In plain words
Without Viveka, knowledge is worthless. How must we use it? Using it in many ways, they are making great big bombs. They are making atom bombs, nuclear bombs and who knows what else. Having made all these, what are we able to do? In a single moment we turn whole countries to ashes. This is knowledge without Viveka. When we nurture this knowledge with that same Viveka, we can develop all that atomic power and bring about many kinds of produce in the country. Food is needed. Goods are needed. We can make so many comforts that are useful to people, can we not! Harm, even an insect can do; good, not even Maheśa can do. Is killing by dropping bombs greatness? Try to save the life of even one man: this is knowledge joined with Viveka.
Students! You may develop your science, your knowledge, as far as you like. It is not wrong. Know everything. That itself is: Awareness is life. There is nothing wrong in knowing. But inquire into what you have come to know, asking which is lasting and which is passing, which is Satya and which is untrue, and practise Satya. A small example. Look. The narrowness that has come about through this education. Today's students are growing up in a narrow condition. Here there are two kinds of families. There is one called the nucleus family, and another family called the group family. In this nucleus family there are mother, father, daughter and son, that is all. This nucleus family is very narrow. The collective family is one in which mother, father, daughter, son, grandfather, grandmother and great-grandfather all live together. What has happened today is this: in the nucleus family, mother and father go off to the office. They leave the children with an ayah, with a driver or with a peon. All these children pick up the ayah's ways of thinking, the driver's ways of thinking, the peon's ways of thinking. These children are becoming worth not even a farthing. Just paying out money, they have them educated. The parents have no concern at all about what he is doing, where he is going, how he is growing up. In the collective family, this is how it is: even if mother and father go off to the office, grandmother and grandfather are at home. These grandfathers and grandmothers teach them everything good, tell them stories and give them counsel fit for proper growth. If by chance the mother and father quarrel, in the nucleus family they have no one to turn to. There is not even anyone to speak to them. What happens in the collective family? The couple's parents-in-law are there. Or their own parents are there. They come. ‘What is this, son, why are you behaving like this? This is not good; you must not act like this,’ they counsel them. Today the joint family has fallen apart. Those who are ruining their own family: where will they get the broad outlook of the world from?