by foisting on the scientific mind, either by force of argument or by engaging in a fervent denial of intellectual knowledge and science as less inferior to our native systems, the figures of our own derivation as standing proofs of an unquestionable authority. Nor, can we so assume that an approach based on a glorious history of our past is enough the change this perception and make all turn to an original, ancient wisdom of the East, unless we say why it is so effective in the term of the Spirit and how. Here, we are at the frontier of a great discovery of our past as well as our future, but to get there we must look upwards towards the luminous abode of Mahasaraswati and bring her divine word here in this world as the dominant impulse of our moral, social and spiritual seeking even from the most obscure forms of the world and so elevate them to a higher level of knowledge, and forever freed of their obscurities.
Vidyā, not education, is the true word of the great Indian system of imparting knowledge, but it is a knowledge based on a sound and secure foundation of a greater Truth, born out of an inner seeing but not without its feet entrenched in the ground. A system based on an indecipherable and symbolic tradition of the Spirit may well be seen by the practical, Western mind with suspicion and distrust, and even when explained to some extent by higher reason and logic, still it seeks only to subject the system to the scruples of material science and attempt to drive out of the exercise the reason as well as the substance for its denial of the Spirit as something trustworthy and practically viable. The idea of the Spirit leaning towards existence and its forms, and not just occupying but embodying them in order to express itself, is native to the Indian thought and has been verified by self-experience in the past by Rishis and Seers of old, but to assume by mere surface observation or conclude by confident reason that there is no Spirit and that even if it is there, it cannot be verified by self-experience and that it is all a moonshine, is a mistake of the thinking intelligence, and therefore, it cannot be equated with the Spirit or considered a worthy opponent to it. Yet, for the purposes of our discussion, we may have to give it its due place in the scheme of things, for in truth, nothing needs to be bluntly rejected but only to be involved and given its due importance. This is the essential difference between the ancient Indian system of education, in which this higher and imparting knowledge rejects nothing but wholly embraces everything to transform if and wherever possible, and the Western system which rejects what it cannot understand and subjects everything to the scrutinies of its myopic science.
The basis of education lies within and the outward only carries the essential result of the inner, the splendours of the inner reflecting on the outer, but it is a not movement of an inner periphery but of a luminous centre within the individual, with which the Guru or the divine Teacher could connect himself and make a better use of his disciple’s faculties and lead them to a higher sublimation, not by sacrificing his nature to a dull and stupid inertia but by enriching his outer self by a direct spiritual enrichment of his inner self. That alone is the purpose of education and its practical utility, not faithfully aping the Western model and incongruous forms to suit our need or to satisfy our inner urges. It may not be appropriate to conclude that the whole of the Western system is a nonsense or too practical to be useful for the indwelling nature of man. The Western system of education has its own merits and points to a direction not different from that of the Indian, and ultimately all forms move toward some secret goal consciously or unconsciously, but it moves by circling around its goal and wasting much of its energy in the process, wastes resources and squanders opportunities, but always comes up with a brilliant edifice of its half-knowledge, a bare skeleton decorated with scientific impostures and make-ups, and it arrives always at a half-figure, always short of the full perspective and leaves the rest as something unimportant or unviable or even unworthy of its pursuit.
This attitude arises out of its incapacity to delve deeper into things recondite and occult, and because they are so hidden from its critical vision, therefore it looks upon them with a justifiable suspicion and anchors itself firmly upon its own limited knowledge and terms everything else as a moonshine and impracticality of the spiritual pursuit of life. Any system based on a derived knowledge, for it is a knowledge by critical observation and external experiment, is incapable of a higher synthesis or direct vision of the Spirit, and it is this surface knowledge of things which has rendered mankind into an impotent symbol of a collective weakness, where mankind seeks its salvation by the limited figures of science and material reason, an imposed slavery which it considers its cherished freedom and in the process, has forgotten its secret evolutionary link to something more profound and larger than these present figures and forms. What is the meaning or purpose of education if it is not able to find this marvellous possibility for mankind and so help him out in his secret quest? Our past systems of education were not an abstraction of a mental synthesis or a sum of an externally derived or accumulated knowledge and here, the critical intelligence was nothing more than a faithful subordinate to a higher wisdom, manifesting through the divine Teacher, but in the Gita the divine Teacher stands in the midst of a great and legendary battle and exhorts his chosen pupil to wage a war against his own kith and kin and destroy those who oppose Dharma or the law of the Divine.
The Gita is a summary of a great and profound philosophy of a dominant spiritual culture of a then India, and Sri Krishna the dominant symbol of a race whose might could only be measured infinitely, and not by any human scales of knowledge. These were yogins, scholars, kings, warriors, sculptures, designers etc. and they lived and fought for the Truth together as a divine race. What education could produce such men in these present times, and if not, why not? The present systems have rather produced a race of men who believe no longer in their own truth, but only in science and its dazzling sidelights; the present humanity is not even a distant reflection of its vibrant past; it is the sign of a great mental aberration which has dominated the hearts and minds of men since the decline of the spiritual age of India. Even Egypt and Persia have fallen into an autocratic rule and lost their mystic heritage and extraordinary culture, leaving the world to suffer more and more under a titanic impulse, which uses the great scientific apparatus to maim humanity by limiting its possibilities to visible phenomena of existence and in the process, has replaced the Spirit with scientific enquiry and verifiable knowledge.
And, the modern age in which we live has embraced this impulse and this limitation of knowledge as the standard of very life itself and seeks to build upon them the foundation of its civilisational values and other substreams of morality and human goodness. What greater good can come out of such feebleness and misguided values of impulsive reasoning and scientific rigour is a pertinent question which needs to be answered from a practical standpoint. The Gita moves to address this problem, not by a set of trenchant formulae, but by addressing and highlighting the hidden weaknesses of man through a triune approach of divine Yoga and so asking him to rise above all forms of weakness and self-despair to seek refuge in the Divine, “In Me, says Sri Krishna”. This is the very crux and foundation of the Gita, to trust in the Divine wholly and to belong to Him in all parts of our being, to belong in thought and action and feeling and every impulse and impulsion to Him and to allow everything to flow out of that ineffable union with the Divine,- that is the sense and purpose of Vidyā and its practical utility in the world.
Still, the Western mind, enamoured of the mystery and richness of our spiritual culture, tries always to find its common ground by limiting itself to the development of the surface man, leaving the rest of his hidden nature to mend itself. In the recent times, science has tried to look beyond and broaden its scope to admit the sense of the invisible, but it is still within the confined laws and rules of experiment and verifiable phenomena. Western theology too stumbles at the idea of a multifaceted, or more properly, million-faceted God or Divine, as opposed to a crucified, humble and nonchalant Divinity on a cross; for in truth, the sense of the integral Divine as life and existence is not native to the Western temperament. It seeks to define life and existence as a formulation of some inexplicable matrix, a theory in which the universe suddenly sprang out of a big bang and all the subsequent forms and species!
From the Vedic to Vedantic age, the effort of all our social and cultures systems tended towards teaching the essential truth of being and existence, and from that effort arose all sense of life and existence and inner pursuit. And, in the Vedantic age, these systems were perfected and made flawless; it was a golden age in which the vibrancy of life was at the peak of its development and man’s spiritual seeking was met with a wider embrace in the form of a Guru. The Divine was discovered to be within and without, all life was a celebration of the marvel of God. And, education itself was expressive or embodiment of a greater knowledge, not only of the invisible, but of the cognisable, but with emphasis on an infinite development of their forms into potent symbols of a higher evolution and through that the possibility, higher evolution of man.
Gita speaks of the high ideals of dharma through the symbol of the transcendent Godhead standing in the middle of the battlefield, amidst rancour and rage, fear and self-withdrawal of his human friend, the Vibhuti of God entrusted with the task of obliterating his foes, who are none than his own bloodline, and here, we get to the idea of an inner battlefield with Sri Krishna as the divine Teacher telling us what to do and how to go about conquering our inner battle, which is far more difficult than any external conflict. The whole sense of the Gita is a revelation of the higher nature of man through the symbolic gesture of the Godhead, whose flaming, universal Form sends shivers into Arjuna with his whole nervous system on the verge of a breakdown, but this higher form of the divine Godhead is ineffable harmony and inexpressible delight, and by the vision of which one sees all and knows everything. This is the practical implication of an imparting, infinite and self-giving knowledge, which cannot be shut into a system, however effective it might seem at first, or into a mental form or rendering; this knowledge has to be aspired for and attempted by a conscious yoga of self-surrender. There can be no doubt that this is the ideal of education that we are envisaging here, whose form and substance derive from a higher synthesis, which the Master of Yoga has faithfully imparted to his human disciple.
No Western system or gospel or philosophy has influenced the minds and hearts of a civilisation in the same way the Gita did, and it still invokes a sense of wonder and devotion inherent in the present Indian masses, not decisively though but it is moving into a certain, inevitable point of its rebirth in the minds and hearts of men once again. Christianity appeals to the subservience of men to a moral, righteous idea of God, and so its cherished systems only reflect this attitude of a moral slavery and attachment to salvation as the last mile of its spiritual quest and refuses to seek beyond the cross and the fallen body the true strength of the Spirit and its robust systems of knowledge here on the earth. The result is an education enlightening enough to build a shackle of self-limiting ideas and scientific vigour, but it is imprisoned by its own contraries and chained forever to a slow and turbid progression of a half-knowledge. Science can mimic the human element and draw a map of our cerebral movements or even detect a rare pulse of it, just as modern art tries to imitate life, but the more it attempts, the more it falters into the pit, for truly, a self-existent Reality and its innumerable forms including the physical, cannot be known fully or their implication understood without a direct perception or seeing out of a higher vision, the one that was granted to Arjuna by Sri Krishna, the divine Preceptor, who teaches us to look within and by imparting His own knowledge into us by a Yoga-Siddhi, an occult practise prevalent in those times, in which all sense of true knowledge could be imparted to the disciple through the process of yoga and self-surrender to the divine Guru. We seem to have lost that tradition and divine heritage and embraced the Western model blindly without due regard for our rich history and self-pride.
The true purpose of education is to find the Spirit, not only above and as one’s higher divine nature, but in the very battleground where we stand today as a people of a once glorious nation, invaded by a thousand armies and conflicts and contradictions and cultural assaults, ruled to submission by dark, external forces and rendered impotent and weak in our own yard. We are ruled by a law of a devious cerebral mechanism, which decides what we need to know, how much we need to know and in what manner and under what conditions. It is more of an imposition of a self-confident half-knowledge than an indispensable aid to human self-development and material well-being, because, out of a such system, nothing truly original can emerge, nor can we expect it to be more than what it is now, for it cannot be changed or progressively bettered by a possible intervention of a higher knowledge. And, any system of education bereft of a conscious Spirit and a self-conscious Mechanism here on the earth is bound to vanish under the pressure of newer and more renewed forms of the dynamic Spirit here, though the signs of which are only visible to an inner eye of knowledge.
It is in the sense of the Gita and so in the forms of its infinite knowledge that we must base our idea of a higher education and its tremendous utility for mankind, and confidently execute the pragmatic structure of the great Scripture to benefit those who are ready for the future of a resurgent India.
End of Part 3
The sense of the Bhagavad Gita — Introduction
