Education in Athens during her heydays was confined to poetry and philosophy. Now it has branched into dozens of subjects. Demography and statistics came of age as subjects in the pre-war days. When neurology gained importance, a young man from Madras desired to be qualified in it abroad. There was unanimous disapproval and stiff opposition. The young aspirant survived it to become a nationally known neuro-surgeon in his ripe old age. These are days of the life sciences. My thinking is on the Science of Life. It is my ardent hope that one day the Science of Life will become a universal subject of study. It just means that one should have enough knowledge of life that his acts will always be supported by life. In plain words, students would be taught how to avoid failure in life totally or at least in a major way.
This subject too branches off into several directions, viz. 1) time, 2) mind, 3) events, 4) sounds, 5) vision, 6) course of events, etc. In our tradition, we classify Time into auspicious and inauspicious. We seek the first and avoid the latter. A science of life will teach how to always make Time our tool or servant and never our ruler. It is a wide subject by itself. One significant point any one of us can fully appreciate is when we are ABSORBED in the present - forgetting the past and never calculating the future - the work becomes a glorious success and gets done to perfection. Man initiates the events, but rarely are they under his control. Planning effectively largely brings the work - a chain of events - under our control. This subject will teach him that men will equally come under his control largely if he takes their point of view. One who rejoices in the growth of others - success - who are working with him will never come under their control.
To set the dogs on men who are troublesome is a safe way of protection. But the same dogs can harass our welcome visitors. One man learnt a type of whistling that subdues any dog. On hearing that whistle, the dogs stop barking and crouch on the floor in abject submission. The sound of his whistle has that power, as Sabdam is Brahman. Some orators know it. As they proceed with the delivery of their speech, their voice is so modulated that they come to a certain pitch they have mastered. At that point, the audience grows quiet and is spellbound. It is not what they speak but the sound that emanates from them, rather the sound vibration that dominates the crowd. When Life Education is taught, it has a hundred similar details, behind which lies the spiritual truth that the whole creation has emanated from OM, the cosmic sound.