Our object-centric education forgets the real subject- You || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Acharya Prashant

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Our object-centric education forgets the real subject- You || Acharya Prashant, with youth (2013)

Question : Sir, why should we study HIDP (Holistic Individual Development Program)?

Speaker : This probably is a question that should cross the minds of educationists, parents, and the authorities in schools and colleges at a very early stage. At a very, very early stage!

(Addressing the questioner) Arvind, what is it that we have studied in our education so far? What is it that we have studied? You have studied the languages, Mathematics, Science, Social science. Later on you studied Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and now technology or economics or commerce.

But tell me, are you the English alphabet? Are you the rivers and mountains that you studied in Geography? Are you the kings and the battles that you read about in History? Are you the molecules or the polymers that you read in Chemistry?

Listeners : No, Sir.

Speaker : You are not. You are not any of that. You are not Doppler’s effect, you are not a complex number. All of these are objects outside of you. Are you getting it? All of these are objects outside of you. You are not them. You are something other than these objects.

Appreciate this. If I am holding a pen in my hand and I say, “I am holding a pen”, what will be the object and the subject in this statement?

Listener 1 : The pen is the object and you are the subject.

Speaker : Right! The pen is the object. If I say, “I am studying Mechanical engineering”, what is the subject and what is the object? ‘I am’ is still the subject and ‘Mechanical engineering’ is the object. But the whole obvious thing has become inverted in our minds. We have been told to call ‘Physics’, ‘Chemistry’, ‘Mathematics’ and ‘Mechanical engineering’ as subjects. Then, ‘Who Am I?’

The fact of the matter is- all our education so far has been only about the objects . Are you getting it?

They are objects. You are the most ultimate, the most important, the Subject.

The subject is always, always far more essential, far more important than any object.

But unfortunately, your education has never talked about ‘the subject’. It has always kept talking about the objects, and the object is outside of you. Your education, your upbringing has always told you that others are important, that everything outside of you is very important. “Think about what others are saying, read the books that others are writing, see what is there in the outside world, see what others’ opinion are, see what others have discovered.” Which is alright! To a certain extent that knowledge is alright, but that is always less important than knowing the subject. And the subject is…?

Listeners : We.

Speaker : Yes. Never in your course of entire education have you been brought to yourself. You have been always taken outside of yourself. So much so that it has become a habit with you. And today it shocks you, at least surprises you when a course comes to you which brings you back to yourself and which says, “Look at yourself. All your life you have been looking at external things, now look at yourself.” Now that surprises you. This is understandable because its a matter of a habit cultivated over fifteen years of education and eighteen-twenty years of life. Are you getting this? Are you understanding this?

Listeners : Yes, Sir.

Speaker : You are far more important than any other object of study. I never get tired of telling my audience that all the education you have had so far, if all that education is kept on one side and HIDP is kept on another side, then HIDP would outweigh the rest of your education.

The HIDP is far more valuable than rest of your education, for the simple reason that the HIDP is about YOU.

It is not about anything external than you. And you are far more important than all the knowledge that you can gather. If you are not there, what is the utility of that knowledge? The fact of the matter is that this component of education should have started way back, even when you were in schools! But it did not! It is still not too late. You are fortunate that at least now you are getting it.

There are so many who have passed through the entire system, twenty-five years of their life, without ever looking at themselves. And it’s your own life that you have to live. If you do not look at yourselves, if you do not understand the functioning, the mechanics of your mind , what kind of life would you live? And what kind of decisions would you take? Is that clear?

Listeners : Yes, Sir.

Speaker : Alright. Good!

Excerpted from a ‘Shabd-Yog’ session. Edited for clarity.

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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