Man is born as a seed. He is born as a potentiality. He is not born as an actuality. And this is very special, this is extraordinary, because in the whole of existence only man is born as a potentiality; every other animal is born actual.
A dog is born as a dog, he is to remain the same his whole life. The lion is born as a lion. Man is not born as a man, man is born only as a seed: he may become, he may not become. Man has a future; no other animal has a future. All animals are born instinctively perfect. Man is the only imperfect animal. Hence growth, evolution, is possible.
Education is a bridge between the potentiality and the actuality. Education is to help you to become that which you are only in a seed form. And this is what I am doing here; this is a place of education.
The thing that is being done in the ordinary schools and colleges and universities is not education. It only prepares you to get a good job, a good earning; it is not real education. It does not give you life. Maybe it can give you a better standard of living, but the better standard of living is not a better
standard of life; they are NOT synonymous.
The so-called education that goes on in the world prepares you only to earn bread. And Jesus says,
”Man cannot live by bread alone.” And that’s what your universities have been doing – they prepare you to earn bread in a better way, in an easier way, in a more comfortable way, with less effort, withless hardship.
But all that they do is prepare you to earn your bread and butter. It is a very, very primitive kind of education: it does not prepare you for life.
Hence you see so many robots walking around.
They are perfect as clerks, as stationmasters, as deputy collectors.
They are perfect, they are skillful, but if you look deep down in them they are just
beggars and nothing else.
They have not even tasted one bite of life. They have not known what life is, what love is, what light is.
They have not known anything of God, they have not tasted anything of existence, they don’t know how to sing and how to dance and how to celebrate.
They don’t know the grammar of life; they are utterly stupid.
Yes, they earn – they earn more than others, they are very skillful and they go on rising higher and higher on the ladder of success – but deep down they remain empty, poor.
Education is to give you inner richness.
It is not just to make you more informed; that is a very primitive idea of education.
I call it primitive because it is rooted in fear, rooted in that ”If I am not well educated I will not be able to survive. ” I call it primitive because deep down it is very violent: it teaches you competition, it makes you ambitious. It is nothing but a preparation for a cut-throat, competitive world where everybody is the enemy of everybody else.
Hence the world has become a madhouse.
Love cannot happen. How Can love happen in such a violent, ambitious, competitive world where everybody is at each other’s throat?
This is very primitive because it is based in the fear that ”If I am not well educated, well protected, highly informed, I may not be able to survive in the struggle of life. ” It takes life only as a struggle.
My vision of education is that life should not be taken as a struggle for survival; life should be taken as a celebration.
Life should not be only competition, life should be joy too. Singing and dancing
and poetry and music and painting, and all that is available in the world – education should prepare you to fall in tune with it – with the trees, with the birds, with the sky, with the sun and the moon.
And education should prepare you to be yourself. Right now it prepares you to be an imitator; it teaches you how to be like others. This is miseducation."
The secret , Chapter 2. A Chance To Pour My Grace Into You
