True Education and Man and God

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5.

True education demands of man not to live on the outskirts of his

personality which are constituted by the worlds orf sense-objects,

the physical body and the mind, but to enter into the realm of the

intellect from where to assert his natural manliness. Man is the

supreme creature in the kingdom of living, because of his rational

capacities in his discriminative intellect. So long as man does not

assert this special equipment in him, he has not in his personality

come to claim his heritage as man.

 

True education makes an appeal to man to exercise his rational

faculty of discrimination between the True and the false in him and

to renounce the false and to identify himself with the True and the

Permanent in him. Eternal Bliss can come only to the one who has

developed this faculty to discriminative between the Real and unreal

and to attach himself to the Real. True education does not advise us

to get away from this world in utter despair or sheer disgust; but

on the other hand, enjoins us to live in this world ever a master of

the world of objects, taming and using them as our willing servants

rather than being enslaved by them. One can actually live in a

spirit of detachment and yet, like Lord Krishna be in everything in

this world.

 

In order to cherish a true education, the sastras and the upanishads

have to be read again and again, repeatedly reflected upon and

continuously remembered, until the inner man in us is completely

reeducated in the way of life. Without a complete study of the

scriptures (swadhyaya) we will not be in a position to know the

logic and what we are doing in the name of spiritual practice, and

without this knowledge our practices cannot gain the edge and depth

that are unavoidable for our sure progress. Thus, in all religions,

a study of the scriptures is insistsed upon as an unavoidable

training during the seeker's early days. But at the same time a mere

intellectual study of the scriptures will nto help us in purifying

and shaping our within to the glorious Beauty of the Divine. It is

necessary that we must pour out our mind and intellect into the

scheme of living that the 'upanishads' advise. And the hope of the

scriptures is that by an intelligent study of it, the seeker would

come to experience the silence of the heart. And a comprehensive

study of Acharya Sankara's Bhaja Govindam will easily serve the

purpose of a true education.