Vidya Vahini

Book excerpt: Baba has clarified that the word vidya used for this vahini (stream), means “that which (ya) illumines (vidh)”. It is this sense that is highlighted in expressions like Atma-vidya, Brahma-vidya, and even the name Vidyagiri (giri means hill or mountain) given to the campus of the Institute of Higher Learning at Prasanthi Nilayam. Baba makes us aware of the comparatively less beneficial lower learning, which deals with theories, inferences, concepts, conjectures, and constructions. The higher learning hastens and expands the universal urge to know and become truth, goodness, and beauty (sathyam, sivam, sundaram). Baba has come as Man among men on a self-imposed mission to correct the wrongs inflicted on mankind through the fanatically blind pursuit of lower learning. The human race has to voyage on an even keel; it is leaning too alarmingly toward the briny grave; the lower learning is lowering it into the bottomless pit. Only spiritual knowledge —that which illumines (vidya)— is the remedy. From His childhood days, Baba has stood forth as an educator, a guru, as the villagers loved to address Him. Without hesitation, He warned elders at Puttaparthi, teachers in the schools, and headmen of castes against cruelty to animals, exploitation of labour, usury, gambling, pedantry and illiteracy, hypocrisy, and pomp. Through quips and jests, parody and satire, songs and plays, the young teenaged teacher ridiculed and reformed society, which honoured or tolerated such evils. Through devotional songs (bhajans) sung in chorus by groups of men and women, He reminded them of the universal human values of truth, morality, peace, love, and nonviolence as early as 1943, when he was barely seventeen. These were the basic acquisitions that the Higher Learning (vidya) can confer on votaries. As Lord Krishna, He said to Arjuna, Among all the kinds of knowledge, I am the Atmic knowledge. Adhyaathma Vidhyaa, Vidhyaanaam. The world can be saved from suicide only through this Atmic knowledge. The search for truth and totality, for unity and purity, is the means; the awareness of the One is the consummation of the process. This message is the sum and substance of every discourse of His during the last five decades. This precious book provides us the chance to peruse nineteen essays that He wrote in answer to appeals for the elucidation of the principles that must guide us while rehabilitating education as an effective instrument for establishing peace and freedom in us and on Earth!