What the World’s Finest Universities Do Not Teach

Conversations and insights from my UK tour

On 30 May, I was at the Cambridge Union in conversation with Professor Jaideep Prabhu. In that hall, where Churchill and Hawking have both been heard, the audience before me was made up largely of economics and management students. Their questions were intelligent, serious, and honest. But one thing became clear very quickly. However sophisticated the education, there comes a point where no theory helps and no degree comes to the rescue. At that point, the question is no longer about the world. It is about the questioner. A one-hour session stretched into conversations over nearly two days.

And what I saw at Cambridge, I saw throughout the tour. At Oxford, in the British Parliament, at the London School of Economics, and in public dialogues. The questions differed, the lack was the same. People know a great deal, but they do not know themselves. That is the subject of this article. What do the world’s finest universities teach, and what do they still fail to teach?

Let us begin fairly. Western higher education has immense strengths. It has reason, evidence, analysis, discipline, and intellectual honesty. Science has dignity because it does not rush to conclusion. It says: first, I will observe, test, verify. That deserves respect. Spirituality is not the enemy of science, science must receive its due respect. Matter belongs to science. Anyone who wants to understand the outer world needs the scientific temper.

On 8 June, at Oxford, I was speaking on the second mantra of the Ishavasya Upanishad in a setting connected, a century and a half earlier, with Max Müller’s role in introducing that very text into the Western scholarly world. On 12 June, at the British Parliament, I spoke on “Asato Ma Sad Gamaya.” In all these places, one point kept returning. Universities know how to study the world. They know matter, economy, society, history, biology, politics. But the most important question is left untouched. In the statement “I know,” who is this “I”?

That is where education remains incomplete.

If you inform a person about the world, but never examine the one gathering that information, education remains incomplete. The purpose of education is the liberation of consciousness. Consciousness is bound in two ways: by ignorance of the world, and by ignorance of oneself. And of the two, ignorance of oneself comes first. If the eye itself is distorted, then whatever it sees will also be seen wrongly. In that case, all outer knowledge will end up serving inner distortion.

So the real problem is not a lack of information. The real problem is the condition of the knower.

The modern educated human being knows plenty. He knows data, markets, technology, management, policy, and career strategy. But he does not know why he knows what he knows. He does not ask what his education is serving. Is it serving truth, or is it serving the same old fearful, ambitious, greedy, insecure ego? That is the decisive question.

Knowledge is value-neutral, the user of knowledge is not. A tool is neither good, nor bad in itself. But if the one holding the tool is inwardly distorted, the tool becomes a weapon. Technology then serves exploitation, economics serves greed, politics serves domination, psychology teaches sales and not freedom. Even the language of sustainability becomes a way of making consumption look more decent, instead of questioning the consumer.

On 2 July, in a conversation with the Cambridge-trained biologist Dr Rupert Sheldrake on consciousness and the limits of science, the same point became even clearer. Science asks: What is this? Science asks: how does this work? But science, by its nature, does not investigate the one asking those questions. As long as science remains within its domain, it is honest and beautiful. The trouble begins when the limits of science are declared to be the limits of reality itself. Then science turns into scientism. And scientism is very useful to the ego. It allows a person to say: only what is outside is real. In that way, he keeps himself outside examination.

That is where the real trouble begins.

At the London School of Economics, in a dialogue with Professor Jonathan Birch on animal consciousness, whose research contributed to UK law recognising even octopuses and crabs as sentient beings, I offered the example of a drunk driver. If a man is driving drunk and we keep improving the roads, softening the barriers, speeding up the ambulance, and tightening the law, will the basic problem be solved? No. There may be some relief, but the root remains untouched. This is what modern civilisation keeps doing. In the very week I was in London, there were severe heatwaves, yet the discussion kept returning to new technology, not to the appetite producing the heat in the first place. There is a climate crisis, so we propose new technology. There is a mental-health crisis, so we propose new therapies. There is social violence, so we propose new policy. There is cruelty to animals, so we propose new law. All of this has its place. But one question is still avoided: who is the one doing all this? What is going on within him?

The same point came up again in my conversation with PETA’s senior vice-president on 3 July. The exploited may change. Sometimes it is the animal, sometimes the river, sometimes the forest, sometimes another class of human beings. The exploiter remains almost the same: conditioned, fearful, acquisitive, violent ego. Unless education touches this ego, education produces civilised barbarism. The outer polish remains, the old darkness remains within.

Now let us turn to India.

India has had the language of self-knowledge. The Upanishads are here. Vedanta is here. There has long been the recognition that the knower too must be brought under examination. This is no small thing. The West took knowledge of the outer world to extraordinary heights. India’s real contribution was this: before you know the world, see who it is that is knowing. The Ishavasya expresses this in two words: vidya and avidya. If you pursue only avidya, only outer knowledge, you remain in darkness. If you cling only to vidya in a merely verbal or complacent sense, you fall into deeper darkness still. One crosses only by carrying both together. The fault is not in outer knowledge. The fault lies in the blindness of the one using it.

And India’s tragedy is this: we have repeated this wisdom far more than we have lived it. We have not allowed scripture to remain a force that changes life. We have turned it into identity, ritual, sentiment, convenience, and display. What could cut into a person, shake him, and transform him, we set aside. What could become spectacle, we kept.

So this is not a question of East versus West, nor of one civilisation being superior to another. There is incompleteness on both sides. The West knows the outer world very well, but falls silent on the knower. India had the language of the knower, but now often uses that very language to sustain the machinery of ego. There is mastery over objects there. There is command over words here. Yet in both places, human beings remain frightened, greedy, lonely, violent, restless, and insecure. The real issue is not civilisation, it is consciousness.

That is why, however great universities may be, they still do not educate the human being completely. They teach subjects, they teach skills, they provide information., they prepare careers. All of that has value, all of that deserves respect. Universities can produce fine teachers, trainers, specialists, and experts. But a human being needs something more. He needs a blow to the false centre from which he is living.

Even the students of Oxford and Cambridge, brilliant in their fields, can sense that something remains missing, some lack that neither degrees nor money can fill. But their education does not tell them that what is missing is the cleansing of the eye and the clearing of intent. Because if the knower himself is fearful, greedy, ambitious, and inwardly unclean, then even the best knowledge in the world will finally serve ego and violence.

So what do the world’s finest universities still not teach?

They do not teach you to ask whom your education is serving.
They do not teach you how to examine the knower.
They do not teach you what the restlessness for success really means.
They do not teach you that achievement without self-knowledge also becomes destructive.
They teach the world well, but they do not ask who is receiving that knowledge.

And until these questions enter the centre of education, universities will continue to produce brilliant, capable, accomplished graduates, while the human being remains a cause of destruction for other species and for the Earth itself.

Acharya Prashant is a philosopher and author whose work centres on self-inquiry and its application to contemporary life; Views presented are personal.