Triveni Journal

1927 | 11,233,916 words

Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....

Education and Spiritual Freedom

Sir S. Radhakrishnan

Education and Spiritual Freedom 1

It is a relief in these troubled times for representatives of different nations and cultures to meet in the calm and friendly atmosphere of a Conference to discuss the foundations of freedom and a free community. The work of this Conference is perhaps difficult to appreciate and its concrete results may not be very obvious, though there is nothing surprising in this, for movements of ideas are generally slow and not striking at first sight.

I

No one can deny that we are living in critical times. We see the grave dangers that surround mankind in spite of the great advance that civilisation has made. The discoveries of applied science, the cinema and the wireless, the inventions of the turbine, the internal combustion engine and the aerofoil which helped us to realise the dream of ages, the conquest of the air, have brought about changes which are almost bewildering. Even in regard to human daring and physical endurance, there has not been any falling off. We see every year fresh records established in games and sport, in automobile races and aerial flights. It is also true that young men today are filled with public spirit and social purpose. When we turn to the bulk of the human population there is considerable advance in education and above all in the desire for it. There is wide knowledge, much intelligent interest and abundant goodwill. And yet the collapse of civilisation has become, to an increasing number of thoughtful men, more and more of a probable event. There is a sense of failure, a sense of imminent peril. The menace of war hangs over the world. The great powers are engaged in a competition of armaments and a race towards war. The civilised countries are concentrating all their efforts, mobilising all their resources for a single end, destruction though it is called defence. Humanity seems to be caught in a net from which it is struggling hand to escape but seems, after years of effort, unable to save itself. We seem to be in the grip of some unseen power which is driving us on to destruction, a power which we are finding it difficult to overcome. We mean well but do so badly. The force of Voltaire’s witticism, that this particular planet of ours is the lunatic asylum of the universe, strikes one more than ever today. The insanity which prevents anything being done to bring peace and order to the prevailing chaos seems to be nearly universal and complete.

It is no use shaking our fists at the stars; the fault is in ourselves. The present situation is the material expression of an attitude of mind. Traditional obstinacies, uncontrolled ambitions of military despotisms and the pusillanimity of the great powers reduce all the efforts of the peace-loving to futility. Though we have the desire for peace, a full knowledge of the disastrous character of another war, the will for peace with an adequate realisation of its implications is not there. All our troubles can be traced to a twist which education, amongst others, has given to our minds, to the fictions and false hopes which are imposed on us. There is a profound maladjustment, a vice in the constitution of organised society, something unjust within national States, and anarchical in their relations to one another. Society is sick because the soul of man is infected with the germs of greed and selfishness. We should not mistake the effect for the cause. If we denounce war, we must set our face against the conditions of which wars are the consequence. Competitive pride is the root of the problem, the supreme evil. To do the other fellow down has been with us for ages, disguised under fine symbols, national and religious. Only when it is removed will hope be reborn in the world and happiness secured for the future generations. We want a new method of life. Attempts to secure peace by political arrangements at best postpone but cannot prevent the crisis. The world is not safe for peace until we bring about a change in the heart and mind of man, until we get a sufficient number of individuals to work for a just and free society, until we make the world a fellowship of free persons.

II

What is a free society? England is said to be a free country, where every one may express his views, at least in the Hyde Park Corner, dine at the Ritz, or dance at the Dorchester, send his children to Eton and Harrow or Oxford and Cambridge, own a Rolls Royce and spend his holidays in the South of France. Assuming that this is the meaning of freedom, can we say that these opportunities are actually available for the millions of this country? Do its people possess equal opportunities of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? These are the privilege of the few and not the possession of the many. It is argued that we have a free society in the sense that individuals and nations are at liberty to compete with one another and help themselves to the fruits of their competitive struggle. A social order which makes every man and every nation a wolf to its fellows is not a free one. The freedom which human beings desire is not the unreal negative absence of restraint, but the real positive freedom to use to the full one’s natural endowments of physique and brains. A free society is one where each individual has real freedom to live as he will, short of infringing on the equal freedom of others to do the same. The so-called freedom which now prevails means slavery to others.

The basis of freedom is the dignity of human personality. No individual is to be regarded as a means or a chattel. Every individual, by virtue of his humanity, irrespective of colour or race, is an end in himself and cannot be regarded only as a means for purposes extraneous to himself. A free society is one which provides each individual economic security, intellectual life, and spiritual freedom.

No man can be said to be free if his desire for food, shelter and economic security is not satisfied. Primitive man had to fight for life, had to struggle for food and defend himself against animals. So long as man is called upon to fight for bare physical necessities, physical life will seem to him to be all-important and his true image will become dimmed. Though the human being has many functions of which the economic is only one, however important it may be, it will dominate the whole course of life, if it is not satisfactorily fulfilled. Today, man has no need to struggle for food, clothing and shelter. Science and industry have made it possible for all mankind to satisfy their normal appetites without any encroachment on their fellows. While we are capable of producing abundance for all, we are living in an economic organisation which induces in the large majority of people a feeling of fear and insecurity which is the root cause of civil strife and national obsessions. The present economic order is the very negation of humanity and love, and a free society should be a more balanced and humane order providing every man and woman freely with the essentials of life and thus freeing the mind in part from other tasks. Society is always in danger of splitting to pieces, if the few who have the benefits of civilisation do not share them with the rest and assume that there is no social problem so long as their own interests are secured.

Man does not live by bread alone. Freedom of intellect, of thought, expression and association is an essential element of a free life. If we are to beable to cope with the changing conditions of life, we must have full freedom to think new ideas, make experiments and correct current errors. We may have the liberty to say even to the highest and most exalted authority that he may be wrong or that it is possible to hold views different from his. Life will become intolerable if each man thinks alike and acts alike. Diversity is in the constitution of things and to suppress it is to dehumanise the world. Yet religious and political organisations demand absolute conformity. In the interests of effective action, they make society into a heartless machine and man an automaton. We are called upon to close our eyes, to stifle our reason, to repeat catchwords and to take sides. Society becomes a vast prison whose activities wound us in every fibre, where we dare not call our souls our own. The fantastic theories of religion and politics which compel us to come into the groups and coerce us at the point of a revolver into ‘a higher freedom,’ do violence to the very nature of man. All that is precious in human society depends on the development of the individual mind. Life where thought and feeling, utterance and action are enforced is not a man’s life. All that is organic is crushed by mechanical thought which gives power to the most empty mind. The tyrannies of old times were at least limited in character. They left large tracts of life for the individual’s adventure, Modern dictatorships sit in the very citadel of the soul and determine even the details of singing and dancing! All this is done in the name of the country, and its expansion. While the need for conquest has gone by, the instinct for conquest remains. It is an atavistic survival from a time when the physical needs of man could not be satisfied, without recourse to rapine and conquest. These survivals and sadistic impulses are organised by the dictatorships which adopt the conscription of minds as well as of bodies and make machines of men. The delicate balance between freedom and restraint, between self-expression and social duty is difficult to attain, but that is no justification for tyranny or license. A balance of liberties, an organised harmony of individual freedoms is the ideal. Unrestricted freedom, whether of the individual, or of a class or of even a nation, as we are slowly coming to recognise, is a danger for other individuals, for other classes, for other nations and so for the whole community. Here as elsewhere the truth lies in the union of opposites, in a reconciling synthesis. We should strive for a socialised individualism and a world community of free States. A free society is one in which economic security is provided for all and freedom of thought and action is permitted within the limits of a reasonable social harmony.

Even these, economic well-being and intellectual life and variety, are the conditions of freedom which is in essence the freedom of the spirit. We may acquire greater power over the universe, produce greater abundance of wealth, get rid of physical suffering and obtain more leisure and yet the world will be a dull inhuman one until we recover contact with the sources of life and realise that unillumined knowledge is no knowledge at all. So long as we believe that there is no reality but the outward, man is a selfish individual and passion’s slave, the victim of fear, greed and malice and only by force can he be trained to accept social obligations.

The facts, however, are otherwise and do not support the atomistic conception of society. Normally man is not fully conscious of his own self. There is in him a hidden being which haunts him like a ghost and is an essential part of his life. We feel certain powers moving within us, we know not what, we know not why. We are conscious of the reality of an abounding inner life, which transcends the conscious flow. All great art arises from the depths of the spirit and not the conscious mind; all great heroism is far beyond conscious rectitude. They produce in us not a thrill of the senses, not a state of nerves, but a sense of escape from our little selves, of participation in universal life. In their pure forms, art and literature, philosophy and religion are consecrated to the service of a high impersonal spirit, tending to a union ever more intimate with

"Our only true, deep buried selves
Being one with which we are one with the whole world."

Man is one with the whole world, we belong to each other. "Heaven lies about us in our infancy." Heaven or oneness with the whole world in love and fellowship is the central fact. This natural goodness and sociability are not completely destroyed even when our nature is heated by passion. Tenderness is normal to human species, if no unnatural strain is put upon it. Between man and society there exists such a deep, mysterious, primordial relationship, a concrete interdependence, that a divorce between them is impossible. This natural sympathy is countered by the unnatural selfishness of individuals and the egotism of collectivities. False racial habits, wrong social compulsions restrict the universal feeling and outlook. Only when we gain a deeper sense of the life we have been cheated out of by burdensome racial prejudices and national egotisms will we gain relief from our present ineptness in living and realise that the universe is all of a piece. The spirit in man is one with the soul of all things. We cannot run away from this oneness even if we go astray. For those who have gained this vision, the supremacy of a world commonwealth is an ordinance of Providence.

Man is a spark of spirit, a child of God. When the Hindu thinkers speak of bondage as due to maya or the Christians trace it to the fall, they are referring to the one fact of man’s alienation from his deeper being, from the true source of life, to the fall from the centre to the circumference. He suffers a tragic destiny when he is immersed in a world of nature. He is tempted to repudiate the divine source of life and feels himself a natural being, a child of the world. Man is at once God’s potential image and his potential antithesis. As such he is free to turn away from God for the sake of his self-affirmation. Though capable of lifting himself to the divine status, the individual craves for an independent assertion. This fall from the divine, this act of separation results in a disruption of the inner unity. The nature of man becomes a wild chaos. Yet on account of the presence and operation of the divine principle, there is in it still a potential unity. This spiritual centre or formative principle prevents the dissolution of the self, by organising its contents to law and order. Complete harmony can take place only when there is a return to unity. Man always has been and still remains a dual being, participating in two worlds, the higher, the divine, the free world and the lower, the natural and the determined in which he is immersed. He shares the destiny of the latter which acts upon him and binds him so that his consciousness becomes obscured and his higher nature forgotten. This duality, this dependence on natural necessity and kinship with the divine reality sets the stamp of its law upon him. Man becomes so accustomed to this world that he finds it difficult to break through its crust and reach that primal state of human consciousness in which no such division exists. The task which man has to fulfill in a deliberate and self-conscious way is to liberate his spirit from the depths of nature, to affirm the spiritual purity and priority of human nature and to deny its origin in a lower, non-human environment. The ordinary life we live conforming to convention, obeying custom, listening to public opinion, passively accepting a code from others, is a kind of slavery though of an epidemic character. Automatism takes the place of authentic being. We tend to forget the inscrutable and invincible preference of the mind for the infinite. And this worldly life acts like a dope or an intoxication leading to a disintegration of the unique, making us afraid to be ourselves. We are bound by the chains of our own fears and suspicions to a routine life. They fall like a shadow shutting us from our own reality. We must break the old moulds of thought and free ourselves from fear. The most difficult thing in life is to be oneself. It alone constitutes the freedom of man, the light and life of the world. It is the destiny of man. The fight for it is the supreme issue. Its presence or absence makes society open or closed, free or bound, human or mechanical. It is basic to a free society and its denial will sterilise the whole civilisation. No loyalty to it can be too firm and no sacrifice too great. Bondage is the fall into division and freedom resurrection into unity.

III

The belief has been a persistent one that the State has the right and duty to determine the kind of citizen it requires and direct its education so as to produce men in a certain mould. At one time the State wanted Clerks in Holy Orders to serve the Church and administer the State. Science and statesmanship, business and industry became important later, and, till the other day, progressive countries adopted these aims for their educational systems. There are States today, which glorify militarism and train the young for rapacious and predatory careers. They give to nations the frenzy of sects. To remake the disintegrating society, we want, not merely clerics, or upper-class English gentlemen, honest businessmen, adventurous explorers or ardent patriots with the love of battle, but humanists with vision, courage and generosity. The end of education is self-knowledge, in so far as the self is a calm discriminating spirit. When we know the inner man, not as a Teuton or a Gaul, not as a soldier or a priest, not as a member of the hungry proletariat or the class of bourgeoise but as a man facing what is permanent in the world, are we truly human. Our education should confirm the spontaneous aims and ambitions of the child mind which identifies itself with the whole of humanity, if false education does not interfere with these natural impulses. Where are the educators today who are not merely preachers of opinions or fitters of tools but makers of men?

If we are to train the youth for a free society, we must teach them not only the role, the obligations and rights of individuals, but their meaning and value for life. Every system of education aims at physical health and efficiency, intellectual alertness and learning, and guidance of the soul, including the education of the emotions and imagination. What matters in any system of education is the accent. Hitherto we have laid stress on learning rather than on life, on intellectual development rather than on spiritual growth. Expansion of the surface consciousness is not a deepening of life. By excessive specialisation and insistence on the outer, the measurable, the quantitative, we tend to extinguish every spark of that light by which man is truly man. Thrown on himself, he is overwhelmed by fear and loneliness, and imagines gods and spirits who torment him. Clever adventurers exploit his credulity and ignorance for their own ends. But the growth of the scientific outlook makes the acceptance of crude religions impossible. The spread of scientific positivism with its assimilation of man to nature, and the ineffectiveness of religions which lose themselves in dreams of the supernatural, have combined to discredit religion and produce spiritual despondency which under the name of acedia was accounted one of the seven deadly sins during the Middle Ages. The one sided development is responsible not only for social hysteria but for emotional instability and nervous disorders.

There are those who give to science the prestige which religion has lost. Its prophets see no limits to the progress that can be achieved by it. In all periods of enlightenment, it so happens that self-confident human reason ignores the mysteries of life and belittles all venerated institutions and beliefs. Man is equated with a system of natural forces. We are little worms, clever worms perhaps, parasitic, unimportant nervous clods occupied with trifles. We seem to live to no purpose, and we do not know where we are going, how and why. We are creatures of a day, and the strivings which will perish with us are of no avail. Life, as a French writer has it, is an epileptic fit between two nothings. If the hope of compensation hereafter is a doubtful one, we can gain immortality this side of the grave, by adopting and accomplishing that larger social purpose which outlasts many generations of mortal men and dignifies individual effort. Consecration to serious purpose gives peace of mind. Russia is not the first country to adopt the technique of calling upon the individual to surrender his life to a movement and a purpose beyond himself, to obtain inward peace. Poetry and religion are for old women and it is for men to become motor-drivers and electrical engineers. The blinds are drawn down over the windows of heaven and men grow hard, positive and mechanical. Social progress and engineering take the place of religion. The finer spirits are oppressed by the emptiness of life and possess a feeling of frustration, a sense of deficiency in dignity and depth. The restless young men whose existence has become pointless, whose allegiance is unpledged, are taken hold of by dictators who presume to give a meaning to their lives, a value to their existence. They are the leaders of hosts. The conviction of victory with which they imbue their followers is built upon religious elements. "I will tread the path," said Hitler the other day, "which Providence has set out for me with the, certainty of a somnambulist."2 A faith in authority and a reverence for symbols grow up. The conventional religion is a detour, a roundabout way while mystic patriotism is the straightest and shortest road to salvation. In this atmosphere we grow up cold and callous, with our sight spoiled and values confused. All vacant minds tend to extreme opinions. We ignore the true and intrinsic worth of men and are dazzled by the outer advantages of power and position. We lose the native sense of community and are afraid of our neighbours. Many vague cults have arisen today exploiting the credulity of man, as in the period after the Napoleonic wars.

The condition of our times is similar to the India of Buddha or the Greece of Pericles with its weakening of traditional authority and rise of self-conscious egoism. If we are not to fall away into the subjectivism and anarchy of thought and morals of the Sophists, we have to attain to the spiritual individualism and freedom of a Buddha or a Socrates. If we are to launch the world afresh, we must set up a new ideal of spiritual life. The scattered elements of knowledge and the detached specialisms require the subtle alchemy of spirit to transform them into wisdom.

The aim of education in India has been initiation into the higher life of spirit. The student is a wayfarer in spirit (brahmachari) and the period of studentship is life in spirit (brahmacharya). Education should be an abiding witness to the things of the spirit. "Wisdom is the breath of the power of God and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty."3 Wisdom is not knowledge. It is practical realisation. In the Chandogya Upanishad Narada confesses to Sanatkumara that though he knows all the branches of learning, he is yet sorrowful: "I am merely a knower of texts (mantravid), not a knower of self (atmavid). Sorrowful am I, Sir, do you kindly make me cross over to the other side of sorrow." 4

The supreme wisdom (jnana) is the result of learning (vidya), reflection (chinta), and austerity (tapas).5 Centuries ago we were furnished with a formula simple and yet far- reaching, the command to love our neighbours, and yet very few have tried to obey it. It has remained a casual opinion beside the mass of selfishness. The ill-breeding of the mind blocked the way to its realisation. The raw materials of humanity, the youth of the world, come into the hands of educators with innocence and eager curiosity, with natural reverence and hope, and a craving for fellowship always half-unconscious, and we twist them out of shape by hammering into their heads lies, illusions and darkness. It is these that have to be unlearnt today if young men are to be prepared for a free society. These have to be overcome by training. We require a change of mind and heart. When psychologists speak of complexes, they refer to the mental and emotional dispositions, which though conscious are not products of conscious judgments. True knowledge is not information which can be conveyed from mind to mind, but a state of personality to be created by oneself. An intellectual opinion is not a spiritual experience. Thoughts become our own through discipline, which requires us to renounce not external things but hatred and envy, jealousy and revenge. True wisdom is the freedom of the intellect, the sanctity of the soul. The educator must not do anything to interfere with the unity, friendliness and humanity of the child-mind. Children tell no lies, they do no wrong. Their acts express their minds freely and spontaneously. We have lost that unity, that virginal outlook. Those who have struggled to overcome their passions can understand the efforts and failures of others. The true mark of excellence is the harmony of thought, feeling and will. The aim of spiritual education is to make the outward and inward man one. Only then is life at peace with itself.

Meditation and self-control are necessary for achieving this. The perfection of a human being differs from that of an instrument or a machine. The latter is judged by its capacity to produce certain goods which are external to it, by its speed and efficiency in its productivity. Yet speed has become a cult in every form of activity, including the social and the spiritual. Yet we know that if we run at full speed, our head will cease to think and our heart to feel. Though today human life and civilisation are judged by the same standards of energy and efficiency, and are dismissed as worthless if their wheels are not turning, the great teachers of the world are united in thinking that the growth of the soul is effected in moments of leisure and meditation. In the words of the Preacher, "The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure and he that hath little business shall become wise." Aristotle observes that we work in order that we may have leisure and that the higher good is not the joy in work but the joy in contemplation. Jesus exalts the wisdom of Mary over that of Martha and affirms that the attainment of the beatific vision is the fulfillment of man’s life, and the path to it is a wise receptivity. "Come ye apart into a desert place and rest awhile," not din and dissipation but quiet meditation, God gives himself to the pure in heart. He asks for nothing but attention, and it is not easy.

It is quite true that some of the ascetics of the East and the monastics of medieval Europe abused their leisure and justified Voltaire’s gibe on the lazy friar who "had made a vow to God to live at our expense." Leisure is for the pursuit of spiritual ends, for the employment of the mind in the search for truth, beauty and perfection, for establishing a sensible contact with eternal values, which lift us above ourselves and make us feel that, whatever may happen to our little selves, life is worth living. It is through meditation that we draw ourselves inward into the depths of our being, renew the tired heart, inspire the fatigued mind and refresh the spirit. If we devote 15 minutes a day to the cult of the body, cannot we devote 15 minutes a day to the cult of the soul? If our education is not to remain a mere decoration, a showy exhibit with no roots, if it is to be real, giving us steadiness in the hour of trial, courage to live our own life independent of the opinion of the crowd, it has to be absorbed in these silent moments. We will know how to live only if we learn how to rest.

Those who are enabled to get behind the intellectual layers of consciousness to the depths of spirit will see the relativity of all national values and narrow enthusiasms. They will welcome the ever-widening scientific vision to which the world is daily becoming smaller and smaller. Earth, water and air which envelop us all are devised by nature to hold us together. If we get rid of our crazy patriotisms, we can co-operate on the scientific basis for the welfare of mankind by strengthening the social, cultural and political links so that we will feel everywhere at home wherever there are men to strive and suffer.

Man is made for peace and co-operation, and war-mindedness is a mental disease, a thing of shame and degradation, which must be banished from the earth, for "he hath made of one blood all the races of men.’ The immense influence which religions exert, in spite of the attacks of criticism and free thought since the days of Lucretius and Lucian, is due to their insistence on the social character of man. They hold up the vision of a golden age which inspires its adherents with hope, courage and strength and aids the development of the highest human possibilities. Even in primitive religion, it is the socially useful acts of life that are consecrated. Those individuals who refuse to play the social part are condemned. The essential acts of social life, birth, education, marriage, are all sanctified by religious rites.

Unfortunately our traditional theologies with their false finalities are not of much help today. True religion takes its stand on the positive fullness of existence, though theologies which claim to represent it are exclusive and particularist. These latter which once caused men to be tortured on the rack or burnt at the stake are today standing in the way of the spiritual integration of the world. They assume that the principle of neighbourly love refers only to one’s co-religionists, and acts of hostility are perfectly justified with regard to others. This is not religion, but politics disguised as religion. When it is urged that Socrates declared, "I am not a citizen of Athens or of Greece but a citizen of the world" and the prophets like Jesus and Buddha made no distinction between the Jew and the Gentile, the Greek and the Barbarian, they naively tell us that the Kingdom of God which recognises no such distinctions does not belong to this world. Thus they misdirect their fellows and lead them to egotism, individual and national, racial and economic. No wonder those who believe in the reality of spiritual life which cannot be adequately expressed in any translation into human words, and affirm the solidarity of the human race, are tempted to regard conventional religions as opiates and the unthinking take to them as they take to drink for relief from the pains and conflicts of the world. True religion affirms that the image of God is in each man, whatever may be his race or sect. It is founded on self-knowledge and not on knowledge of some other self, even though that self may be a Buddha or a Christ, on delicate sincerity and not imitative energy. Genuine spirituality goes beyond all religious denominations and demands a humanization or spiritualisation of the world in all its aspects. Spiritual awareness and social harmony are the two aids for a free society. The sense of human need is there and the teacher can satisfy it by giving to the youth an idea of the fundamental power and worth of man, his spiritual dignity as man, a supra-national culture and an all-embracing humanity.

1Based on a stenographic report of a speech at the World Education Conference, Cheltenham.

2 The Reich youth leader Her Baldur von Schirach, at a Hitler youth camp in the Bavarian Alps on Sunday, replying to reproaches that his organisation was ‘godless’ said: "One cannot be a good German and at the same time deny God, but an avowal of faith in the eternal Germany is at the same time an avowal of faith in the eternal God. For us, the service of Germany is the service of God. If we act as true Germans, we act according to the laws of God. Whoever serves Adolf Hitler, the Fuhrer, serves Germany, and whoever serves Germany serves God." (The Times, 29th July, 1936)

3 Wisdom VII. 25.

4 VII. 1. 3–4.

5 Maitrayani Upanishad.

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