In plain words
This very thing is declared in the Bhagavad Gītā: ‘Adhyātmavidyā vidyānāṃ.’ ‘I am that very Adhyātmavidyā,’ said the Teacher of the Gītā. All the kinds of education of today are worldly kinds of education. All these are Bookish knowledge. But Adhyātmavidyā is Practical knowledge. All the kinds of education of today are nothing but physical, mundane, worldly, impermanent, transient, Asatya kinds of education! It is not right to call this education. Whatever brings Jñāna, that alone is education. ‘Vit’ means to know. Which? Know what? Ya, which: to know that which brings Jñāna is education itself. God is He who is the embodiment of education. God does not exist apart. All of you are nothing but embodiments of God! Some ask, ‘Why do we need God?’ This is utterly meaningless. You need not ask to have God; you yourself are God. My question to this is: why do you long for yourself? Why do you need yourself? You are God, God is not separate from you; in you, with you, above you. You are God. Spiritual education is that which makes this truth known. Where does this spirituality grow?
In every man is the goodness called Divinity
Students! If you bring a seed, put it in a tin and pour water on it, it rots. It does not sprout. In the same way, only when we sow the seed of Prema in spirituality does it take form as the great tree called the cosmos and give us the fruit called Ānanda. When we sow this seed in ground empty of spirituality, it does not grow at all. ‘By practice are tasks accomplished on earth,’ they said. You must practise for everything. Walking, reading, talking, eating, writing: all these come with practice. The mother teaches. ‘My child! Ammā, Appā,’ she teaches. All these are things that come by practice. The Gītā puts this as ‘Śreyohijñānamabhyāsāt’; we have thought that we want Śānti. Practise, to begin with. You are sitting here, seated in padmāsana. If you had no habit at all of sitting in padmāsana, no practice at all, you could not sit so. Even sitting is a practice in itself!