Modern education

March 27, 2017.

Namaste

ॐ असमद गुरुभयो नमः

I have contemplated about this for sometime .

This goes to the fundamentals of how we are educated. Based on my self directed research, I understand that education in ancient India, before the colonization, was offered to young boys and girls at age 7 after conducting a upanayanam ceremony. There enters a spiritual guru into their lives who educate them on all branches of study including math, physics, chemistry, geography, astronomy etc and specific study like warfare, architecture, veda adhyayana etc based on their family occupation. The spiritual guru runs a residential school known as gurukulam and practices like yoga abhyasa, sun salutations (Sandhya Vandhana), svadhyaya ( study of scriptures) and various other subjects happen over the next decade of the student's life known as brahmacharya. The student accepts his teacher as his everything and complies by the rules of the ashrams ( school) and at the end of his studies pays guru dakshina ( tuition) as demanded by the guru. The guru demands dakshina on an individual basis that depends on the student's capabilities and his teacher's vision for the student's future.

It is also said that even though Sri T. Krishnamacharya could have excelled in many capacities as a professor or religious head or scholar, he started a family and became a yoga acharya as that was the guru dakshina demanded by his teacher.

All this was replaced by the colonial type of education. The spiritual teacher was replaced and later absent from the general education a child received.

The education we receive today in schools and colleges do not involve spiritual education and above all religions and religious practices have taken the place of spiritual studies 😟.

Children who grow up with modern education start to get conditioned to be skeptic about the spiritual or meta physical aspects of existence/universe. In a way modern science has become a religion 🙂.