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Education for Intellect and Soul
by Satya Narayana Dasa, PhD, Director, Jiva Institute,
Visiting Professor, Rutgers Univerisity
 It
is said that the child is father to the
man. To make a good ‘father’ out of a
child, however, the man must give the
child proper education. Otherwise the
child will only remain uncultured being
and a source of trouble for society.
A society is judged by the level of its
education, not by its GDP. Its real wealth
is education, upon which all other wealth
depends.
The so-called poorer nations do not lack
natural resources. Then why are they poor?
Only because of lack of proper education.
One of the major distinctions between rich
countries and poor countries is their
level of education.
Complete Education
While lack of education can be negative, a
lack of ‘complete’ education is not much
help either. Professional education, which
equips one to get a job, is not a
‘complete’ education. It can not by itself
contribute to the society unless there is
also education about the values of life. A
child without such an education is like a
flower without fragrance. If a boy is
young, handsome and born to a high class,
rich family, but not educated in values,
what good can be expected from him? None.
All supposedly positive attributes such as
beauty, power, wealth, or high lineage
become sources of misery if they are not
accompanied by good education. In the
legal world, there is the term ‘white
collar crime’— crime committed by the
affluent class. Every day there are
newspaper stories about such crimes.
Here, the criminals are not uneducated
people by modern standards. In fact these
people, judging by their apparent economic
status, do not need to engage in such
crimes. They have enough—money, power and
status. Then, why do they engage in
criminal activities? Because they are not
educated in the higher principles of life.
Education has enriched their intellects
but not their souls. They have been
educated in the importance of money, but
nothing beyond that.
In the USA, in the widely-publicized case
of Bernard Madoff, a wealthy man has been
sentenced to 150 years in prison and $170
billion in restitution payments for
pleading guilty to 11 federal felonies
through which old women and charities lost
hundreds of billions. Even if he amassed
the wealth, he will not be able to enjoy
it. This is a natural occurrence for a
person who is not educated in values and
philosophy.
Long ago, there was a king in India whose
name was Yayati. He was ruling India, was
young and had the most beautiful queens.
Moreover, he enjoyed all these luxuries
for a long time. What he concluded, after
a long and fruitful life, was that if a
person's mind is not balanced and content,
all the wealth, grains, cattle and women
of the world are not sufficient to satisfy
him. This is a very profound realization
and we can learn a lot from it. There is
no need to repeat Yayati’s experience to
arrive at such a conclusion or we would
all be little Madoffs out to gather more
paraphernalia for enjoying life.
The Two Types of
Education
The Upanishads (Vedic literature) declare
that there are two types of education—Para
Vidya (superior knowledge) and
Apara Vidya (inferior knowledge).
Para Vidya means spiritual education
and Apara Vidya means professional
education.
Para Vidya is the transcendental
knowledge that leads to supreme wisdom and
eternal bliss. Apara Vidya, on the
other hand, is secular or intellectual
knowledge that merely helps us to enhance
our vision of the outer world. Wisdom is
eternal, while knowledge is mainly
informative and therefore temporary and
subject to change.
 The
Upanishads recommend that a child be given
both the superior and inferior types of
education. Education that focusses only on
inferior, temporary knowledge is only half
the job. The superior education explains
the principles and purpose of life.
Without this education a person has been
compared to the dumb donkey that carries a
burden on its back the whole day in
exchange for a handful of grass to feed
itself. Because the inferior education,
only trains one to earn money, it is a
burden. One spends a lot of time, energy
and money acquiring it just for the sake
of surviving in society and inviting a
host of health-related and stress-related
issues along the way!
One may rightly ask, “What is the utility
of Para education?” “It does not
solve our economic problems—the whole
world is in the grip of economic fever
now.” My reply to all such people is: it
does.
It is the Apara education that has
led us to the mess we are in and we will
never come out of it without the help of
Para education. Only with complete
education (by which I mean the
amalgamation of Para and Apara
Vidya, as recommended by the
Upanishads) can the society can function
properly.
The general feeling of insecurity and fear
all around is caused by Apara
education. Other products of Apara
education include the economic slump,
terrorism, crimes, rapes, exploitation,
wars, divorces, drug trafficking, AIDS,
global warming, environmental pollution
and, even, swine flu. Who wants them?
Nobody. But they are here and will not go
away unless their root cause is understood
and uprooted.
The Solution
The solution, therefore, lies in Para
education. The Hitopadesha (an ancient
Indian book of wisdom by Narayana Pandita)
rightly says that those parents who do not
provide Para education to their
children are their enemies. Ironically,
these parents are also their own enemies,
because ‘the child is the father of man’!
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