The Asian countries, in spite of their long heritage of morality and spirituality, have been subject to great humiliation during periods of foreign invasion. While the higher knowledge of philosophy propagated by the oriental sages and saints has been accepted as a unique contribution to the store house of human culture and civilization, the people of these lands could not resist the foreign invaders. The history of all the Asian countries, a region of so many religions, has been dominated by foreign powers for centuries together. This imbalance brought about their material deprivation and political subjugation. On the other hand, the West is completely obsessed with physical development. It has made spectacular progress in the fields of politics, economics, science, warfare, etc. In fact, it has made so much material progress that it seems to be the sovereign master of the water, land and air. But for all that, it is not socially content and miserably lacks spiritual wealth. Unlike the East, in the West plenty of wealth has created a crisis. Therefore, it is abundantly clear that no country can progress harmoniously with only one-sided development. Therefore, it behoves both the East and the West to accept a synthetic ideology that stands for a happy synthesis between the two. Here, the East can help the west spiritually, whereas the materialistic West can extend its material help to the East. Both will be mutually benefited if they accept this golden policy of give and take, expressed in Bengali as, “Dive ar nive milave milive.” In the educational system of the East, there is the predominant element of spirituality. Oriental students used to go to their Guru’s house at the age of five and live there up to twenty-five years of age. They led a strictly ethical and spiritual life and were mainly taught paravidya or spiritual knowledge and some aparavidya or mundane knowledge. Then next in their domestic life, they cultivated mundane knowledge and spiritual knowledge up to 50 years of age, and in the last quarter of their life they cultivated spiritual knowledge exclusively. So the people of the orient could not but be spiritual in their thoughts and actions. Whereas there is, in the western system of education, a clear and unilateral emphasis on mundane knowledge. So to build up an ideal human society in the future, the balanced emphasis on the two is indispensable. We should remember that morality, spirituality and humanity, and a happy blending of occidental extroversial science and oriental introversial philosophy is the very foundation of our system of education. Unlike Rudyard Kipling who wrongly observed that “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” Ananda Marga believes in one universal society with one ideology and one cosmic goal. Shri P R Sarkar 1969, Ranchi Discourses on Neohumanist Education
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 09:49:05 +0000
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