The whole case has been laid bare. Without entering into further investigative comments, we may leave the reader here with the power of his own thought and imagination for deeper contemplation on this dramatic event.

However, a clue for this onward research may be given here: The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (I. 3) says that every individual function is smitten with death, that is, with the principle of change and destruction, and that when these functions are freed from the clutches of death they revert to the original from which they came. So, how can the reflection become the original, the part become the whole, the effect become the cause? The answer is: by freeing the reflection or the part from the conditions which make it a reflection or a part. And what are these conditions? The principles which cause change and destruction, which are the constituent factors of individuality on account of which it is that the individual is said to be mortal, while the Cosmic Being is immortal. This Upanishad says that speech, when it is freed from the principle of death, becomes Fire. Similarly, breath, when it is freed from the principle of death becomes Air. The eyes, when they are freed from death, become the Sun; and likewise with the other functions. The meaning here seems to be that the reversal process of functions referred to above is the principle of death in the individual and the individual becomes the Universal when the former is freed from the principle of death or destruction. Becoming has to revert to Being.

And, death or destruction does not mean annihilation but a tendency to move from the effect to the cause, a change that is necessitated by the urge within the part to become the whole, for the latter contains the former, in fact, in an organic oneness. What we call evolution in a vast sense is nothing but this; the struggle of the universe to evolve from the lower to the higher, in which process the individual’s tendency for the Universal is included. The whole universe is busy with the activity of re-arranging its constituents for a self-realisation of itself in the Absolute. Evolution is a movement of the not-self to the Self, by deepening as well as expanding its jurisdiction, inwardly in quality and outwardly in quantity, until the Supreme State is reached, wherein quality and quantity merge into the single Being. of the Infinite Self. For an interesting and majestic discourse on the relation of the Absolute to the individual one is referred to the 4th Section of the First Chapter of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. As our present concern is the educational process, we shall not touch this subject here to any extent more than necessary for our present need for clarification.

There can be no real meaning in education if it is not a systematised art of contacting reality by graduated stages. And reality is inseparable from our own life, our very existence—anything unconnected with our existence is not reality for us. From the above-quoted description of man’s position in the universe, provided to us in the Upanishad, it appears that reality, to us, is an approximation of experience, by degrees, to larger dimensions of universality. Thus, the educational process also has to be a gradual rise of experience, by degrees, through the different stages which connect our existence with reality.

A consideration of the true educational process, then, obliges us to take the immediate facts of experience as the basic truths of education. This means to say that no experience whatsoever can be outside reality, for every experience is a part of it, as it is revealed in some degree, and every degree is a degree of reality. Education, then, is a universal movement of the mind towards self-recognition in the highest state of Reality, though it takes its stand in and commences from the most initial and primitive stage of experience. It ranges from a child’s simplest notion of the external world to the loftiest concept of the scientist and the philosopher. If, from this point of view, we are only to name the themes that may have to be gathered by the studies to be comprehended in the educational process, we may tentatively list them thus: the kindergarten stage and the Montessori methods of approach; reading, writing and arithmetic in their most basic forms; elementary geography and history in the form of stories and inspiring narratives; simple dramatic portrayals; grammar, language and literature through stages of increasing width and intensity; mathematics, natural science, botany, zoology and physiology; ethics, civics, sociology and political relationship; astronomy, physics, chemistry and biology in their more developed form; psychology, aesthetics, economics, the philosophy of history, and world-culture. This enumeration of subjects practically covers all that is taught today in our colleges and universities, perhaps the only things that are taught to us in these institutions under the, impression that these subjects exhaust all possible studies. But this is a sad mistake. The study of reality is not complete merely with a sojourn into these empirical extensions of the human mind in the visible world of sense-perception. To detect why these studies are incomplete in themselves, we have to go back to the evolutionary details supplied to us in the Upanishad as observed in the earlier paragraphs. At best, all these studies are the worst forms of knowledge that we can hope to gain, for these are only notions gathered subjectively concerning the objects ofthe outside world which manages to retain its own independence over the individual experiencing subject. But, how is the world so independent and unmanageable? For an answer we have only to go back to the Upanishad. The world ofthe elements-earth, water, fire, air and ether—has unfortunately become the cause of our experiences which are the effects produced by our sensations of them. This is only the knowledge which the reflection has of the original, far removed from truth due to the reversal process mentioned in the Upanishad. If the reflection can be regarded as the original, our present-day educational career also can be regarded as the final shot in man’s pursuits. No wonder that Sage Sanatkumara considered all this knowledge as only a name, because it has estranged itself from the original which is supposed to be its object. Yet, Sanatkumara regarded ‘Name’ as the first step in the investigation of reality; the ‘name’ points to what is ‘Named’, though it is no more than a mere ‘pointer’. So, too, is the need and the extent of value of our empirical sciences and arts. But, if knowledge is isolated from its object, how can knowledge bring happiness? How can knowledge be equated with power? How can knowledge be the same as virtue? For, happiness, power and virtue are associated with reality, and when knowledge is unconnected with reality—because it is only a symbol, a pointer, a reflection, and not the original-it remains only a name, though in the sense of the lowest degree of reality. It becomes a pretension to progress, growth and culture if it usurps the status of the original by exceeding the limits of a ‘pointer’; a ‘hint’ or a ‘reflection’. We have to investigate into the principles of real knowledge more deeply and courageously. What is real knowledge? What should be the aims and methods of education? What should be the nature of a comprehensive curriculum?