Social Vs Spiritual Education

While wondering about the entire thrust and orientation of our education system, a quick assessment itself reveals to me that it is completely and singularly oriented towards preparing someone to face life. This is true of all the dimensions of education that we impart to our children, or even adults for that matter (unless we are taking about highly specialized areas like psychology or management where in there can be modules for understanding oneself. Even these modules have an application thrust, in that the understanding is for usage in certain circumstances). When I say all dimensions, I refer not just to the knowledge and skills needed to practice particular fields or the generic characteristics like ways of thinking, reasoning, analyzing, etc, but also to what we consider to be the righteous moral or ethical education, imparting which makes us feel that we are doing something great to society and to the child. A quick reference to the dictionary was uninspiring to say the least.

When we say we want to educate our children, we commonly refer to imparting the requisite capabilities to either do jobs in a career or handle situations in life. A job is a requirement that arises in the socio-economic system. So are the situations in life. Exhortations to children that “unless you study well you wont get a good job or will not be able to handle life well”, stem from our worry to manufacture a product out of them which will have a saleable value in the socio-economic market place. It has all the elements of a business enterprise– the society and economy are the customers, salary and career growth the rewards, children the products, schools the factories and parents the entrepreneurs! The competition that exists in some of our countries, owing to the limited resources and opportunities, accentuate this worry and drives parents and thereby their wards to insane levels in order to succeed in this production-marketing enterprise.

Civilization and society are relatively latter creations in human history, largely imperfect ones at that, as with most human creations. And these (the latter at least) change, sometimes even within a single generation of people. Our identity, our self-understanding, our worth – everything is made relevant to society. Doctors, engineers, teachers, father, mother, citizen – all of it, is a social role that we play.

Why don’t we even fail to understand that these are only aspects of our lives is a question that deeply begs an answer in me. There is a greater, far more powerful, far more real aspect to our lives - ourselves. Everything starts there and perhaps goes around and ultimately ends there.

Why don’t we ask ourselves who the I in us is? Who are we within ourselves? Shorn of all the external dimensions, who is it that exists in us? Such questions, if at all asked are anchored in the turbulent ocean called society and never extricated from it, for e.g., I am an Indian, tamilian, etc.

A quiet period of meditation and stillness can help us discover that all the thoughts, emotions and experiences (mostly the former two create the later) that pervade our being rise and fall the tide of oceans. These waves, like tidal waves, are controlled by external forces – sometimes turbulent and sometimes not so. Observation of their rise and fall will quickly reveal to us that they are ephemeral and many times enemies to our peace and happiness. Even the most gripping thought, emotion or experience which seems to have a complete hold and possession of our entire being, ready to launch us into extraordinary action and extract the greatest sacrifices from us, can evaporate so simply in these moments of stillness. Then we go deeper and are in closer proximity to a purity or existence that is perhaps more close to what we are than the physical-emotional-mental space that most of us exist in most of the time.

Given that our socio-psychological experiences are transient, our education should primarily focus on finding an answer to the question- “Who am I?” Great sages like Bhagwan Sri Ramana Maharishi have said that this is the only important question that we need to seek an answer for. An answer to this question, they promise, would reveal not just who we are but also what the whole world is.

It is a pity that society has conspired to take us away from our selves. While living in society is important, it is secondary. The foundation is us. Somehow we seem to presume that we know who this I in I is, since we completely forget to put any effort to understand it.

The focus of education should be on this spiritual dimension. In fact, our entire lives and experiences in it should be used as avenues to understand who we are. Lets us teach our children to ask this question and help them find an answer (in the process help ourselves find an answer too!). It may not be easy, it may not be promising at first, but having got living examples amidst us in the form of realized masters, lets us develop faith and take the first steps. Hope is the foundation of life. Let us hope that their divine grace and our sincere efforts will eventually take us there!

I welcome any ideas and methods to introduce spiritual education within the ambit of our schools and homes. Thank you.