Krishnamurti Jiddu - Education and the meaning of life - read book online for free

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Krishnamurti's teachings concern mainly the nature of knowledge. Therefore, the focus of his attention was constantly on the problems of education. He founded schools in India, the USA and Brockwood Park (Hampshire). In Education and the Meaning of Life, he shows that conditioning by race, nationality, religion, dogma or tradition inevitably leads a person to conflict. If the student is able to understand this, then the restoration of the personality crippled by these influences begins, and its comprehension of “correct life” and “prosperity in kindness” - two of the most important principles of Krishnamurti’s spiritual teachings.

Jiddu Krishnamurti
Education and the meaning of life

I. Education and the meaning of life

Try to travel around the world, and you will see how incredibly similar people are to each other - be it in India or America, in Europe or Australia. And this is especially true for colleges and universities. We produce, as if from a pattern, a type of human being whose main interest in life is the desire to protect himself, to become someone outstanding, or simply to pass the time carefree.

Traditional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. The lack of one's own position - conformism - leads to mediocrity. When we need success in something, it is very difficult, and often dangerous, to be different from others or not to be influenced by the environment. The desire to achieve success, which means the desire for rewards - be it in the material or in the so-called spiritual sphere, attempts to protect ourselves from all sides, the thirst for comfort - all this only smoothes out our discontent, blocks spontaneity and gives rise to fear, which, in turn, distorts understanding of life. Thus, over the years, the mind grows dull and the heart grows cold.

Striving for comfort, we eventually find a secluded corner in life where there is the least danger, and then we are afraid to take a step out of our hiding place. This fear of life, fear of struggle and new experiences kills the spirit of seeking in us. Our entire upbringing and education makes us afraid of being different from our neighbors, of opposing established social norms and of being afraid of contradicting authorities and traditions.

Fortunately, there are still people who are ready to seriously explore the problems of human existence without any prejudices or prejudices. But for the most part we lack a real rebellious spirit. And when we, without meeting the proper understanding, succumb to the influence of the environment, the spirit of rebellion, which may have been inherent in us, weakens, and the burden of obligations finally kills it.

EDUCATION AND MEANING OF LIFE

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Anastasia Chukovskaya

Schools should teach love, a holistic view of life, self-knowledge and, most importantly, freedom. The philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti came to such conclusions in his treatise “Education and the Meaning of Life” back in the 20s of the last century. Krishnamurti tested his theses in practice by founding several schools in the USA, Great Britain and in his homeland, India.

What is the problem

We produce, as if from a pattern, a type of human being whose main interest in life is the desire to protect himself, to become someone outstanding, or simply to pass the time carefree. Traditional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. The lack of one’s own position—conformism—leads to mediocrity.

What do we live for and what do we fight for? If we pursue education only to stand out from the crowd, to get a better job, to become more efficient, or to dominate other people, then our lives will be superficial and wasted.

What good is our education if all we do all our lives is destroy each other? If we are forced to endure the misfortunes of endless wars, one after another, then it is worthwhile to assume that there is some fundamental error in the basis of our approach to raising children.

A person who thinks exclusively logically is not a thinking person, since he only adapts to a certain pattern, repeating again and again alien and far from new phrases and thoughts.

It is impossible to understand your life abstractly or theoretically. To know life means to know yourself, this is precisely the alpha and omega of education

After all, education, in essence, is self-comprehension. There is something in each of us that strives for integral existence.

What we call education today is just the accumulation of bookish knowledge available to everyone who can read. Such education only offers us a subtle form of escape from ourselves, and any escape inevitably causes more suffering.

We send our children to school to acquire some technical skills with which they can eventually earn a living. If we put our career first, then soon our life turns into a mechanical way of existence and a fruitless routine, escaping from which we use every opportunity to somehow distract ourselves.

And as long as education is built on stereotyped principles, not creative individuals will appear, but only new specialists

Of course, while children are still very young, our task is to protect them from harmful influences, taking care of their health and physical safety. But, unfortunately, we don’t stop there. We want to influence their thoughts and feelings, we want to shape them in accordance with our own intentions and ideals. We strive to be fulfilled in our children, to make them our continuation.

What to do?

We are not interested in the person himself, but in our own idea of ​​what he should be. What should be becomes much more important to us than what is—more important than the personality in all its complexity. If we begin to perceive the personality directly and directly, then we will no longer need to transform the personality into something else. All we need is to help the individual become aware of himself, and there is no selfish motive or self-interest in this.

Any method that classifies children by temperament and ability only emphasizes their differences among themselves. This, in turn, gives rise to antagonism, contributes to the emergence of social inequality and prevents the formation of an integral personality.

Proper education is about accepting the child as he is, and not imposing on him our ideas of what he should be. By confining the student to our ideal, we force him to conform, and this causes fear and causes conflicts between what he really is and what he should be. As a result, all internal conflicts result in social conflicts.

False messages

Many of us are convinced that by teaching everyone to read and write, all of humanity's problems can be solved. But this idea has proven to be untenable. So-called educated people are not at all peaceful and integral. They, more than anyone else, are responsible for the spread of ignorance and poverty throughout the world.

The child has no class or race consciousness. It is the influence of parents or the school environment, or their combined influence, that instills in him a spirit of separatism. The child himself does not care who his playmate is - a Negro or a Jew, a Brahmin or a non-Brahmin. But the social structure, by its continuous influence, attacks the child's mind, influencing and molding it according to its own design.

It is not in the interest of a sovereign state for its citizens to be free and independent-minded individuals, so it controls people through propaganda, distorted interpretations of historical facts, and other tricks. This is why education increasingly teaches us what to think rather than how to do it.

The role of the teacher

To observe the child's inclinations, his drives and temperament, to understand his difficulties, to take into account heredity, the influence of parents, and not to perceive him as a representative of a certain group, all this requires a quick and flexible mind, not enslaved by any system and not entangled in prejudices. And the teacher will also need the highest skill, the ability to self-sacrifice and, above all, love. Training teachers with these qualities is one of the most pressing problems of today.

Proper education begins with a teacher who has comprehended his essence and therefore thinks outside the box. If the teacher has not received the correct education, then the maximum he can do is comment on the textbook

Therefore, the problem is not with the children, but with the teachers and parents.

A truly sincere and dedicated teacher will protect children from false values, using every opportunity to show them the path to true freedom. But no teacher can do this if he is committed to any ideology, dogmatic or self-interested.

When the classes are small and the teacher is able to devote his full attention to each child, observing and helping him, then any form of coercion and suppression is completely unnecessary.

If a teacher demands respect for himself, but does not respect his students, this will cause indifference and disrespect on the part of the audience. If there is no respect for human life, then knowledge leads to destruction and poverty.

Young people are easily influenced by a priest or a politician, a rich man or a poor man, adopting their way of thinking as their own. But proper education should protect young people from foreign influences.

The danger of discipline is that it considers the system much more important than the person imprisoned in it.

Many of us by the age of 45-50 are already broken by slavish obedience and monotony, pretense and fear. We are a doomed people, and yet we stubbornly continue to fight for a place in the sun in a society that has a certain value only for those in power.

If a teacher understands this and if he has experience, then, regardless of his temperament and abilities, teaching will not be schematic and stereotyped, it will become effective.

School and vocation

School self-government, after all, is nothing more than self-government in later adult life. After all, if at school a child learns to be attentive, objective and prudent in any dispute concerning his everyday worries, then in the future he will be able to face more difficult life challenges with dignity and equanimity. The school should teach the child to understand the difficulties and characteristics of other people, their moods and characters, and then, as an adult, he will show humanity and patience towards others.

Proper education should help a student find his calling. If this does not happen, his entire subsequent life may be wasted. If a child dreamed of being an artist, but became an ordinary clerk, raking piles of papers in some office, he will spend the rest of his life cursing his fate and experiencing a feeling of doom. A boy may like the military profession, but first he must figure out whether human society really needs militarization.

If parents truly cared about the fate of their children, they would build a new society for them. But they don't seem to care, they're too busy to worry about such trifles. They find time to earn money, have fun, perform rituals and worship. But they don't have enough time to figure out what the right education should be for their children.

Jiddu Krishnamurti’s book “Education and the Meaning of Life” was published by Sofia Publishing House in 2003

Jiddu Krishnamurti(Jiddu Krishnamurti, May 12, 1895 - February 17, 1986) - Indian philosopher. He was a famous speaker on philosophical and spiritual topics. These included the psychological revolution, the nature of consciousness, meditation, relationships between people, and achieving positive changes in society. He repeatedly emphasized the need for a revolution in the consciousness of each individual person and especially insisted that such changes could not be achieved with the help of external forces - be it religion, politics or society.

Jiddu Krishnamurti was born in colonial India into a strictly vegetarian, Telugu-speaking Brahmin family. In his early youth, when his family lived in the city of Madras, next door to the headquarters of the Theosophical Society, he was noticed by the famous occultist and high-ranking Theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater. Leadbeater and Annie Besant, leaders of the Theosophical Society at that time, took the boy under their wing and raised him for many years, believing that Krishnamurti was the “guide” they were waiting for for the World Teacher. Subsequently, Krishnamurti lost faith in Theosophy and liquidated the organization created to support him, the Order of the Star in the East.

Krishnamurti denied affiliation with any nationality, caste, religion or philosophy and spent his life traveling the world as an independent speaker in his own right, speaking to groups large and small as well as interested individuals. Krishnamurti wrote several books, the most famous among them are The First and the Last Freedom, The Only Revolution, and Krishnamurti’s Notebook. In addition, a large number of collections of his conversations and arguments have been published. Krishnamurti's last public appearance took place in January 1986 in Madras.

Mary Lutyens, the author of several books about Krishnamurti, who knew him from her childhood, defines the main goal of his teachings as “to free people from the fetters that separate one person from another, such as race, religion, nationality, class divisions, traditions, in order to transform the human psyche through this.”

“Everywhere in the world people are in search of something hidden, secret, some awareness that would give them more knowledge, more understanding, awareness of something that people call “truth.” They think that the truth is hidden somewhere far away, beyond the boundaries of their daily life, beyond its sorrows and joys. But life itself is the truth. And with an understanding of life comes an understanding of the truth.”

A teacher who has devoted his entire life to the education of a free and integral personality is truly a deeply religious person. But he does not belong to any sect or to any organized religion. Any creed is alien to him, he does not adhere to any rituals, because he knows that all this is nothing more than illusions, fiction and superstitions, born of the desires and aspirations of other people. He, like no one else, knows that reality or God manifests itself in a person only when the person has comprehensive self-awareness, and therefore is free.

People who have not received an academic education are more likely to be natural teachers because of their tendency to experiment. Not being teachers by training, they sincerely strive for knowledge and understanding the meaning of life. For a true teacher, teaching is not just a profession, it is a lifestyle. Like an artist who cannot imagine himself outside of painting, a true teacher would rather agree to eke out a half-starved existence than give up his occupation. Therefore, without a burning desire to teach, there is no point in even thinking about becoming a teacher. After all, it is extremely important to understand from the very beginning whether a person has the gift of teaching others or not. Or maybe, leaving his fate to chance, he became a teacher, seeing in this occupation only a way to earn a living?

As long as teaching is nothing more than a profession for us, one of many ways to earn money, and not following a calling, there will be an insurmountable gap between us and the outside world. Therefore, in everyday life, at home, we are alone, but at work we are completely different. And as long as teaching is treated the same as any other profession, confrontation and hostility between individuals and entire classes will be commonplace. If things continue like this, then in the near future we should expect tougher competition, the emergence of an uncompromising struggle of ambitions and the erection of national and racial barriers that impede mutual understanding and give rise to confrontations and countless wars.

But, having felt the calling of a true teacher and decided to devote our lives to this responsible occupation, we will not erect barriers between personal life and work, since freedom and reason are most important to us. Proper education requires equal treatment of all children, regardless of whether their parents are rich or poor. It is necessary to treat each child as an individual, taking into account his character, aspirations, heredity and much more. A true educator does not serve any social class, does not defend the rights of the poor and does not justify the rich, the only thing he is interested in is the freedom and integrity of each individual.

The decision to devote one's life to the cause of proper education must be completely voluntary. You cannot allow yourself to accept it as a result of someone’s persuasion or based on selfish calculations to make a professional career in this field. In order to make such a decision, you need to be free from the fear of failure in the race for success and achievement. After all, by accepting the successes or failures of the school as our own, we remain at the mercy of selfish motivation. If teaching is truly your calling, if you consider proper education to be a vital need of every individual, then I assure you that you will never allow anyone’s ambitions, not others, not even your own, to hinder you or lead you astray from your chosen path. Then there will be both time and opportunity for work, and you will be able to immerse yourself in it headlong, without expecting any reward, recognition, or fame. Then everything else: family, personal safety, comfort - everything will fade into the background.

If we really want to become true teachers who can give children the right education, we will be forced to abandon not only any one system of education, but all existing systems at once, since it is clear that none of them is capable of making a person free . Any system or technique only limits the individual, reducing his entire worldview to a strictly regulated set of values. But no system, no methodology can make a person free.

At the same time, it is necessary to be extremely vigilant so as not to become a victim of another system - our own, since our mind does not stop developing and improving it for a second. It is very convenient and safe to conform to a certain pattern of behavior, to follow a given pattern of actions, and it is for the purpose of self-preservation that the mind strives to give everything a name. After all, in order to be alert all the time, constantly observing oneself, it is necessary to show considerable skill, otherwise this activity will become tedious, while creating your own method and then following it does not require much effort of thinking.

Endless repetitions and habits make the mind dull, and to awaken it from sleep, a jolt is needed, which we call a problem. But attempts to solve the problem with the help of standard explanations, justifications and condemnations again return the mind to a sleep state. This inconsistency, dullness of mind is truly a vicious circle. Therefore, a real teacher must take care to put an end to this failure not only in himself, but also to help his students overcome it.

Someone may ask: “How to become a true educator who can give children the right education?” The whole point is that the very formulation of the question in the form of “how?” reveals not a free, but a fearful mind that needs benefit, results. Hopes and attempts to become someone or something only limit it and force it to project the desired result, while a mind free from limitations is always observing and learning and therefore never falls into its own traps.

Freedom exists initially, and it is a mistake to think that it is something that can only be achieved in the end. The moment a person asks “how?”, he is faced with insurmountable difficulties. That is why a teacher who has decided to devote his life to proper education never asks this question, because he knows that there is no specific method by following which one can become a true teacher. If a person really wants to become a teacher capable of giving the right education, he will never ask how to achieve the desired result.

Is the system capable of awakening the mind in a person? We can go through all the rounds of testing of the system, receive all possible degrees and titles, but who will we become after all this, true teachers or personifications of the system that raised us? The desire for reward, the desire to be called an outstanding teacher is an irresistible passion to receive universal recognition and praise. Accepting praise or encouragement from time to time is quite acceptable, but if long-term interest in work depends on it, then such dependence turns into a drug that very quickly depletes a person. A person dependent on praise and encouragement cannot be called mature.

In order to create something new, you need to be receptive and energetic, and not waste precious energy on meaningless bickering and arguing. If a person does not work according to his calling or has lost interest in the profession, he will be haunted by melancholy and fatigue. Therefore, if there is no vital interest in teaching, a person should not become a teacher.

But why are teachers so often disappointed in their work? This does not occur as a result of the influence of circumstances forcing a person to act against his will. It comes when we ourselves cannot determine what we want. Choosing a profession in turmoil and confusion, we make rash decisions, and then grab the first occupation that we don’t like at all.

Even if teaching is our true calling, we may feel temporarily frustrated because we see no way to overcome the current educational crisis. But once we understand the importance of proper education for all mankind, we will again find the necessary incentive and inspiration. And it’s not a matter of willpower or determination, but of sensitivity and understanding.

Education and the meaning of life. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Read the book Education and the meaning of life online

Krishnamurti's teachings concern mainly the nature of knowledge. Therefore, the focus of his attention was constantly on the problems of education. He founded schools in India, the USA and Brockwood Park (Hampshire). In Education and the Meaning of Life, he shows that conditioning by race, nationality, religion, dogma or tradition inevitably leads a person to conflict. If the student is able to understand this, then the restoration of the personality crippled by these influences begins, and its comprehension of “correct life” and “prosperity in kindness” - two of the most important principles of Krishnamurti’s spiritual teachings.

I Education and the meaning of life

Try to travel around the world, and you will see how incredibly similar people are to each other - be it in India or America, in Europe or Australia. And this is especially true for colleges and universities. We produce, as if from a pattern, a type of human being whose main interest in life is the desire to protect himself, to become someone outstanding, or simply to pass the time carefree.

Traditional education makes independent thinking extremely difficult. The lack of one's own position - conformism - leads to mediocrity. When we need success in something, it is very difficult, and often dangerous, to be different from others or not to be influenced by the environment. The desire to achieve success, which means the desire for rewards - be it in the material or in the so-called spiritual sphere, attempts to protect ourselves from all sides, the thirst for comfort - all this only smoothes out our discontent, blocks spontaneity and gives rise to fear, which, in turn, distorts understanding of life. Thus, over the years, the mind grows dull and the heart grows cold.

Striving for comfort, we eventually find a secluded corner in life where there is the least danger, and then we are afraid to take a step out of our hiding place. This fear of life, fear of struggle and new experiences kills the spirit of seeking in us. Our entire upbringing and education makes us afraid of being different from our neighbors, of opposing established social norms and of being afraid of contradicting authorities and traditions.

Fortunately, there are still people who are ready to seriously explore the problems of human existence without any prejudices or prejudices. But for the most part we lack a real rebellious spirit. And when we, without meeting the proper understanding, succumb to the influence of the environment, the spirit of rebellion, which may have been inherent in us, weakens, and the burden of obligations finally kills it.

There are two types of rebellion. One of them is violence, which is simply a reaction, devoid of any understanding and directed against the existing order. Another type of rebellion is a deep psychological revolt of the mind. Many rebel against established orders only in order to legitimize new illusions or objects of their hidden desires. What's really going on? We can endlessly move from one group of people to another, adopting accordingly different lists of ideals, but in this way we are just creating a new pattern of thinking, against which we will have to rebel again and again. Opposition breeds reaction, and reform requires further reform.

But the rebellion of the mind is not just a reaction. He comes to us through awareness of our own thoughts and feelings. And this happens only when we accept personal experience as it is, when our mind reaches the highest stage of awakening. And the mind in the highest stage of awakening is intuition, and only it can be a true guide in life.

So what is the meaning of life after all? What do we live for and what do we fight for? If we pursue education only to stand out from the crowd, to get a better job, to become more efficient, or to dominate other people, then our lives will be superficial and wasted. If we receive education only to become scientists, to become scholastics or specialists who acquire knowledge, then with our lives we will make a certain contribution to the destruction and impoverishment of all things.

But if there is a higher meaning of life, then what is all our education worth when we cannot come one step closer to understanding it? We may be highly educated people, but if we do not have unity of thoughts and feelings, our lives will be incomplete, tormented by many fears and contradictions. And until education can develop in us a holistic view of life, it will be meaningless.

Modern civilization has divided life into so many components that the education system has begun to occupy a very modest place in it, except in cases where the training of highly qualified personnel is necessary. Instead of awakening a whole mind in a person, education forces him to conform to the generally accepted pattern and thereby prevents him from perceiving himself as a whole process. Numerous attempts to solve the problems of existence only in a single area of ​​life indicate an absolute lack of understanding.

Personality consists of different fragments, so focusing on and developing only some of them causes confusion and internal contradictions. Education must ensure the integration of these disparate elements of the essence, that integrity, without which our whole life turns into a string of conflicts and suffering. Is there any point in becoming a lawyer if people are constantly suing? Is there any point in continuing to accumulate knowledge if we have never lived beyond error? What is the use of all the technical and industrial potential if we only use it to destroy each other? What then is the purpose of life if there is nothing in it but violence and poverty? Even having money or the opportunity to earn it, even enjoying or praying, we continue to be in endless conflict.

It is necessary to learn to see the difference between the personal and the personality. The personal is contingent, and by contingent I mean origin and environment, including nationalism, superstition, class inequality and prejudice. The personal or accidental exists only for a moment, but that moment lasts a lifetime. And since the existing education system is based on the personal, the accidental, the momentary, all it can lead to is a perversion of thinking and instilling concern for oneself.

Each of us, being a product of the education system and society, strives only for personal gain and security, tirelessly fighting for a place in the sun. And although we have been trained in various professions precisely for the needs of a system built on exploitation and fear, every time we hide it behind cliched phrases.

This kind of learning inevitably brings confusion and suffering both to ourselves and to the whole world, since it creates for each individual those psychological barriers that separate people and keep them isolated.

Education is not just about training the mind. Learning makes us efficient, but it does not give us complete perception. The trained mind, being merely a continuation of the past, is incapable of new discoveries. And therefore, in order to find out what correct education is, we need to find out what the meaning of life is.

For most of us, the ability to perceive life as a whole is not a matter of primary importance, and education, by extolling secondary values, makes us specialists in just one area of ​​\u200b\u200blife. The need for knowledge is undeniable, but to give it undue importance is simply to move toward conflict and disharmony.

There is a skill inspired by love that is immeasurably superior to the skill born of ambition. After all, without love, which brings a holistic perception of life, skill gives rise to cruelty. Isn’t this what we see everywhere?.. Our modern education leads to industrialization and war, its main goal is the further development of skills. We are enslaved by this ruthless machine of competition and mutual destruction. If education prepares us for war, if it teaches us to destroy in order not to be destroyed, does this not mean that such education has completely outlived its usefulness? In order to realize the idea of ​​proper education, we need to learn to perceive life as a single whole, but for this we need to be able to think not strictly logically, but directly and sincerely. A person who thinks exclusively logically is not a thinking person, since he only adapts to a certain pattern, repeating again and again alien and far from new phrases and thoughts. It is impossible to understand your life abstractly or theoretically. To know life means to know yourself; this is precisely the alpha and omega of education.

Education is not just the acquisition of various kinds of knowledge or the collection and systematization of facts. Education is the knowledge of life as a holistic process. And the whole cannot be known through its part, despite the fact that all the rulers, religious figures and politicians prove to us the opposite.

Education is not just the acquisition of various kinds of knowledge or the collection and systematization of facts. Education is the knowledge of life as a holistic process. And the whole cannot be known through its part, despite the fact that all the rulers, religious figures and politicians prove to us the opposite.

The main task of education is the formation of a holistic, and therefore intelligent, person. You can get a degree and acquire technical skills and abilities, but this is not enough to be called a reasonable person. The mind has nothing to do with information obtained from books. It also does not consist of sophisticated self-defense or aggressive defense of one’s rights. An unscientific person may turn out to be much more intelligent than one who has devoted his entire life to science. By legalizing all kinds of tests and examinations of human abilities, sorting them into various degrees and criteria, we contribute to the development of a cunning mind to which anything human is alien. The mind is the ability to see the essence of things, to see what is. Awakening this ability in oneself or in others is education.

Education should help us discover eternal values, and not cling to generally accepted dogmas and postulates. It should help us overcome national and social hostility, and not strengthen it. But, unfortunately, the current education system makes us into obliging, thoughtless performers. By developing only the intellect, it leaves us internally inferior, stupid and lacking in creative potential.

Without the ability to perceive life holistically, all our personal and social problems will only multiply and deepen. The main goal of education is not to train scientists, specialists and all sorts of careerists, but to educate harmonious men and women free from fear. After all, only between such human beings is long-lasting and lasting peace possible.

By understanding his own nature, a person begins to understand that fear can be overcome. If a person is forced to constantly fight for a place in the sun, if he needs to overcome life’s difficulties, poverty and blows of fate, then he must be infinitely flexible, and therefore free from all kinds of dogmas and established stereotypes of thinking.

Education should not encourage conformity or force the individual to oppose society. It should help a person to acquire true values, which arise through unbiased introspection and self-awareness. After all, self-expression without self-awareness leads to aggressive and ambitious self-affirmation. And it is education that should awaken true self-awareness in a person, and not indulge him in the desire to assert himself.

What good is our education if all we do all our lives is destroy each other? If we are forced to endure the misfortunes of endless wars, one after another, then it is worthwhile to assume that there is some fundamental error in the basis of our approach to raising children. I guess this problem is not new to most of us, but we don't know how to solve it.

Any system, educational or political, is amazingly capable of protecting itself from change. The system changes only when there is a profound change in consciousness within ourselves. After all, the person is important, not the system. And while a person is not able to realize himself as an integral process, not a single political system - neither left nor right - is capable of bringing order and peace to human society.

II. Proper education

The ignorant is not the one who has not received education, but the one who has not known himself. A scientist is a fool if in his search for truth he relies on bookish knowledge or on someone else's authoritative judgment. Understanding comes only through self-knowledge, awareness of the integrity of the psychological process. After all, education, in essence, is self-comprehension. There is something in each of us that strives for integral existence.

What we call education today is just the accumulation of bookish knowledge available to everyone who can read. Such education only offers us a subtle form of escape from ourselves, and any escape inevitably causes more suffering. Conflict or misunderstanding comes from a wrong attitude towards people, things, ideas. And until we reconsider and change our attitude towards them, simply studying something, simply collecting facts or acquiring various skills and abilities will lead to chaos and destruction.

As members of an organized society, we send our children to school to acquire some technical skills with which they can eventually earn a living.

We strive to make a child, first of all, a specialist, hoping that this will bring him material security. But can we think that worshiping technology will give us the opportunity to understand ourselves?

The need for the ability to read and write is beyond doubt. It is also necessary that engineers and all sorts of other professions exist in the world. But will technology help us understand life itself? Undoubtedly, technology is secondary. But if we allow it to take a dominant position in our lives, then we will not be able to comprehend the most important thing. Life is love, joy, beauty, sorrow, ugliness. Once we realize this holistically, awareness itself will create its own technique. But in no case is it the other way around - after all, technology alone will never bring either awareness or creativity.

Modern education has been a complete fiasco precisely because it considers technology to be the most important thing. By putting technology above all else, we degrade the person himself. Excessive expansion of power and technological potential without a holistic understanding of life and without a comprehensive awareness of thoughts and feelings gives us a sense of false superiority over others, which ultimately leads to the outbreak of wars, putting the lives of many people in danger. The exceptional cultivation of technology leads to the emergence of scientists, mathematicians, bridge builders, and space explorers. But are they capable of a holistic perception of life? Is it possible for a scientist to experience every moment of life in its entirety? Yes, but only when he stops relying on science.

Technological progress at some level is capable of solving some of humanity's problems, but this only gives rise to further difficulties of a deeper nature. After all, living only on one level, cutting yourself off from the rest of the world and ignoring life in all its integrity and harmony, means voluntarily exposing yourself to suffering and self-destruction. At this moment, the most important and urgent need for each of us is the ability to perceive life holistically. Only a holistic perception of the world around us will provide us with the opportunity to meet the steadily increasing difficulties of life properly.

Of course, technical knowledge is necessary, but it can in no way solve our internal problems. This is due to the fact that the thoughtless acquisition of technical knowledge without the ability to perceive life holistically has turned technology into a means of destroying people. A person who knows how to split an atom, but does not have love in his heart, becomes a monster.

We choose our calling based on our abilities. But can following our calling save us from conflicts and misunderstandings? Some forms of technical training seem necessary at first. But when we finally become engineers, doctors, accountants, the question arises: what next? Is fulfilling professional duties the meaning of life? Obviously, most of us think so. Work takes up most of our time, but whatever we produce, admiring the results of our work, becomes the cause of suffering and hopelessness. With our attitude to the environment and our evaluation system, we have turned things and our work into an instrument of envy, violence and hatred.

Without self-awareness, any activity is doomed to failure and is an escape. The destructive consequences of this process are difficult to imagine. Having mastered technical mastery, we often become arrogant and cruel, carefully hiding this behind euphonious slogans. Is it worth extolling technology and skill acquisition so highly if the logical conclusion of it all is mutual destruction? Our technological progress is truly fantastic in its increasing power, but, being just an instrument of mutual extermination, it has become the cause of impoverishment and suffering throughout the world. We have no right to call ourselves peaceful and happy people.

If we put our career first, then soon our life turns into a mechanical way of existence and a fruitless routine, escaping from which we use every opportunity to somehow distract ourselves. The selection of facts and the development of abilities, which we call education, deprive us of the fullness of perception of life and action. And all because, without realizing the integrity of the life process, we are so attached to our abilities and skills that we begin to attribute exceptional importance to them. But the whole cannot be understood through the part. Understanding is achieved solely through action and personal experience.