Education is hardly edifying without provision for character. Character-transmission is the essential mission of education. Those who give their children everything in the world, but fail to give character, give them 'stone' in place of 'bread'. This booklet briefly delineates the means of attaining this crucial and vital aspect in the course of human development.
Those who have succeeded in attaching or detaching their minds at will have succeeded in Pratyahara, which means gathering towards, checking the outgoing powers of the mind, freeing it from the thralldom of the senses. When we can do this, we shall really possess character; then alone we shall have taken a long step towards freedom. Before that, we are mere machines.
-Swami Vivekananda