The Higher Education

This article is excerpted from a discourse by Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba to the women in Anantapur College on the values and qualities to be cultivated by women.

Education must help weaken all narrow loyalties and strengthen the aspiration for establishing a peaceful and prosperous world. It must promote in the individual consciousness unity, tolerance, and equality. The lessons imparted to youth should not, like rainfall on desert sands, disappear without fertilizing the soil; nor should they, like rainfall on marsh, make the mind more slushy. They should, like the raindrops imbibed by oysters, produce in the mind pearls of wisdom and virtue.

A second type of education is the training given for earning a livelihood, imparting the skills and knowledge necessary to live in comfort.

The first type of education is termed spiritual. Here you are being educated through both these paths. Of course, there is a vast difference between the education prevalent in the past in India and that which prevails today. In the past, pupils were taught secular topics along with ethical, moral, and spiritual subjects. Great attention was paid to the development of character and disciplined living. Present day education is devoid of discipline. It encourages a kind of life in which each person can follow his own whim, wish, and desire. Can this be correct? Is the view correct that whims and fancies should not be controlled? We need to pay attention to this problem.

The Qualities

Education must deal with three basic qualities in man—the dull, the passionate, and the balanced (tamasic, rajasic, and satwic). These, unless sublimated and regulated, will ruin man or reinstate him as Divine. They can, if regulated and controlled, win him the three worlds and bring him the Trinity. For example, you can find the three in the story of Rama. As a young boy, Rama was walking across the forest with the sage Viswamitra. He met the woman Tataki [a demon] and killed her; he came across another woman, Ahalya [wife of a sage Gautam] and he restored her to her husband after advising her in appropriate terms. He later met another woman, Sita, and made her his own. The first woman is the tamoguna [the dull quality], the second the rajoguna [the passionate quality], and the third, Sita, the satwaguna [the balanced quality]. Each represented one of the three gunas [qualities]. Again, Rama had three “friends,” or “comrades.” The satwic one among them—Vali—he absorbed into himself. The rajasic friend—Jambavantha—was granted His presence for some length of time and was awarded a coveted position and status at some future period. The tamasic friend—Sugriva—was constantly corrected and transformed. Again, we find Rama contacted three persons spurned by society—Sabari, Guha, and Kumbhakarna. Sabari is the representative of the satwic nature; the boatman, Guha, is the rajasic type. The demonic Kumbhakarna, constantly relapsing into actual sleep, is the true representative of the tamasic type. Each of these three was sent to one of the three lokas [worlds] by Rama. By these three examples, Rama made clear to mankind the nature of the three gunas and how it can affect one’s career.

Humility

Each person has to decide for herself which of the three ideals to hold forth before the world. The possession of degrees like an M.A. or B.A. is of no consequence at all. Students should give up all narrow feelings and ideas. Faith in God is the widest and deepest of feelings that the heart of man can entertain. Without it, man is reduced to inert matter. Faith in God and devotion to the Supreme induce humility. Education must endow man with humility. But, today, education cultivates the ego and so man’s life is reduced to sheer waste.

Egotism is a wicked instrument; on account of it, as our Puranas [Hindu scriptures] declare, even divine beings have fallen. Great scholars and ascetics, rulers and warriors, like Ravana and the rest, have met their downfall as a result of this vile trait. It is the crown of all evil traits. It is the crest of every crooked path. It makes man bewail his lot and deprives him of all the gains of knowledge. To be proud that we are educated people or that we are the authorities in charge of educational institutions is a meaningless gesture.

You gain many things from elders after approaching them reverentially. But first get rid of the ego. Only then can life flow without obstruction, easy and free. Think of a football; children kick it about from one end of the field to the other, never giving it a moment’s rest. They can do so because it is inflated with air; when the air is let out, no one cares to kick the deflated ball. The humble man is, therefore, left alone.

Humility, with no pride or jealousy, no tinge of ego, is the chief virtue of man. He must develop full control of his senses and attain self-respect. You are the mothers-to-be of this land. Therefore, when you cultivate humility from now on, the children of this land will also become gems of virtue and ideal citizens. Education develops humility; humility heightens authority; authority opens the avenues of wealth; wealth promotes, under such conditions, the quality of dharma [righteousness]. When it invigorates, living will lead to happiness here and bliss hereafter.

Weak

Women are termed abala, “weak, without strength.” Do not feel like that. The courage, renunciation, power, generosity, love, and fortitude that women have is unequalled by men. Cultivate that love and treat your sisters with loving consideration. Do not allow tamasic and rajasic qualities to dominate; develop the satwic qualities of balance, tolerance, and love. That is the justification for education, the real gain. This is the spiritual current that is the core of all education. Educated people are as these bulbs. They must shed light to show others the way. They must shine, a result of the spiritual current with which they always have contact. On the other hand, if the bulb does not shed light even when the current is on, it means that it is not in good condition. It means that the mind of man is polluted by the tamasic and rajasic natures.

You [the students] mentioned that I have come to you for the first time in the New Year. But there is no new or old in time; it is always the present, the now, the flow of life. Those who have the tamasic and the rajasic natures are like blocks of coal, which can never be washed white by soap and milk.

Coal cannot become white, but soap is rendered dirty and milk dark. They must be subjected to the fire of divine agony. Then the coal becomes weightless and full of light, as ash. So too the individuals subjected to the tapas, or heat, become light and begin giving light. Since they are light they can spread themselves over wider and wider regions.

Who are those who truly guard and foster the dignity of man? The answer is: “Those who exercise control over their senses, and who possess self-respect; those who have the spirit of detachment and the quality of love.” Women especially must endeavor to acquire these qualities. You must earn for this college a great name by supplementing your secular studies with the study and practice of moral and spiritual disciplines and truths.

We welcome into this college new batches of students every year and we bid farewell to the batches that leave. The lesson we wish to impart to both is the lesson of discipline. Control, give up, limit, regulate—these are the guidelines. Na sreyo niyamam vina—No progress, without observing bounds and limits. Discipline is the very pulse of life. The circulation of blood, the process of breathing, and digestion—each follows certain strict rules, is bound by certain limits and laws. Life itself is a limited company! Our desires are unlimited, but the limit is set by the deposit we have kept from which to draw. Give up greed, the craving for more than you deserve. Students often wish for less effort and more success. This should not be. Wish for success after putting in the necessary exertion.

God and Man

The divine principle is unreachable by reason and logic. You may ask: how can we believe it? On that account, can you disbelieve even the Divine? When you throw a stone into the air, it falls to the ground. The reason for this is the gravitational force of the earth. But it cannot be seen. Since a person cannot see it, he is tempted to deny it. So, too, though the Divine is not seen, its influence, its impact, its working can be experienced.

In like manner, there are millions of things indicated by the words of the dictionary. Even though we have not seen all of them, we believe that they exist. Why then disbelieve in the divine principle?

The fact is, without the Divine, there cannot be the human. Humanness arises only when the Divine enters into the awareness. He who is not aware of his Divinity has only wasted his years of life.

It was the holy Gokulashtam, the day that Krishna was born. At Dakshineswar on that day, the priest in charge of the temple of Krishna decorated the idol with plenty of costly jewels and made the shrine very attractive. At night, he could not make up his mind to remove the jewels. So, he kept them in place on the idol itself, locked the outer door of the shrine and went home. A thief, who noticed this, broke open the lock, removed the precious gem-set jewels, and carried them away. The priest discovered the theft and reported it to the proprietress of the temple, Rani Rasmani. Her son-in-law rushed into the temple and seeing the idol bereft of all ornaments shouted, “Have you no shame, Krishna? You could not save the jewels you were wearing on your body from being stolen by a thief. How can you save us?” Ramakrishna Paramahamsa heard him and reprimanded him severely. “Fie on you! Gold for Him is as dirt. You may, in your ignorance, value it as gold; but, he has his own sense of values. Since you value them as gold, you should have guarded your gold jewels.”

Do not rely on God to protect you from everything. God does not concern Himself with worldly matters as much as with your spiritual advance. He will save you from the grief resulting from past lives of which you are not at present aware. Therefore, man is advised to develop vairagya, or detachment, so that he won’t become entangled in worldly desires.

Destiny

Of course, destiny, too, plays an important part.  During an earthquake in East Asia, a whole village was destroyed. There were only two survivors in one family, a brother and sister, ages 16 and 12. They moved out into the jungle and the brother fed his sister and himself by selling the fuel he collected. One day, a palmist examined the brother’s palm and predicted that he would marry his own sister. Aghast at this, the brother led the girl into the wilderness and killed her with an ax. No one else knew of this. He left her dead and ran away from the scene. But she was discovered alive by a person who took her home and raised her. The boy too was adopted by a kind soul, and he grew up in a nearby village. After some years, it happened that the sister was brought to the village where her brother lives and was given in marriage to the boy. After the birth of their first child, the brother finally identified the woman as his own sister. Ashamed of the sin of incest, he ran away from human sight and was seen no more. His wife did not know why he had left her. She roamed about in despair, trying to find her husband. She carried the baby in her arms and waited on the edge of a precipice, scanning the countryside for signs of him. At last, the legend says, she was changed into stone! Even today, that human stone can be seen in Vietnam, announcing to the world that destiny is invincible. What has been determined to be the consequence of the past cannot be modified. You can only pray for grace that can make the impact less painful, less grievous.

Convey these ideals to all. Cultivate great virtues; be generous, give up undue attachment, then, you can spend your entire life happily. Greatness does not lie in the actual achievement; it lies in your realizing the value of the act, the achievement. When you remove the pollution from the mind, the light of the spirit will shine and the reality will be revealed to you.

Feminine Shakti

Woman has been awarded the highest status in society; the country is itself honored as Motherland. And, the future of the nation depends on women. Women are repositories of mighty strength. In days of old, a big fight ensued in the Papi range of hills near Rajahmundry, on the banks of the Godavari River. The men prepared themselves for the battle but the women held them back. They pooled the mystic strength latent in them, as shakti [power], and were able to save their people from the enemy.

Do not judge others as good or bad. Do not search for the evil in others, for the evil will enter you. God tolerates the good and the bad. His grace falls equally on both. Place a surgical instrument that was used to save life and an axe that was used to cut down living trees, side by side—a magnet will attract both equally. Be equal-minded and tolerant. Love all with equal fortitude.

Source: Sanathana Sarathi, March, 1978