India - the Mother

July 17, 1960

For about a century, the human world has been suffering from a disease which seems to be spreading more and more, and which nowadays has reached its highest pitch: it is what we may call utilitarianism. People and things, circumstances and actions seem to be considered and appreciated exclusively from that angle. Nothing has worth except what is useful. True, a useful thing is better than a useless one, but we should first be clear on what we call useful: useful to whom? To what? For what?

But increasingly, the races that regard themselves as civilized call useful whatever can bring, acquire or produce money. Everything is judged and assessed from a monetary angle. That's what I call utilitarianism. And the disease is highly contagious, for children themselves don't escape it.

At an age when they should have dreams of beauty, of grandeur and perfection, dreams perhaps too sublime for the ordinary commonsense, but nevertheless highly superior to that flat commonsense, now children dream of money and worry about how to earn it.... What becomes paramount for them is to prepare to pass their exams, for it is with diplomas, certificates and degrees that they will be able to find good positions and earn lots of money. For them, studies have no other goal, no other interest.

Learning in order to know, studying in order to understand the secrets of Nature and life, educating oneself so as to let one's consciousness grow, disciplining oneself so as to master oneself, overcome one's weaknesses, incapacities, ignorance, preparing to move in life towards a nobler, vaster goal, more generous and truer—they give hardly any thought to all that and regard it as quite utopian. The only important thing is to be "practical," and to prepare oneself and learn to earn money.

On Education: Correspondence