22 July 2004 (Jaipuria School) Peace Education. - Part 3: Peace Education

Q: What is peace education? Where would you place it in the Indian education system?

As the question of peace, education became prominent with the establishment of UNESCO in 1945, the charter of UNESCO announced that, since wars are fought in the minds of men, defences of peace should be established. In the minds of man you may say this is the starting point of peace, education in the world. It was helped - and this was the consequence of two world wars through which the world had passed. It was realised that war should be abolished altogether from the scene of the world, and it was realised further that the most effective means of doing it is education.

Thereafter, UNESCO produced two big volumes in which this ideal of peace was enunciated and discussed. I don't know if you have read or if you have heard of the first document published in 1971, it is entitled Learning to Be. Its main argument was that all wars are the result of division and fragmentation and therefore, if you look into the depth of this phenomenon of fragmentation, you find that all fragmentation in the outside world reflects the fragmentation of man within himself. Man, divided within himself, is a man at war within himself and therefore it was fair that unless man himself gets integrated, unless his own divisions are healed, unless human beings are integrated, unless there is peace in the heart and mind of man within himself, you cannot expect peace in the outside world.

In 1996, UNESCO published another volume. Another report which is titled Learning: The Treasure Within and the message of this document is that man has within himself a treasure all that it needs to learn can be learned by self unfolding. The truth of the self, if it is known it will open the gates to the truth of the world and it initiated four principles of education: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. They seem to be very simple propositions, but the implications of implementation of these four principles would imply a great change in the system of education.

Our present system is geared merely to learning to know, and that too, at the most. In fact, one of the very important questions in education is what is knowledge, since we are all students of management, this question of knowledge is, to my mind, most fundamental in all disciplines of management, as you must have learned, a good manager should be the storehouse of information, it's a basic store, unless sufficient in terms of information, unless how to generate information, unless how to marshal information, how to utilise information, you cannot be a good manager.

But then there is a difference between information and knowledge and then there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom and when we speak of education for peace, you speak not merely of information, not merely of knowledge, but you speak of wisdom. The state of peace is a state of wisdom and again as students of management, I would like you to know quite well the distinction between information and knowledge and distinction between knowledge and wisdom.

I am sure you must have given thought to this subject. What I say may be even superfluous, but still it is good to reiterate some of the basics of this distinction, since it is directly relevant to your further question: what is the place of peace education in the Indian system of education. The reason being that in India, particularly the theme of wisdom throughout the ages has been underlined as nowhere else in the world.

But let us see how we can define the word information and I will not define it. I will ask you, it is one of you to tell me what, according to you, is information. I'm not a good lecturer, I’m a good discusser and a good conversationalist. I talk, I discuss, I converse, and perhaps you will appreciate this method instead of lecturing, a lecture on you, to engage ourselves in a conversation. If any one of you can give me one definition of information, I shall be grateful. Anyone. What is information? You are a student of management. Yes, yes, can you try? What is the meaning of information? How would you define information?

Your main point is, as far as I can understand, information is basically related to data, which is quite true, but perhaps my question was a deeper one. What is data? It’s a good answer, but let me now come forward. See information is concerned with one basic fact, and that is what might be called disclosure. All information is a disclosure, something is disclosed. You can have a large number of facts around you, but unless they disclose themselves, you are not informed about them, mere data, mere presence of objects around you is not information. The real fact is that when the data around you begin to be disclosed to you, they are revealed to you. So the essential fact regarding information is the fact of the event of disclosure, and normally information is disclosure of objects which you call data.

Now how does it distinguish itself from knowledge, disclosure of a fact? When does it ripen into knowledge? We have plenty of facts around us. In fact, in the world advertisements for example, go on rushing before you on the monitor of television. All are disclosures, then can you say that you are deriving from this disclosure these pieces of information knowledge? There is a distinction between information and knowledge. For example, as a manager you may ask somebody to make a survey of the market, it is one of the most important elements in your management program. Survey of a market - and you collect data, that is information, and maybe the agent whom you have sent for collecting, represents your data. You are a good manager when you derive knowledge out of this data. These are data presented to you. There is all the disclosure. You say I have now the knowledge of this situation in the market. You may have data, but what is the knowledge? Can anybody try this?

Yes, good. I think all these answers are quite good, although not entirely penetrating. They all tell you something about knowledge. If I can help you, you can say that there is no operation of knowledge in any operation of the mind unless you are able to arrive at a concept in every aspect of knowledge. The essential element is the presence of a concept. The data don't give you the concept, the concept is not written anywhere. Information is only information of particulars, this that that that that.. It's a kind of a table of facts. Now, when you apply your mind - and this is where it comes, apply your mind. What is the meaning of applying your mind? All application of mind is an effort in deriving a concept. A concept is like an umbrella. You examine any concept, you will find it is like an umbrella, concept of demand, concept of supply, concept of meeting of demand and supply, determination of the price, the concept of the price. All these concepts are like umbrellas in which many facts can be collected together. There is some kind of resemblance between facts and all the facts which resemble each other are brought together under one concept. They are distinguished by another set of facts which also resemble each other, it is another concept, then comparison of concepts and the play of concepts in your mind generates knowledge.

Therefore, when you want to judge whether your agent has given you your data or knowledge, you can judge from this fact whether the agent has given you a concept or has helped you to generate in your mind a concept. If your agent is not able to give you data in the form in which concepts can be derived more easily, you can say that the agent is a good tabulator, perhaps not even tabulator, a good informer, but he's not a great helper to you in deriving concepts. This is one of the ways in which you can judge whether you should appoint him as an agent or not. If you want to appoint somebody as your agent, one of the ways by which you can judge is whether the data that he presents to you enabled you to derive concepts and connect concepts with each other and then can give you some kind of an overall view. When you have transcended the level of information, when something of the whole, this is the specific differentia of a concept. There is something like the whole, universal.

In fact, if you read western philosophy - and this is where I request all managers to read philosophy - because this is also theme of my friend who is here - Professor Vyas - he is a professor of management ethics, he's one of the experts in our country, and he will tell you that all managers should be philosophers and only good philosophers can become good managers and the justification for this idea is this: that nobody can be a good manager unless he is able to form concepts, and what is a concept is best understood when you study philosophies like that of Socrates and Plato.

In the western philosophy, they were the first ones, the derivation of a universal, which is never seen anywhere in the world. A universal is not seen physically. What you see is only particulars, out of the particulars you derive a concept which is universal, and this is the task of a manager. Mere information, that is very often you say, O he has got lots of statistics. Even your computer has more statistics than you can store in your own mind, but mere possession of statistics is not knowledge. It doesn't make you a manager. A manager must have the capacity to derive concepts. Then all that you said applies after this. This is the basic point.

You know, it is always easy to describe that to define, and you must have seen that my questions are for definition and not for descriptions. Something can be utilised, it is a description. Knowledge is that it can be utilised. Information cannot be directly utilised. It’s quite correct, but you can utilise it because you have gone through a process of conceptualization. It is the process of conceptualization which is the builder of knowledge. It is that which enables you afterwards to utilise it in the proper manner.

Now this is not a lecture on management, so I will not dwell upon this point so much. I’ll come back to the original question about education of peace and the place of it in our Indian system. I spoke just now about the four pillars of learning: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together, learning to be. Now peace education is to combine these four. It says that a true education for peace will give to every individual a practice in combining these four elements.

Mostly, as I said, our education is learning to know and that to basically only learning to get information. Learning to know is peripheral. It comes at a very high level, but then it says learning to do. You cannot do a thing properly unless you are founded in knowledge. Now this also is a fact which is not sufficiently realised, because there are people who are more viewers than knowers in the history of the world. You find that there are many good people who when you ask questions, they are dumb. When you ask them to do, they can do efficiently many things. It’s a fact. But doers can become better doers if they have good foundation in knowledge and those who are knowers. They become better knowers when they begin to practice and they begin to do. Therefore, these two processes should be always involved together.

So, according to this message, most of the human beings are quarrelling with each other and therefore wars ultimately arise. It is because they are not trained to reconcile in themselves the process of knowledge and the process of doing. If you can have human beings who know and who do and there is a kind of harmony between the two you get better oriented individuals, the quarrels will be much less. Very often, you will find that philosophers are despised by practical businessmen because they feel philosophers are only speculating, they are all good for nothing, theory, theory, theory. There is no practice. And there is a constant quarrel in the world and many wars in the world have arisen because people who think and people who work and act are in two different camps and they misunderstand each other.

So if you in your own personality, if you can combine these two together, your own personality, the war will be much less and you'll be more integrated. As a result, the third pillar comes into operation, that is to say: learning to live together. You can live together only if you can appreciate these two aspects, because in a given community you'll find theoreticians and practical people and they cannot live together properly, but if the art of combining these together, if you understand these two together, then you can be a harmonizer. You can explain to both of them and say you can be a good leader, a good manager. A good manager is one who understands the doers and who think, and then you combine them together. In fact, all management is management of men. This is the basic point. All management is basically management of man, and you can manage people better if you can bring people together to work together as a team. Greatest problems of the world have arisen because people do not know how to live together. Even two people quarrel with each other. Two countries square with each other, two religions quarrel with each other, two linguistic groups quarrel with each other and we don't know how to bring them together. Therefore, peace education emphasises a great deal on the art of living together.

And finally, it says if you want to judge whether you have learned to live together or not, if you want to make a test, the test will lie in whether you as an individual, you as a manager, you have learned to be, and this word learning to be is a very important word. What is it that constitutes learning to be? To be is to experience that you are. Now this word “you are'' is a very important word. Most often we do not know that we are. We live in abstraction. We live in dreams and ideas, this fact or that fact, you don't experience “you are”.

There is one of the modern philosophies of the world called existentialism. I don't know if you've heard of it: existentialism. According to this theory, every individual has a goal to come to existence. We think we exist, but it is not true. We don't experience existence, we don't feel the concreteness of our being. It points out that whenever an individual is required to make a choice between two alternatives, an extremely important decision to make, one of the examples that is given is a woman is invited by a man to meet him in a garden both of them have met before, they like each other, they have not yet decided to settle down together, and the woman is invited by the man: shall we meet today in the garden. Now imagine this is what is called the beginning of the existentialist situation. If you say no, your future is sealed. You are giving a signal, you are not interested in the man. If you say yes you are giving hope to him and you do not know whether you are going to give hope to him or not, whether you should give hope to him or not, are you misleading him? If you say yes I’ll come, you may be misleading him, you may not really have much interest. Fine. This is called an existential situation. For the first time you begin to ask really what do I want to do? I want this man in my life? Fine, supposing you say yes, I will come, fine, one step forward in the existential situation. Then you meet together. You sit down on a bench and suddenly he picks up your hands, suddenly. Now this is an existential situation. Should you allow the hand to be left in his hand or you should slip back and the decisions will be taken now on the spot. If you allow one minute more, you are giving signals after signals. Isn’t it? I mean it's a fact.

That is why it is said for management particularly, managers should pass through the tests of existentialism. You should all be put to the test right on the spot, take a decision, this way or that way. People come to crisis actually, they break down sometimes. Now this is something to do, learning to be, what is learning to be? You for the first time realise what you are. What do you want? What is your direction of life? One step this way or that way. The best definition of learning to be is to learn to possess oneself and to be master of oneself. These two words: self-possession and self-mastery. As long as you do not possess yourself, everyone exists in the world, but you do not exist by possessing yourself.

If you use the sankhya philosophy in India, you have got a very powerful philosophy called sankhya philosophy where as long as you simply breathe and work and act, you are only a child of prakriti. It is a big machine going on in the world of which you are a kind of a cog and if the machine is working you are also working at the same time and most of us are machines of that kind, because the world machine is going on powerfully and we are a part of that engine. So we go on functioning according to the dictates of the engine, but you are not you. It is prakriti which is moving as the Bhagavad-Gita says:

सदृशं चेष्टते स्वस्याः प्रकृतेर्ज्ञानवानपि ।
प्रकृतिं यान्ति भूतानि निग्रहः किं करिष्यति ॥ 3.33

All existences follow their nature and what shall coercing it avail? Even the man of knowledge acts according to his own nature.

Bhagavad Gita 3.33

All the beings, all the becomings in the world are nothing but प्रकृतिं यान्ति, they're, all movements of prakriti. It goes even to say किं निग्रहः करिष्यति, you all speak of self-control, but it says all the time we are under the engine of a prakriti, vast engine. Even if you try to control yourself, will you be able to control? A huge machine is going on. How can you control it? Therefore, sankhya philosophy says you begin to exist first when you know that there is in you a purusha, the controller, the sakshin, the witness, the controller.

Now this is Indian thought and therefore very relevant to Indian education. Indian education can help you a great deal in peace education. If you apply the idea of purusha and prakriti, in fact all managers must have a good grounding in the workings of prakriti and workings of purusha. A good manager is a good purusha. Purusha is not masculine. Purusha is one who dwells in this house of prakriti. Anything that is moving is prakriti, anything that can stand behind is purusha. Every man and woman has a purusha in him or her at the moment you can withdraw from the movement, engine of the movement, and that is a task of the manager, a manager has before him the huge factory at work, it is a movement of prakriti. A huge machine is functioning, you as a manager are a purusha. You can take the decision to stop the engine, to start the engine, to what to do to start, whether you shall have a night shift or day shift, what kind of organisation you will have, you are the purusha. You are the manager. This capacity exists in every human being. This is the affirmation of sankhya philosophy, every human being has this purusha in him, but we are not aware of it. You become aware of it when you begin to take decisions, take an exercise of decision taking and the more you are trained to take decisions, the more you become yourself, you are learning to be.

So learning to be is a culmination of learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. Now one can lecture on the subject at length. Peace education is a very big subject. At one time I was a chairman of UNESCO's committee on international understanding and peace, so I can talk to you about my experiences in this field at length, but that is not the purpose of this particular meeting. This is only one question given to me, and I think this is enough. I can only say peace education is basically an education to be. It is an education, to use the Indian terms, education to become aware of purusha consciousness and to exercise it. All right.

I think I’ve answered this question indirectly already: if you want to be a manager, you have to be purusha and you cannot be purusha unless you undergo a spiritual education. This dichotomy of pursuit of money and pursuit of spirituality is a false dichotomy.

In India we have got a concept of Mahalakshmi, the goddess of all prosperity, and the concept of Mahalakshmi is a spiritual concept. According to the Indian spiritual knowledge, you cannot possess wealth rightly truly, unless you combine two other powers of the divine Mother. We begin today with sharada and I thought it was a very good introduction to management. There are four powers: in fact Sri Aurobindo has written a very great book, a short book of no more than 30 pages, and I would like every manager to read this book. It gives a secret of the highest management of the world, not only of a factory, how the world is managed and the world can be managed best when you combine four powers which are all spiritual powers.

What are the four powers? First is the power of Maheshwari. Second is the power of Mahakali. Third is the power of Mahalakshmi and fourth is the power of Mahasaraswati. It is by combination of these four powers that the whole world is managed. If you think that the world is being managed by bifurcated human beings, by experts who are tempted by heaps of wealth, if you think that the world is managed or can be managed merely by storing information or by shear birth in a rich family and by accident you become rich suddenly right from birth, these are only superficial perceptions and good managers should study management at the depths. It is only when you combine four powers in your own personality that you can be a real good manager. You can really be a master of prosperity. The power of knowledge, the power of heroism, the power of mutuality and the power of skill: these four elements you should combine together. Maheshwari is the goddess of knowledge. Mahakali is the goddess of heroism. Mahalakshmi is the goddess of mutuality, and Mahasaraswati is the goddess of skill, perfection of skills, yogah karmasu kaushalam, this is Mahasaraswati; when you can bring together these four powers.

Mr. JRD Tata was a good personal friend of mine, and nobody can doubt that he was a great master of wealth. He was my very good personal friend and he had all the four powers together in him. This I can assure you from my personal experience. Once he and I were travelling together in the plane, and he was at that time the chairman of Indian airlines and Air India, both at that time. He had instructed that nobody should go to see him off, nobody should come to receive him at the other end. Normally people waste that time only in seeing off and in receiving, and he did not want all that paraphernalia for himself. He and I had taken out the suitcases from our own car in our own hands, I have seen him myself carrying his own suitcase, going to the belt for check-in along with me, and then we went into the cabin of the aircraft and as soon as the plane took off and became stable in the air, we were both sitting together, he said Kireet I shall just come back. He went to the toilet, not for the use of the toilet. He wanted to examine the toilet. Remember he was a chairman. It was impromptu. I mean nobody expected it. The chairman will go straight to the toilet first and will examine the conditions. He opened the tap, flushed the toilet, saw the paper, saw the lotion, each and everything. Then he called me. He said you see what a dirty thing it is, he said, and the whole crew, imagine Mr. JRD Tata in the toilet and how many people can be accommodated in a toilet room. It was a big rush. Then he went to the cockpit. He was himself a good pilot. He was the first one as you know to drive a plane in India, and then we did many things. I'm just giving you an example. He was the son of Mahasaraswati, going into the minutest detail and the skill with which he was examining everything, and I saw here was the son of Mahasaraswati. Then I saw he was talking. He was so kind, I tell you, so kind. He did not show any kind of anger or displeasure, the things were not at all good, but the kindness with which he dealt with everybody, explained to them that look you should do this, you should do that and everybody was so happy, happy to be trained by him on the board. He knew how to live together. It was Mahalakshmi.

It's not money, it is Mahalakshmi, it is all money is nothing but people coming together and producing together, that is wealth. Right. That is spirituality. If you cannot make your people happy with you. As I said, we are all in search of money, but you do not know how to search for money. The secret of money, Mahalakshmi lives only where there is mutuality, there is harmony, Mahalakshmi is a goddess of harmony. If you are not able to bring together people into harmony, you cannot produce wealth.