The Purpose of Education

The Purpose of Education

[00:45] What Is a Problem For You?

Welcome to my podcast, The Vedic Worldview. I’m Thom Knoles. Today, I’d like to speak to you about two Latin words: edu-care. Educare, the leading out. The leading out, which turned into the English word “education.” Educare, the leading out—education. Leading our inner potential out into the world, making us functional and socially responsible citizens, beings who are educated.

And along with education comes another concept, with another word to it: erudition. Erudition, to be erudite, means to be well informed, mostly by having been exposed to the thoughts of others, perhaps through reading, perhaps through attending, perhaps through conversation—but to be broadly exposed to a variety of ideas. To be erudite.

Education, to be led out. What is the purpose of education? Well, it’s to create a citizen who, at the very least, is minimally problematic. When we have massive adaptation energy, we have inner stability, and part of that is going to come because of how well informed we are.

How well informed are you? What is it that, for you, comprises “a problem?”

[02:35] Archimedes and Leverage

Let’s use a famous example. It’s sure to be an apocryphal tale, nonetheless, even though it may not have actually occurred historically, it makes a wonderful telling and it proves a point. It’s a tale of the great mathematician and physicist in the employ of the King of Greece, by the name of Archimedes. The King was not Archimedes; the mathematician was Archimedes.

And Archimedes is credited by physicists today with having first described in great detail the principles of leverage. Leverage. Americans say “leverage,” so we’ll go with the American pronunciation because I believe I might have more American listeners.

Leverage. How to take something—for example, and this is not the only example, but this is a very simple example—take a long stick or a pole or even a log, find an appropriate fulcrum, lean that stick or log against that fulcrum, insert one end of the log under a heavy weight—something that you can’t pick up by yourself—and then, with the fulcrum in the right place, pressing down, causing an enormous amount of work.

“Work” in this particular case is a physics term that means the functional achievement of movement. A lot of work, meaning the lifting, in this case, of, say, a boulder that no individual person could lift, and moving it, even with just one person.

Once upon a time— and here’s our tale about Archimedes, from which we’re going to extract some wisdom— a narrow passage existed between two very high natural rock walls, through which a trade route had been established over hundreds of years. Being so narrow, it was difficult for carts, donkeys, people, camels, and other beasts of burden to make their way in opposite directions.

It moved from one broad part of Greece to another broad part, but you had to pass through this narrow neck to get from one place to the other. One day, after a shake in the earth, a massive boulder came rolling down from the clifftops, lodging itself in this narrow chasm, blocking the trade route.

Hundreds of people could not move it. They pressed their hands against it, tried to get their donkeys to pull it, and so on, until the mighty Archimedes was finally consulted. He came and created a massive lever. With just a few people and a minimal amount of effort, they were able to dislodge the boulder and clear the path, allowing everyone to move through.

Afterward, someone asked him, like an interviewer of the day, “How did you do it?” He said, “Principle of leverage.” He added, “Give me a place to stand and an appropriate fulcrum, and I could lift the entire Earth if needed.” It’s a very interesting thing.

[06:29] Do You Have Problem-Solving Techniques?

Well, if you don’t know about leverage and the principles involved, then you might try to do things the hard way.

Are you educated? Do you have problem-solving techniques? Because problems are actually consciousness states. To what extent are you aware of the actual solution?

Sometimes the solution is to let go of rigid attachment to specific timings and outcomes, trusting that in the larger picture, there’s another way of achieving fulfillment. It may not even be in the thing that you’re trying to do—that might be the “aha” moment.

Or maybe the “aha” moment, as in the case of the Archimedes story, is to use some leverage. Maybe the divine inspiration is to recognize that it’s not what you know but who you know.

Are you really making maximum use of— and we even use the word “leverage”— the contacts you have in various places? Is there someone you could bring into the equation, making maximum use of their creative intelligence, their way of viewing things? Do they know someone who might assist in the resolution of the problem consciousness?

To educate, to lead out, is to lead someone out of problem consciousness.

[08:10] University – Unified Diversity

Now, what we’ve attempted to do in education hasn’t worked. It hasn’t worked because of the size of the body of knowledge. You go to any great, decent-sized library—let’s use a massive library like the United States Library of Congress, for example.

You enter that place and see row after row, thousands upon thousands of books— all of the accumulated and accrued knowledge of humanity, in every field, in every endeavor. Books on psychology, physiology, ecology, cosmology—books on every conceivable subject.

The first thought is daunting: “I can’t possibly read all that. I can’t.”

What we’ve done is try to make education interdisciplinary. Multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary. “Multi-” means many different disciplines all under one roof: a uni-versity, the diversity unified. Uni-versity—unified diversity under one roof. The place where any kind of knowledge could be gained, anything from becoming a doctor to an artist or a sculptor or a movie maker, all under one roof, right?

Multidisciplinary, and then interdisciplinary. Let’s see if we can teach students how to draw upon all the arts and all the sciences—physiology, medicine, everything—encyclopedic knowledge.

Interdisciplinary—to make a person capable of not being problematic, being a source of solutions. A solution-bringer. This is the whole idea of education.

[10:51] What Kind of Human Have They Become?

And then, to what end? Education, because it has failed in so many of these endeavors, has come to be viewed as simply the offramp from the freeway of education to employment.

It’s fascinating when I interview top employers and ask them what they’re looking for in recruits. To what extent do they look at the educational achievements of someone who, once upon a time, had been a student at high school and university?

Their answer is, “Hardly at all, if at all. What we’re interested in is a person who can pass the interview. We’re going to interview them and see what kind of human they’ve become. We’ll be able to tell what kind of capabilities they have based on talking to them conversationally.”

“And they might come in with all their papers, their high school and university records, plunk them on the table, and even their resume, and we’ll tap it with our hand, pat it with our hand, and say, ‘Thanks for that pile of paper. Now let’s get you to answer a few questions.’
‘Here’s what we’re doing in our organization. How would you see yourself fitting into our mission?’ And if the person can pass that interview, they’re likely to get the job.”

[12:29] Credentialed Persons

The world of educators is convinced that the client of education is the employers of the world. The employers don’t see it that way. They want people who can actually operate human-to-human, and they want to give those people a chance. But the education system doesn’t teach you how to pass an interview. It doesn’t teach you how to interact human-to-human and get things done.

It teaches you that if you don’t make great grades, don’t get all your papers done, and don’t get all your credentials in place, you won’t be a credentialed person. Credentialed persons, so goes the fallacy, are the ones who get all the top jobs and get paid a lot. And if you get paid a lot, of course, you’ll have fulfillment in life. That’s another fallacy that we’ve addressed elsewhere.

And so, someone who’s gone through years of educational training ends up being askance.

[13:45] Highly-Qualified Uber Drivers

I know one person who has three PhDs in physics. Her final PhD is on the behavior of one atom. Out of all the atoms that exist in the universe, there’s one particular atom known as lithium, and she knows everything there is to know about lithium.

I said to her, “After your 24 years of schooling—including primary, high school, university, and master’s degrees, and your three PhDs—how do you feel?”

She looked at me and smiled. “I feel overqualified for almost every job, and I’m also unemployable because nobody wants to know what I know.”

I said, “What are you doing?” She said, “I’m driving Ubers. I’m driving Ubers around. I have three PhDs and I drive Ubers around because I’m useful if people want a lift from somewhere to somewhere else.”

This is what’s happening to the field of education. There is a disconnect between what an erudite, educated person has to offer and what the educational system is attempting to pour into the heads of its students.

[15:17] Knowledgeable in Very Certain Areas

Without training in how to be an effective, interactive human being, education, basically, is teaching people how to be knowledgeable in very certain areas of life.

You zero in on one subject because you can’t learn everything in that library, and so you specialize—just like my friend did with the lithium atom. You specialize and specialize and specialize.

“I know all there is to know about an atom.” But if you asked her about, let’s say, the celestial mechanics of the solar system, she likely wouldn’t know very much that was functional at all.

If we asked her how the stock market operates—why there is a stock market and how it generates revenue in countries—or, if it’s going badly, how it loses revenue for countries, she probably wouldn’t know.

If you asked her, “What are the likelihoods of African elephants not going extinct in the next 20 years?” She probably wouldn’t know. If you asked her, “Who was Descartes?” She probably wouldn’t know.

If you asked her, “Who was the 44th president of the United States?” She probably wouldn’t know, but she can tell you absolutely everything about one atom—lithium.

So, in our attempt to become knowledgeable, we’ve had to zero in, and that means we’ve had to ignore great big bodies of knowledge. There’s vastness of knowledge to be had, and we’ve had to ignore it.

[17:23] Ignore, Ignore, Ignore

One of my greatest old friends, clients, and mentors, Professor Brian McCusker, who was Professor of High-Energy Nuclear Physics at the University of Sydney for decades, was one of the world’s top experimental physicists. An amazing man who taught me almost everything I know about quantum mechanics.

He said to me, when he was a young teacher at university, before he became professor, he would give his students a particular task. He would say, “What kind of downward force on a cord, like a string, is needed if the cord is going over a pulley—which is, in physics, referred to as a block, but we’ll call it a pulley—attached to a weight of five pounds? What kind of downward force on this end of the rope needs to be exerted in order to lift that weight of five pounds where the cord attaching it goes over a pulley to your hand?”

There’s a formula that you follow to come up with the answer to that. The poundage of downward force you have to exert.

One of his students said to him, “Sir, could you tell us what is the color of the cord that you’re pulling on? Because, as you well know, different colors of cords absorb light in different ways and it can actually change the density and, in microscopic ways, change the weight of the cord.” To which the lecturer, then not yet a professor, said, “Ignore that.”

Then the student said, “At what elevation is our experiment occurring? Because the answer will be different at sea level, or, as in Death Valley, California, below sea level, than it would be at 13,000 feet above sea level, at the peak of a high mountain.” To which the teacher said, “Ignore that.”

The student replied, “How recently was the pulley oiled? Because if the pulley is not frictionless, the answer will be different.” To which the now exasperated lecturer said, “Ignore that. Just use the formula and give me the answer.”

After a day of saying, “Ignore, ignore, ignore,” the man, who later became Professor McCusker, realized, “I’m teaching ignorance to my students because their questions are absolutely accurate. In the real world, you can’t just use a formula. You do need to know how recently the pulley was oiled. You do need to know at what elevation the work is occurring.

You do need to know all these things. But I’ve just told them all day, ignore, ignore, ignore. I am teaching people how to ignore. I’ve got to stop doing that.”

That revolutionized the way that he taught physics after that. He wanted to make it inclusive.

[20:53] Increase Knowledge of the Knower

Let’s look inclusively at what actually happens when in contact with the realities of the world.

We do teach ignorance in our educational systems because of the necessity to specialize. We are increasing ignorance faster than we’re increasing knowledge because we have to tell people to ignore things.

You want to become a specialist in certain kinds of commodities trading in the futures market, at a big futures exchange like in New York City. You’re going to have to ignore the stories of Michelangelo. You’re going to have to ignore the stories of physics. You’re going to have to ignore the stories of celestial mechanics of our solar system. You’re going to have to ignore, ignore, ignore. In fact, you’ll be ignoring more than you will be gaining knowledge of the desired topic.

So, in our now thorny system of education, we’re increasing ignorance faster than we’re increasing knowledge. Ignorance is increasing faster than knowledge. And our educated students come out with their degrees and their accreditation, and employers are only interested in them to the extent that they can pass interviews.

This has a very deflating and defeating effect on students who wish to be educated.

The Vedic view is that in order to become a highly informed, highly performing, creatively intelligent individual who is nimble, agile, and has access to a stable base of knowledge, we have to increase the knowledge of the Knower.

[22:51] Knowledge of the Knower

Not just knowledge of items. After all, Consciousness is the source of all thought. All thoughts that exist bubble up out of the Consciousness field, the field of Being.

In Information Theory, there is a fundamental tenet, and that tenet goes like this: Knowledge has organizing power.

This was one of the favorite tenets cited by the great Edward de Bono, the man who first described the phenomenon of thinking outside the box—lateral thinking. Worth looking him up, Edward de Bono. He was a follower of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and a practitioner of meditation.

If knowledge has organizing power, which is demonstrably true, then knowledge of That—now here we’re spelling “That” with a capital T—knowledge of That, by which all things are known, must have infinite organizing power.

Let me break that down for you. Knowledge has organizing power. True, demonstrably true. If items of knowledge have organizing power, then knowledge of the Consciousness field in which all knowledge is embedded—knowledge of That by which all things are known—must have infinite organizing power.

If knowledge has organizing power, knowledge of That by which all things are known must have infinite organizing power.

This is the kind of organizing power we get from practicing Vedic Meditation twice every day.

[24:57] Vedic Meditation Awakens the Home of All Knowledge

Because the mind, in Vedic Meditation, ceases to be the limited mind that generates a limited brain, which then has to apply itself to the situations in life. If the consciousness becomes problematic, the brain becomes problematic, and then we say, “My world is full of problems.”

A problem is a consciousness state. It’s not a reality of the world. It’s a consciousness state. “I have a desire, and either the desire is not complete, or the means that I can see to attain to fulfilling the desire is not complete, and so I say, problem.”

But from whose perspective is it actually a problem? There is a perspective from which what you’re experiencing is not actually problematic. You’re merely in problem consciousness.

Education is not complete unless it gives us knowledge of the Knower, knowledge of the Cosmic Creative Intelligence Field that is the source of our own thoughts, knowledge of That by which all other things are known.

When we practice Vedic Meditation, twice each day, every time we meditate, our mind is exposed to the Unbounded Consciousness Field, and a fundamental tenet of Vedic science is that knowledge is embedded in the Consciousness Field itself.

That is to say, when you awaken Consciousness, you awaken the home of all knowledge.

Without doing that, we’re not realizing the true potential of education. All we’re doing is giving people specialized knowledge and requiring them to ignore almost all other fields of knowledge.

For education to live up to its promise of creating a problem-free individual, someone who is a walking solution, in order for that to occur, we have to have more people expanding their awareness twice every day through the practice of Vedic Meditation.

And to all those listening to this who are students, you must practice your meditation twice every day in order to become someone who is a walking fountainhead of solutions, instead of someone who is, like everyone else, struggling with problem consciousness day in and day out.

Jai Guru Deva.