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Vedic Education and factual knowledge In Maharishi's Global Press Conference on 26 January 2005, Raja John Hagelin, Raja of Invincible America and Minister of Science and Technology of the Global Country of World Peace, posed a question to Maharishi from the press. The questioner commented that Maharishi had recently said that his Vedic Universities will take away all the shortcomings in every field of knowledge—education, health, and so forth. In view of this, the questioner asked whether the needs of knowledge are primarily experiential? Do students need to experience Total Knowledge at the source of thought within their own minds? Or will the Vedic Universities also offer new factual knowledge about education, health, etc., that the modern sciences do not yet provide? If so, would Maharishi please explain what new factual knowledge is needed to make the existing fields of knowledge complete? Maharishi began his answer by saying that 'The word is silence. Too much noise is given to the boys, without the experience of what it is. When it comes to experience, it is the experience of silence. Silence is not being taught, either intellectually or experientially. That is why knowledge remains—I would plainly say—knowledge remains unproductive. Unproductive means that you want to have something, and you have to work hard on it. Working hard, you lose your heart and mind, and then you do not get it.' 'That is not education,' Maharishi said. 'Education should make it very easy for the educated man to achieve anything. Otherwise, what is the use of education if you keep on struggling? Are you educated? No. Non-educated people struggle, because they do not know how to do things; they [can] only do [so] much. Knowledge means more comprehension, more unboundedness, more far-sightedness, more insight.' Maharishi then commented that the present theme of knowledge is just like medicine, which has poisonous side effects. He said that education is also full of poisonous side effects and poisonous direct effects because it uses the learning age in such superficialities. 'There is no depth to it,' he said. 'The depth of it is only in experiencing it. That is why the phrase that is common in the field of the wise people is "knowing by being." Then you know a thing—by being it, completely being it. 'Rather than so much lecturing to student, and their trying to remember, and examining them, and giving them less marks or more marks—which is the drama of the players in field of knowledge—experience is necessary. Classes should not be just talkers. They must give the experience of that level of intelligence from where talks begin. Have the memory of that; open your awareness to that level from where all thoughts rise, like the ocean of knowledge from where all the waves come up—the ocean of knowledge.' Maharishi emphasized that education should be of the ocean, and not just talk of the ocean. It is like talk of water: 'Water is like this and like this,' and a huge amount of lecturing about it. But that will not satisfy the thirst. You satisfy the thirst, and then tell them about how nice it is and all; then all that telling will be meaningful. Otherwise, talking about it can excite the desire for it, but will never fulfil or never satisfy. 'That is why educated people cannot handle their lives,' Maharishi continued. 'They may have big names and big articles in their names—this scientist and that geography expert and this historian and all that—but in their daily life, they cannot live Totality. It is too superficial. 'Education deprives the students from living total life, because it does not give them Total Knowledge. It gives fragmented knowledge. They are born with a brain physiology, which can be completely open to everything, but they are not given that opportunity to be that Total Knowledge. 'But it does not matter what the case of education has been. We are creating education that is complete.' © Copyright 2009 Global Good News®
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