In plain words
What we should gain from it is not an acquaintance with books, but the knowledge that comes from experience! Jñāna is what makes us recognise the bond between the individual and society, and what joins our old experiences to new ones, brings them together and fosters moral conduct.
Wealth beyond limit brings loss of reason. Worldly learning is the root cause of Ahaṅkāra and show. Along with it, we must also practise spiritual sādhana. We must develop character as well. No one should try to live each for himself, like a drop on the water. With help, cooperation and a spirit of service, we can achieve any daring task at all. A single thread cannot tie down even an ant. Yet some thousands of threads together bind an elephant, do they not! Unity itself is the virtue. We say ‘cooperation’, but what is happening is not cooperation; it is only operation! Because of this, peace and order do not hold in society. Setting up a union does not bring about unity. People may come together on paper, but they do not come together in action.
What comes of conferences and meetings? Decisions taken after spending crores and wasting the members' time stay on paper alone. They are not seen in practice. We must vow to go from village to village and bring new ideas and new ways. Through your Study Circle you must examine certain matters and spread their results through the world. You must discuss the matters that are of help to others and carry out research. You must help students who fall behind in their classes, and the poor, and work for the welfare of the world.
As the clouds stir across the sky and the lightning shines close beside them, so behind learning Jñāna must shine forth. What more than this can I make known to you?
Just as lightning flashes in the midst of the clouds while they stir in the sky, Jñāna must shine within education. The life of the educated man itself must become a message to others. You must pour out your strength, your abilities, your virtues, your purity and your blood to achieve this ideal.
Look, does all the darkness die at the news of a lamp in the world? Is the hunger of the hungry appeased by hearing the names of five kinds of delicacies spelt out? Does a pauper's poverty go merely by hearing of the power of wealth? Do a sick man's grave illnesses leave him by hearing of all the wonders of medicine? By reading the whole host of śāstras, is the dense darkness of Ajñāna cut away? Of learning in this world that is not practised, though learnt in plenty, what is the fruit? A big round zero.
Will an illness be cured by saying the name of a medicine? Will poverty go by naming money? Will hunger lessen by reading out the names of the five delicacies and sweet rice? Only when we take them in do we see the result. We must examine what is causing the problems flaring up in the field of education, then follow the principles of the remedy and put them into practice. In the system of education, teachers are like the tank. Students are like the taps. If the tank is full of clean water, clean water comes from the taps. To root out the faults in themselves and to shape their students into the very best is the teachers' duty. This is the inner meaning of education. Free of narrow and selfish feelings, we must nourish and grow broad feelings for the good of others.
We must make firm the feeling of oneness, that all are one. ‘All this is pervaded by the Lord’, ‘Vāsudeva is all this’, ‘The Lord of all beings’: so the Upaniṣads teach. Teachers must cherish other children with the tender affection they have for their own. Along with chemistry they must also give them the sweet essence of God. Along with physics they must teach philosophy too. Along with botany they must teach about the tree of life. When they teach economics, they must teach the spiritual science along with it. This life is a tree. The ties of kinship we build up here are its branches and twigs. Our thoughts are its flowers. The fruit of that tree is Ānanda. The sweet juice in that fruit is good character. The roots of the tree are self-confidence.
In the field of education today there are no roots of self-confidence. Nor is there the sweet juice of good character. More than that, discipline has fallen badly away. Saying one thing, doing another and thinking yet another: that is what goes on. We must strengthen and develop not the body but humanness, and these, Satya, Dharma, Śānti and Prema, which turn man into Mādhava. This itself is the aim of educational institutions and the fulfilment of the pursuit of learning.