Education and Literacy

                                                   

Education is supposed to create unbiased society whose standards should not be based on cast, creed, religion, region and other unintentional inherited social doctrine. Education produces a great nation, social values, industries, moral science and provides vision to life. In an educated society, people must get their right with ease and must not face any hurdle getting their work done. It might be getting passport, ration card, government services and so on. However why we face problems to get even basic rights?  Indian government data shows that nearly 75% of population is educated in India. For India it is good number to make system better and corrupt less.  Highly educated politicians, bureaucrats, doctors, engineers, financial experts and all other persons (so called educated) are responsible for poor administration, order and law, healthcare and so on.

However, if a doctor is educated then how come he/she can allow gender inquiry before baby’s birth? If an IAS is educated then how he/she can pass a tender of construction to one, who offers bribe? If a politician is educated then how he/she can ask for vote based on cast and religion? If private company’s employees are educated then how come they produce fake bills for reimbursements and tax exemption?  We can cite many more like this, but the question is, are they really educated, if they are, then there is something terribly wrong with our education system. Our knowledge system does not educate people, but make them skilled in particular field, which make them literate in that area (even basic definition of literate is the one how can read and write language). It means someone is literate in particular area i.e. doctor knows how to cure the disease, administrators know how to govern a district, politicians know how to rule (serve) and so on. These are their job and they must be expert in these fields, however we should not tag them as educated but literate in their respective field.

Aim of education is to raise the standard of life, not living standard. Literacy must include moral values, honesty, unbiased decisions, and integrity to be education. A literate man can achieve all needs of his life but cannot add value to create a corrupt less and healthy system. Tomorrow our nation’s literacy rate might be more than 90%; however we will be able to fail to produce unbiased system until we get educated people.

But now the question is what kind of persons can be educated, how a person should be educated? A conditioned mind cannot be educated. What is conditioning, and how can we get rid of this? When one is born, one starts getting conditioned of one’s civilization which includes culture, religion, region, nation, social belief, customs, traditions, rituals, etc. after some time span these social conditionings become so deep rooted in our mind that we start behaving in same manner as we have been brought up. Even we do not realize and we become slave of these conditionings and cannot separate our self from this to see the actuality. If we were born in some other nation, state, cast, religion then we would have been believe and practicing something different instead of our own. Therefore conditioning of mind is not the reality and lead to incoherent society. To make our mind unconditioned we must relinquish all unintentional inherited conditioning from society. More you are unconditioned the more you are educated.

Is there Guru

                                                                      

Since thousands of years we have many gurus who teach us about life and its values. They have been showing us how to live a good life, how to free self from anger, greed, jealousy and such other human natures which are considered hindrance in spiritual journey. Have they succeeded in this? Even in recent times, they are offering meditation and other spiritual courses to attain something which is mystical, unknown, beyond thought or transcendental. However, in today’s spiritual market, meditation has been confined to get mind relaxation for a while. People are so stressed of their life that they consider meditation as a tool to get some recreation. Is this the purpose of meditation and is it what gurus are offering us? If meditation is for just relaxation, it can also be achieved by listening music or any means.

Why do we go to guru, because they lead us to reach to something new, something totally different? Or we want to fulfill some of our temporal needs through them. Is this our selfishness which pulls us towards them? Someone needs job, someone wants to get cured, and someone wants salvation and so on. Desire to get better in life is good thing and everyone must put their efforts to gain all prosperity of life what he/she wants. However, why do we believe on gurus to fulfill our desire and needs, what makes them to be the adviser of your life? I am not talking about students who need teachers to study subjects, of course they need, but when one is enough conscious and educated to take decision of one’s life then why we approach gurus, if someone thinks that he is not capable enough to take some decision then he can go and consult some expert in that field to take advice for his/her betterment. For any health issues you can approach doctor, for financial issues CA, for property, relation, crime and other issues advocates are there, and so many other experts for various fields. In what area guru is expert?

Any experience cannot be shared exactly the way it is experienced; it might be spiritual experience or any other. Experience loses its meaning when described in words. Systems and paths have been created to pass it generation to generation, and today gurus are utilizing those systems and paths to fulfill their psychological and physical needs.

People of this era must understand the need of spiritual seeking and way of seeking. These modern gurus will lead you nowhere. Whole religious system, spiritual paths are only meant to provide the solution of human race’s problem. Therefore, any system that does not improvise human life and which is not relevant in recent time must be discarded.

We must believe in something before we start seeking, because if we believe in nothing it will be impossible to start with. Before we believe on some creator, guru or someone else we must believe in our self, we know that we exist and we are aware of this. Now once we are sure that we exist and aware, we can start our search by using our thought, intellect and reasoning. Anything in which we should believe must be based on evidence and logical approach.

Anyone who is visiting gurus must ask these questions to himself, what he wants from guru, what he has not achieved that he can get easily without any effort with grace of his guru, and how does this system work. Once you start thinking in this way you can find simply if guru is required in your life or not.