Man-making integrates education and religion

Mere intellectual growth, unaccompanied by this ethical growth, makes only for the fattening of man’s ego, of his raw ‘I’. Such an education tends to make him clever but not wise, a prey to tensions and sorrows, and may lead him as much to rascality, on the one side, as to frustration and unfulfilment, on the other. By sharpening his intellect without at the same time expanding his heart in love and compassion, that intellect tends increasingly to scorn all values except self-interest, and ends up in the stagnation of cynicism, which registers the spiritual death of man. This is more serious than physical death for one so high in the scale of evolution as man. This is the prevailing mood of modern civilization, especially of its intellectuals. It is a disease more deadly than cholera or smallpox, malaria or leprosy. This is the main weakness of education in the modern world, arising out of its lack of insight into the spiritual dimension of the human personality and consequent emphasis only on organic satisfactions and organic survival, which goals even physical science, in its twentieth-century biology, as we have seen, apart from the higher world-religions, treats as unworthy of man and relegates to the pre-human stage of evolution.

It is here that education and religion blend into a single man making process, the earlier and the later phases of the single discipline of human growth, development, and fulfilment. The Indian spiritual tradition does not identify religion as with mere profession of creeds and dogmas or performance of rituals and ceremonies; neither does it equate it with scholarship. Religious scholarship is only knowledge about religion; but religion itself is experience, it is spiritual growth, development and realization. Atma va are drastavyah – ‘The Atman has to be realized’, says Yajnavalkya to his wife, Maitreyi, in the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad (iv.v.6). The central theme of religion and its key words are, therefore, the same as in education, namely nourishment and growth, the spiritual growth of the human personality through spiritual nourishment. No formalism or creed or dogma can do this for man.

EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 15 – The Philosophy of Man-Making Education (Pg:239-240; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Kanpur University on December 13, 1970.

Man-making Education promotes a double efficiency

The only means to this achievement (not just democracy in form but democracy in content) is education, conceived, as I said earlier, as man-making education. And for the first time in our long history, we can not only hope for, but are also in a position to realize, this all round development of our people, thanks to modern world conditions and the efficient technology of the modern age. To realize this, what we need is to capture the intellectual and moral energy to take full advantage of these favourable conditions, and to effect a double efficiency in our people through our educational process, namely, thought and personality – efficiency, within, and work and productive-efficiency, without. This double efficiency is the essence of a man-making education. As Vivekananda pointed out, it is only when we have restored our sunken millions to human dignity and worth that we can claim to be men; till then we shall have to treat ourselves as candidates to that high estate; and Vivekananda conceived education, and also religion, as the training to equip us to claim and to realize that high estate. So he always placed stress on a man-making education and a man-making religion. Every claim needs to stand the test of life and experience. Our claim to be a mature civilized people has today to face the challenge of the widespread human backwardness of our society. Human intelligence develops the power to identify and solve human problems through the training of that intelligence in purposive thinking and social feeling and social action. The product of such training is personality-energy and character-efficiency. It is this energy that is capable of mobilizing all types of physical and social energy resources and investing them in the social field and to make society grow in health and vigour. This is the energy that we have to develop in our people today, so that we cease to be passive spectators of human suffering, so that we cease to throw our hands up in despair and resignation, but become not only adequate, but more than adequate, to our mounting problems, so that these problems yield to the sure touch of our trained mind and hand.

EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 15 – The Philosophy of Man-Making Education (Pg:230-231; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Kanpur University on December 13, 1970.

Character: The Fruit of a Socially Oriented Will

Today, we have in our youths the manifestation of high emotional energy. This is the essential raw material of all character. But it is only the raw material. It needs processing to produce character. This rich emotional energy, disciplined and controlled by a socially oriented moral will, and directed to socially useful channels of action, is character-efficiency, according to Vivekananda. Where that emotional energy resource is less, the resulting character will be of a lower order. Where that energy is more, the resulting character will also be of a higher order. Herein lies the significance of education for human growth and fulfilment, individual and collective.

That high educational possibility is before us all today. Let our universities be the centres from which these energies will emerge and radiate throughout the nation. To play this vital role, they need to convert themselves into dynamic and dedicated centres of constructive and creative thinking. Let us, students and teachers and managements in our educational institutions, learn to sit and discuss across the table, calmly and purposefully, the problems that affect and afflict our nation as well as our education. We shall thus release a new energy into the bloodsteam and nervous system of our nation, and then witness joyfully its march, with steady steps, to all-round prosperity and progress.

EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 14 – Education and Human Development (Pg:200-201; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Gauhati University on March 28, 1972.

Education as ‘Learning to Do’ and ‘Learning to Be’

Learning to Be and Learning to Do have to become two inseparable aspects of any education designed to help the human child to achieve life fulfillment. Modern education all over the world has so far concentrated only on the Learning to Do aspect. The high efficiency achieved by modern Western man, and the Japanese, in this field is the product of the discipline of physical science and its technological fruits. Our own country, though backward in this field at the beginning of the modern period, is steadily catching up since our political independence. When all our children, from the primary to the school final levels, apart from the few that go up to the university levels, will receive the blessings of education in modern science, reinforced by a wide range of technical training courses, we can expect to see a high level of practical efficiency in our nation. That will mark a tremendous augmentation of the human energy resources in our country, unprecedented in our long history. We have to take all steps to orient our current educational processes in the direction of motivating and guiding our students to acquire the energy resources available from knowledge, organization, and self-discipline. ‘The nation must acquire scientific pluck and genius’, said Swami Vivekananda even at the close of the last century. Our philosophy assures us that vast energy resources are present in every child; education is the tapas, the discipline, that helps in making them manifest, like the striking that manifests the fire already present in a matchstick.

Widen scope of education from "doing" to "being"
But, learning to do, if carried too far without a corresponding stress on learning to be, will result in distortions in the human psyche and in the human social situation. These distortions, and the consequent human unfulfilments, constitute the dismal shadow on the otherwise bright human horizon of the modern scientific age. Practical efficiency, resulting from the training of the intellect and the will, in a context of physical health and vitality and yoked to an endless pursuit of organic satisfactions, may lead to the stifling of the imagination and of the spirit of creativity, and a general sagging of spirit. This is already afflicting modern civilization, including the stifling of the roots of pure science by the charms of the fruits of applied science. It reveals the age-old truth that the pursuit of profit, power, and pleasure can be only counter-productive, can only lead man to alienation, sorrow, and unfulfilment, if carried too far and without the guidance of a deeper philosophy of man. Training of the imagination is necessary to foster creativity; it is the energy behind pure science, art, ethics, and religion. Referring to the importance of this faculty, Lenin said (V. I. Lenin, Complete Works, Vol.45, 5th Edition):

‘This is an extremely precious faculty. To think that it is only indispensable to poets is a mistake and foolish prejudice, It is even needed in mathematics, for without imagination neither differential or integral calculus would have been invented.’
The scope of current higher education in India and the world outside is thus severely restricted, due to its undue stress on learning to do; it has to be widened to include also learning to be. This is the only way by which the current situation of ‘human skill as the means’ accompanied by ‘human folly as to ends’, as remarked by the late Bertrand Russell (Impact of Science on Society, p. 120-21), can be transformed into human wisdom as to ends; and ‘it follows that’, he concluded by warning, ‘unless men increase in wisdom as much as in knowledge, increase of knowledge will be increase of sorrow’.

EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 12 – Education, Science and Spirituality (Pg:144-145; ed. 1995)
This was the convocation address at the Burdwan University West Bengal on February 20, 1976.

Assimilation of Knowledge is the aim of Education

Such is the Indian society that is waiting to receive each and every one of our youths who complete their university education today. It is a society of bubbling hopes and mounting problems, with an impressive past and a glorious future. Every youthful generation of modern India owes it to itself and to the nation at large to strive to become strong and dynamic. Such strength is the product of faith in oneself and in one’s country’s heritage, reinforced by the assimilation of all available knowledge, national and international. This is the aim of all true education. Vivekananda defined the scope of our national education as the assimilation of the spirit of Vedanta and modern science. The Chandogya Upanisad in a memorable passage (I.1.10) refers to the energy of character generated by education:Yadeva vidyaya karoti, sraddhaya, upanisada, tadeva viryavataram bhavati – ‘Whatever is done through mastery of the know-how, through faith (in oneself and one’s cause) and through inner meditation – that alone becomes charged with the highest energy’.

EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume III – Education for Human Excellence; 1 – India's Educational Vision (Pg:16-17; ed. 1995)
This was the address delivered at the Calcutta University Convocation on February 15, 1966.

Instilling a Citizenship Awareness into Education

Education is the most important field from the long range point of view, for national health and welfare. This field has suffered from the mercenary attitude as much as any other field. The inculcation of the citizenship attitude, and the temper of the social responsibility it involves, into the world of our education, should be given the highest priority by all our political parties. This positive and wholesome influence of the political parties on education in place of the current wholly unwholesome and harmful influence, will have a revolutionary impact on our education. It will strengthen the ever-present positive and elevating influences of the still existing small minority of teachers and students, who are patriotic and dedicated but who now feel suffocated and helpless. We can well imagine what democratic health would come to the nation if a sizeable section, if not all, of our teachers, from the primary to the university levels, would achieve this revolutionary change from the mercenary to the citizenship awareness, and instill the same into all the millions of our students, and instill also into them that love of knowledge and character-excellence, both of which have been serious casualties during these thirty post-freedom years.


EXTRACTS FROM: Eternal Values for a Changing Society Volume IV - Democracy for Total Human Fulfilment; 1 - Enlightened citizenship and our democracy (Pg:40-41; ed. 1993)
This was the inaugural address at the Symposium on Enlightened Citizenship organized by the Ramakrishna Mission, New Delhi - held on April 27, 1980.