We are schooled to know about our society and nature but not about ourselves, especially the nature of our mind and our spiritual potential. Even as adults and senior citizens, we remain ignorant of the mischievousness of our mind and the magnanimity of our heart. Our outward inquisitiveness is rarely turned inward, except at moments we are stuck by grief or crisis. Even those somber moments do not kindle inward inquiry but leave us in sad quietude.
Thus we remain ignorant of the mind and intelligent joy-oriented life management . We continue to be slave rather than a master of the mind. It is that rather turbulent psyche with endless desires, fixed prejudices, ever seeking false security through through material gains and escaping the inherent aching void through sensual pleasures, which has to e seen ad sanitised. The psychic energy that our thoughts and emotions are made of is what has to be negated for the tranquil and intelligent energy in the core of our being to emerge naturalizing our very state of being. It is cellular transformation with the life-sustaining bio-chemicals revitalized the blissful still state of mind and body. This is the state that is diligently pursued by every spiritual master, sage and seer. Even our supreme man of action, Mahatma Gandhi, had this as the ultimate goal with Truth as the instrument and having in his words ‘his being and living for realization of this goal’.
Every religion expounds this goal as the ultimate transcending the pleasure-obsessed violent mind. In Hinduism, it is ‘Atma’, in Islam ‘Rooh’ and in Christianity it is ‘the holy spirit. Etymologically education means bringing out the potential. Ironically, this what our present education perversely lacks. Being biased in favour of mere intelligence quotient, it overlooks the most vital spiritual quotient now being expounded by the behavioral gurus as emotional quotient. It is the energy of the EQ that makes us and maximizes the un manifested attribute of us known as sensitivity or the conscience. Indeed it is the deficiency of this human sensitivity that is the root cause behind our degeneration and decadence, masquerading as amoral culture and crass civilization fostering violence and vice all over the globe. The extortions, corruption and incrimination of the powerful elite and the governing polity are traceable to the glaring deficiency of sensitivity. And this hardened callousness of the corrupt rulers is perpetuating the poverty of the masses.
The conspicuous corruption, mental and monetary of the so called educated elite schooled and graduated in exclusive institution confirms their depthless self-agrandising education. This evil-oriented education manifesting as drugs, AIDS and anthrax needs to be revolutionized if we are not to end up as violence feeders or worshipers of greed and goods. The universal visible effect of present education is all round sickness precipitated by the scourge of stress. Unless this stress is busted by infusing the spiritual quotient along with intelligence quotient in education, there is no hope of ennobling the human nature.
This is what has been emphasized in the reports of UNESCO propounding a perspective on education, which NCERT has been attempting to introduce in its curriculum. All the human resource development training programmes prove to be futile, unless the real source of humanity-that is the spirit is developed. As means of eliminating the stress and strain, yoga and meditation are becoming popular worldwide but only the steadfast resolve to realize our blissful spiritual self by rejecting our habitual egocentric consciousness and adopting the soul-centric awareness that can free us from our own dehumanising mind. Only such self-awareness can bring out the ability to come upon bliss and beyond and the capacity to enjoy life and the knowledge based analytical ability in us. Developing such a three-dimensional personality should be the objective of education.
The article has been taken from the book ‘The Art of Being and The Art of Living by Captain KV Reddy