Sathya Sai Baba The World-Avatar Teaching and Revelations

edge in the context of the world. Such knowledge will not go to the
depths of the heart or reveal the aspect of Brahman at all. The kind of
knowledge where one does not follow up the process of listening with
the process of thinking over and digesting it will at best be learning
without proper background or the requisite culture. (36-198/199)
To make education a prop for life or a breadwinner for your material
life is a mistake. Your life itself should give you the strength to live. Education
should not be made a bread-winner. There are crores of people
in this country who are not educated and who are still living a good
life. To think that education is necessary to enable man to live is quite
wrong. Education should enable you to be an ideal and develop into
an ideal example. Your learning is not to be used just to fill your stomach.
Education is the correct type of education if it enables you to lead
a life which can be an example to others and if it enables you to distinguish
right from wrong. Education should promote humility in you,
and enable you to become more humble than an uneducated person;
it should enable you to serve your mother and father and country and
your service should become a selfless service. If you become a selfish
person and simply acquire degrees which become a burden on your
shoulders, that kind of education is of no use. Selfishness, exhibitionism
and immorality are seen in an extensive measure only in the educated
class of people. Such education which makes you proud and
which removes all the good qualities such as humility cannot add to the
prosperity of the country. It can only cause harm to the country and
create confusion and trouble. As you become more and more educated,
your ideas should become broader and broader. As your knowledge
grows further and further, humility should also become more and
more. At any time and under all circumstances you should be prepared
to give your help, energy and encouragement to those who ask for it.
The moment our students get one or two degrees they become burdensome
to their own parents and they do things which cause great
confusion in the minds of the parents. They bring tears of sorrow to
their parents. The father of the house struggles to do everything for the
family even when he grows old. In spite of the fact that the son sees
the father going through all this struggle, he does not raise even his little
finger to help him. This kind of education which makes one not
serve his father, how is it going to enable him to serve the country?
Mother and father have struggled on many occasions to feed and support
their son as a student and when the parents are in difficulty the
son would not do anything to help them and relieve their hunger and
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