In plain words
Good conduct, a good Buddhi, steadfastness in Satya, Bhakti, discipline and an eye fixed on duty: only those who teach these are gurus, and only those who have learned them are students. These very qualities are the means that grant man this world and the next. This is precisely the learning that drives away the bad qualities which turn human beings into demons.
Many proclaim that the system of education has two ideals. One: the learning that brings comforts in the world and in society, with no want of food and clothing. The second: the learning that, with no tie to the joys and sorrows of the world, sets you on the spiritual path and grants realisation. But these two are not separate; they are bound together, neither able to be without the other. Students and gurus alike must recognise this well.
Man is not a thing made of hands, feet, Manas and senses. Enfolding all this and lying beyond it, there is a personality: that itself is the Ātma. It cannot be seen by the eyes of flesh. Nor can the other senses perceive it either. It is beyond all that can be seen. All that the senses perceive is the world; this is the basis of the world. All that is seen stands on a basis that is not seen. The roots are the basis of a tree; the foundation is the basis of a building. On the basis called the Ātma, both the jīva and the world stand.
Three or four centuries ago, when foreigners entered Bhārata, in our system of education there were just a few universities of one kind or another. They had no buildings raised for beauty and grace. The home of some great scholar was itself the college. Only ten, or four or five, students learned with him; in those days there was no such practice as fixing a time limit for lessons and discourses. The guru's grace and the disciple's longing: teaching went on according to these. In some place or other, at some hour or other, even at midnight, whenever a peaceful setting was found, there were lessons! What was the classroom? The courtyard of a temple, or the shade of a tree: that itself was their room. When study went on in so holy a place, the devotees who came to the temple and the pure-hearted people moving about near the tree also had the chance to take in the subjects.
In those days the practice was for each university to teach one subject in particular. The chosen śāstra of the university of Kāśī was grammar. The institution in Kashmir held the science of poetics dearest; at Takṣaśilā the greater care went to Āyurveda; the university of Ujjayinī won special fame in mathematics; in Navadvīpa there were a great many scholars of the Nyāya-śāstra. Each taught its own chosen śāstra with care.