Inspirations

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA ON EDUCATION

· There is no doubt that today’s education neglects training of the mind in all its aspects, but it also neglects the spiritual side of human beings. People’s minds are not directed to higher pursuits of life with the result that their hidden potentials are not revealed. Only when wisdom, peace, strength, unselfishness, loving concern for others and other virtues become evident is a person transformed from a sensuous being to a true human being.

· Intellect has been cultured with the result that hundreds of sciences have been discovered, and their effect has been that the few have made slaves of the many—that is all the good that has been done. Artificial wants have been created; and every poor man, whether he has money or not, desires to have those wants satisfied, and when he cannot, he struggles, and dies in the struggle.

· Everything a person does, every thought, every move, leaves an impression on the mind. Even when it is not outwardly apparent, it is strong enough to work beneath the surface. A person’s character is determined by the sum total of these impressions. When a large number of these impressions come together, they form a habit. This then becomes a powerful force, for character is but repeated habits. This is why, through the acquisition and repetition of desirable habits, one’s character can be remodeled.

·The education that you are getting now has some good points, but it has a tremendous disadvantage which is so great that the good things are all weighed down. In the first place it is not a man- making education, it is merely and entirely a negative education. A negative education, or any training that is based on negation, is worse than death.

·The physical body is to be sustained by proper material food, the mind to be developed through the assimilation of the right type of ideas, and the soul, to be nourished by earnest prayer and meditation.

·During the period of studentship, the foundation of life is to be laid properly. If it fails, later life is also bound to be a failure. That is the reason why great stress is laid on the life of brahmacharya. It was so in ancient times and it should be so in the present time also.

·The student must practice self-control and study the scriptures, along with other branches of learning. He should observe strict continence, never consciously departing from it. He must learn to offer his heart’s worship to the Divine Self in all beings and to see the One God residing in all.

· Sri Ramakrishna declares: If a man practices absolute brahmacharya for twelve years, the medha nadi ( nerve of intelligence) will open, i.e… his power of understanding will blossom. His understanding will become capable of penetrating and comprehending the subtlest ideas. With such an understanding man can realize God. God can be attained only through a purified understanding of this type.

·The human energy which is expressed as sex- energy, in sexual thought, when checked and controlled, easily becomes changed into ojas. It is only the chaste man and woman who can make ojas, and store it in the brain; that is why chastity has always been considered the highest virtue….

· By observance of strict brahmacharya all learning can be mastered in a very short time; one acquires unfailing memory of what one hears or knows but once. The chaste brain has tremendous energy and gigantic will- power.

· It is a medical—a physiological—fact that the best blood in the body goes to form the elements of reproduction in both sexes. In a pure and orderly life, this matter is absorbed. It goes back into circulation, ready to form the finest brain, nerve, and muscular tissue. This life of man, carried back and diffused through his system, makes him manly, strong, brave, and heroic. If wasted it leaves him effeminate, weak, and irresolute, intellectually and physically debilitated, and prey to sexual irritation, disordered function, morbid sensation, disordered muscular movement, a wretched nervous system, epilepsy, insanity, and death. The suspended use of generative organs is attended with a notable increase of bodily vigour and spiritual life.

· For a young man up to the time of his marriage, chastity is most salutary, not only in an ethical and aesthetical sense, but also from hygienic standpoint.

· All knowledge, therefore, secular or spiritual, is in the human mind. In many cases it is not discovered, but remains covered, and when the covering is being slowly taken off, we say, ‘We are learning.’

· Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life- building, man- making, character- making 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 a whole library… If education is identical with information, the libraries are the greatest sages in the world, and encyclopedias are the rishis.

· Negative thoughts weaken men. Do you not find that where parents are constantly taxing their sons to read and write, telling them they will never learn anything, and calling them fools and so forth, the latter do actually turn out to be so in many cases? If you speak kind words to boys and encourage them, they are bound to improve in time. What holds  good of children, also holds good of children in the region of higher thoughts. If you can give them positive ideas, people will grow up to be men and learn to stand on their own legs.

· Well, you consider a man as educated if only he can pass some examinations and deliver good lectures. The education which does not help the common mass of people to equip themselves for the struggle for life, which does not bring out strength of character, a spirit pf philanthropy and the courage of a lion--is it worth the name? Real education is that which enables one to stand on one's own legs. The education that you are receiving now inn schools and colleges is only making you a race of dyspeptics. You are working like machines merely, and living a jelly-fish existence.

· No one was ever really taught by another; each of us has to teach himself. The external teacher offers only the suggestion which rouses the internal teacher to work to understand things.

·  One should live from his very boyhood with one whose character is like a blazing fire and should have before him a living example of the highest teaching.

· The old system of education in India... is very different from the modern system. The students had not to pay. It was thought that knowledge is so sacred that no man ought to sell it. Knowledge must be given freely and without any price. The teachers used to take students without charge, and not only so, most of them gave their students food and clothes. To support these teachers the wealthy families... made gifts to them... and they in their turn had to maintain their students.

· Purity in thought, speech, and act is absolutely necessary. ...As to the thirst after knowledge, it is an old law that we all get whatever we want. None of us can get anything other than what we fix our hearts upon. ... There must be a continuous struggle, a constant fight, an unremitting grappling with our lower nature, till the higher want is actually felt and victoryis achieved. ... The student who sets out with such a spirit of preseverance will surely find success and realization at last.

· The great national sin is the neglect of the masses, and that is one of the causes of our downfall. No amount of politics would be of any avail until the masses in India are once more well educated, well fed, and well cared for.

·  My whole ambition in life is to set in motion a machinery which will bring noble ideas to the door of everybody, and then let men and women settle their own fate. Let them know what our forefathers as well as other nations have thought on the most momentous questions of life. Let them see specially what others are doing now, and then decide.

· Concentration is the essence of all knowledge; nothing can be done without it. Ninety per cent of thought force is wasted by the ordinary human being, and therefore he is constantly committing blunders; the trained man or mind never makes a mistake.

·  Controlled desire leads to the highest result. Transform the sexual energy into spiritual energy, but do not emasculate, because that is throwing away the power. The stronger this force, the more can be done with it. Only a powerful current of water can do hydraulic mining.

·   If you really want to judge of the character of a man, look not at his great performances. Every fool may become a hero at one time or another. Watch a man do his most common actions; those are indeed the things which will tell you the real character of a great man. Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be.

·  Do you know how much energy, how many powers, how many forces are still lurking behind that frame of yours? What scientist has known all that is in man? Millions of years have passed since man first came here, and yet but one infinitesimal part of his powers has been manifested. Therefore, you must not say that you are weak. How do you know what possibilities lie behind that degradation on the surface? You know but little of that which is within you. For behind you is the ocean of infinite power and blessedness.

·  Teach yourselves, teach every one 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 whrn this sleeping soul is roused to self-conscious activity.

SOURCE: Book entitled ‘My Idea of Education’ by Swami Vivekananda, Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata