With youth: Our object-centric education forgets the real subject- You

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Question (Q): Sir, why should we study HIDP (Holistic Individual Development Program)?

Acharya Prashant (AP): This probably is a question that should cross the minds of educationists, parents, and the authorities in schools and colleges at a very early stage. At a very, very early stage!

(Addressing the questioner) Arvind, what is it that we have studied in our education so far? What is it that we have studied? You have studied the languages, Mathematics, Science, and Social science. Later on, you studied Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, and now technology or economics or commerce.

But tell me, are you the English alphabet? Are you the rivers and mountains that you studied in Geography? Are you the kings and the battles that you read about in History? Are you the molecules or the polymers that you read in Chemistry?

Listeners (L): No, Sir.

AP: You are not. You are not any of that. You are not Doppler’s effect, you are not a complex number. All of these are objects outside of you. Are you getting it? All of these are objects outside of you. You are not them. You are something other than these objects.

Appreciate this. If I am holding a pen in my hand and I say, “I am holding a pen”, what will be the object and the subject in this statement?

L: The pen is the object and you are the subject.

AP: Right! The pen is the object. If I say, “I am studying Mechanical engineering”, what is the subject and what is the object? ‘I am’ is still the subject and ‘Mechanical engineering’ is the object. But the whole obvious thing has become inverted in our minds. We have been told to call ‘Physics’, ‘Chemistry’, ‘Mathematics’ and ‘Mechanical engineering’ as subjects. Then, ‘Who Am I?’

The fact of the matter is- all our education so far has been only about the objects. Are you getting it?

They are objects. You are the most ultimate, the most important, the Subject. The subject is always, always far more essential, far more important than any object.