To What Extent Is Education Important?
Questioner: Sir, I was reading one of your blogs on education in which you have said that our normal education is important up to some extent. My question is, ‘Up to what extent? Who decides that extent?’
Acharya Prashant: Formal education is important to the extent the body is important. The less the body-identification, the less is the importance of object-centric education.
Questioner: But formal education also plays a role to make one less bodily identified.
Acharya Prashant: The ‘one’ that is already body-identified. Right? Which education helped him make body-identified?
Questioner: Here I am living in a village. Most of the people are landless-laborers. All they think is about their daily bread. Had they been more educated they might have gone ahead of food and shelter.
Acharya Prashant: Basic food, shelter…and then a suite in Boeing.
Bigger food, bigger shelter.
Questioner: That’s why I have used the word ‘might’. but if someone has to make efforts for his daily bread, his body would constantly remind him that he needs to feed the body first. It is very difficult for such a person to think that he is not just a body.
Acharya Prashant: Who brought him to this condition?
Questioner: If a child is born in such a family, it his not his fault.
Acharya Prashant: The family too is conditioned by its education.
Questioner: Today I can read a novel because I have Rs. 250 to buy it. And my education has played a very important role in it. But if a family’s daily income is Rs. 100 per day, can anyone in the family think of buying such an expensive book?
Acharya Prashant: Where does poverty come from? Is there anything poor in the existence except man? Ever seen a poor flower in a jungle, or a poor animal?
Questioner: There may be different forms of poverty in flowers and animals that we do not know about.
Acharya Prashant: No, poverty is when you feel poor. Poverty is when you want to store.
Questioner: Animals also cry. flowers also become dull. To understand animals, we need to be animals(in physical form). And storing is not a question for the one who does not even get two meals a day. Quran says that there is enough for everyone and HE has already arranged for everything. Then why do people die of hunger?
Acharya Prashant:
- Give a dog 20 Kg. food, will it store for the next day? And what does the man do?
- Animals cry for what reasons? How long do they cry? Why does man cry?
- Poverty is man-made.There is no poverty in existence. Man has created duality.
Questioner: One thing is clear to me that we are being controlled by someone else. There is nothing we can do on our own. This duality is also not created by man.
But I have also read that ants store food and camels store water.
Acharya Prashant: Do different ants of same species store different amounts of food? 1 Kg. vs 1 billion Kg. ? 1? Do they classify themselves according to the number of food grains they have?
Questioner: Probably not.
Acharya Prashant: That is why they are never wealthy or poor.
Questioner: But Sir, what is wrong with possession of things? If a mobile phone can connect me to you over a distance of 2000 km., then it is good to buy a mobile phone.
Acharya Prashant: You possess the mobile phone- Existence. Mobile phone possesses you – Society.
