Why the Most Educated People Can Still Be the Most Cruel

What exactly are we expecting education to fix? To think that education will fix our character is very narrow-minded stuff. You see, if a problem is ignorance, education can help. If I do not know how mathematics works, education can teach me mathematics. If I do not know how a disease spreads, education can teach me biology. If I do not know how the history of a particular civilization is, education can give me that history. But human nature is not simply a knowledge problem. This is the first thing that we all must keep in our minds, because a person can know that lying is wrong and still lie. A person can know that cruelty is destructive and still be cruel. Or a person can understand the consequences of greed and still become greedy.

So the question is not whether education gives us knowledge. Education absolutely gives us knowledge. But the question is whether knowledge has the power to overrule desire. And there, the situation becomes much more deeper. Imagine a person standing before a delicious meal while knowing perfectly well that overeating is unhealthy. Does knowledge automatically defeat appetite? No. Everybody knows that using a phone too much will spoil health. But are people really disciplined? No. The person knows. And very often, the desire wins. This small example reveals something enormous about humans. Human beings are not governed exclusively by what they understand. We are also governed by what we want. And desire is older than education, and fear is older than philosophy. Violence existed before textbooks. So education actually enters human story very, very late. The impulses to control or to have it are ancient for us.

This is why the belief that education will eventually perfect or perfect humanity is like trying to teach a wolf philosophy and expecting the wolf to stop being a wolf. The wolf may understand the philosophy, but it is still a wolf. And perhaps the uncomfortable truth is that education does not remove human nature. It often makes human nature more sophisticated. Consider intelligence. We like to assume that an intelligent person is less likely to behave foolishly, right? But intelligence is merely the ability to navigate complexity. It is not automatically wisdom. Let us all not fool ourselves. A clever person can use intelligence to discover truth. The same intelligence can be used to construct elaborate excuses for a lie. A highly educated person can use knowledge to solve problems. That same knowledge can be used to manipulate, exploit, and deceive. The educated mind does not necessarily become more superior. Sometimes it simply becomes more efficient. It's just like a primitive person may deceive badly, but an educated person may deceive more beautifully.

And this is where education reveals one of its most idiotic possibilities. It can provide human beings with better tools without providing them with better intentions. Give a selfish person greater intelligence, and you will not get a generous person. You may simply get a more sophisticated selfish person. Give a vain person things, and you will not get humanity. You will get a better self-promotion person. Are you seeing what I'm seeing? So the instrument becomes more powerful, but the hand holding the instrument remains the same. This is why I'm suspicious of the sentence which says education makes people better. That's absolute narrow-minded stuff. Better at what? That question matters. Education can make someone better at calculation, communication, analysis, engineering, medicine, law, economics, and even philosophy and science and other countless stuff. That is understandable. But none of these guarantees goodness. A person can understand the structure of society and still exploit it. A person can understand psychology and still manipulate people. A person can understand morality and still violate it. Knowledge tells me what something is. You see, it does not necessarily tell me what I should desire. And even when knowledge tells me what I should do, it does not guarantee that I will do it. This is the difference between knowing and being. We confuse the two constantly. We think that if someone has heard the right ideas often enough, those ideas must eventually transform them. That is total narrow-minded stuff. But human beings are remarkably capable of compartmentalizing themselves. We can believe one thing and behave according to another. We can praise honesty while lying when honesty becomes inconvenient. We can condemn corruption while becoming corrupt when the reward is large enough.

You know, the other day, one person was telling me that the movie industry is one of the biggest jokes, and he was explaining why, because for many people, when you go tell them that you have to do a physical intimacy scene, so many men and women would say, "I have standards and values; I will not involve in all these things." But the moment you tell them a famous celebrity is in the movie and we are going to pay you enough, their values and morals change. Are you seeing what I'm saying? The moment reward is more, values also get compromised.

Now, enough with the entertainment. Now, coming to the main message. You are the absolute self-aware reality which is the substratum of all. That is the origin of all origins. It is on you that the entire drama of creation is happening. But to think that you are the body and mind is your narrow-minded stuff. You believe you are bound, and therefore you are bound. Turn your mind within and see things for yourself: that you are the self-aware reality. Once that is done, you will simply become an autopilot person. Things happen through you and not by you. And I'm not joking. This is not some Upanishad text I'm saying. I'm literally telling you the truth. If you don't believe me, read science. When you read science about how the mind works and how desires happen, you will naturally come to an understanding that things are done through you and not by you. The person whom you think yourself to be appears to exist but does not actually exist.

I keep giving this example of ocean and waves in the ocean. From far, ocean looks bluish, but the moment you go put your hand inside and lift the water, you will understand that water was transparent. It never had blue color in it. Similarly, when you turn your mind within, you will understand that there is nothing called spirituality. No karma, no drama, no sin, no merit, no guru, no ashram, no god, no goddesses, no that, this, blah, blah, blah, no, no, no, no. You'll come to the understanding that this is the truth. And I'm not trying to turn against anyone here. I'm literally trying to tell you the truth. A wave that thinks it needs to practice a method to become ocean is fooling itself. Or a fire that thinks it needs to visit ashrams to produce heat is fooling itself. And a noise trying to follow a method to reach silence is the greatest stupidity. That is the most stupidest thing on earth. So turn your mind within and see that you are the self-aware reality, and be done with this drama.