Oct.
28, 2002
Education
by Mothers Service Society
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To Sri
Aurobindo "All Life is Yoga".
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I call
education the yoga of the society.
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Sri Aurobindo
means by the word 'yoga' the self-willed progress of the deepest element even in
the shallow layer.
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The whole world
is in movement; the whole universe is so.
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The movement is
confined to Nature, Prakriti; the Purusha is motionless.
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Sri
Aurobindo goes to a third position where the Purusha in the Prakriti is on the
move.
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There is
nothing in the world that is not sustained by a SEED of Spirit, the Purusha.
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When Nature
moves, She gains experience.
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The essence of
her experience is spiritual.
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It collects as
the evolving soul, the psychic being.
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This is to
contradict the traditional position that the soul is immutable. In truth, it
is an improvement.
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When all Nature
is constantly gaining experience, all her components too are progressing
simultaneously.
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Energy, force,
power, organisation, skill, knowledge, and a host of other things are her
parts.
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Our concern is
knowledge, which is in constant progress.
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Education is
the social organisation of knowledge.
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To us the
organisation of education is important in the school.
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At home,
education in the primary sense is of significance.
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How do we
approach it?
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One person
the parent educates the other the child.
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We have already
arrived at the position that self-learning is the only significant learning.
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What then is
learning?
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The separated
ego, coming into contact with the not-self experiences in all its senses
centralised in the brain.
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Mind is seated
in the brain.
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Brain is the instrument
Mind has created in man for it to function.
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Brain is
physical, mind is subtle-spiritual.
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What the
Mind learns is education.
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What the brain
learns is skill.
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We confine
ourselves to education.
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The belief of converting
knowledge into practical utility is the theme of Sri Aurobindo's yoga when the
descent is expressed by the body.
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At the other
end, the practicality of the West infects us Indians.
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Knowledge is of
value when it is untainted by use value, the ideal of a mercenary nature. The
West is material that degenerates into it.
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In the aspect
where the West has discovered Brahman in Matter, it is great.
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Fundamental
research is pure research.
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In gathering
knowledge, the motive should be knowledge for its own sake. When it is so
gathered and formulated, it acquires power when expressed in action. A pupil
acquires knowledge over the years and comes to possess it as a consolidated
perfection before he starts applying it. Earlier attempts to convert it into
practical application either prevent its complete formulation or prompt faulty
partial formation.
v Nature has developed
emotions in Asia, spirituality in Asia, Science in Europe and practical
organisation in
v Education is the experience
of the mind even as work is the experience of the body. The experience of the
vital is to release energy, especially by the action of the mind on the body.
v What is experience,
especially in the Mind?
v To observe the surroundings
and adjust one's behaviour is experience.
v Mind observes the
environment by the senses.
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The senses
carry sense impressions of the outside to the mind.
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A vitalised
mind accepts the impressions as facts.
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Mentalised mind
separates these impressions and extracts the pure facts out of it which are
organised by the brain into opinions or decisions.
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Opinion is
personal. Idea is impersonal.
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Pure mind
arrives at impersonal ideas from the external experience of the outgoing mind,
going out through senses.
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It is
evident that this mental experience is entirely one's own, an inner process, exclusively
personal.
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If the above
description is true, it amounts to saying that no one else has any role in
one's education whether it is the teacher or parent.
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The best form
of education provides the child a conducive climate where he can learn on
his own.
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There is more.
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The freedom the
school provides unleashes the mental curiosity of the child. The wealth of
material put at his disposal is there for him to draw from. We see faster and
better progress.
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As the mind is
located in the body, energised by the vital, human mind is the last rung of
five levels of Pure Mind, divided into two categories of Supermind and
Spiritualised mind.
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The Silence of
the Muni, the drishti of the Rishi, the intuition of the yogi and the knowledge
of the gods form the four grades of the spiritual mind.
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Some silent
children do very well. It is a natural endowment. Nascent learning releases
vast energies that are boisterous. Knowledge in the mind of things learnt long
ago falls silent and exhibits no more energy than to be. Also we see
children of wider mental capacity absorbing knowledge silently. Mind widens
by its perspective. The wider the perspective, the more quiet the mind
becomes. Here emerges a method or a process to be worked out either for one
child or a class, while the principle remains the same. If we widen the
perspective, the child will move into Silence. There are physical perspectives
of facts, vital perspectives of interest, mental perspectives of comprehension.
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Assuming that a
child largely moved into the Silence of the Higher mind, he is meant for tapas.
We retain the child for education which, being a lower plane yields far greater
results. The Silent mind UNDERSTANDS by NOT thinking. To think is to be
in mind. As physical work pushes the comprehension to the body, THINKING retains comprehension in
the mind. Hence the phrase 'sleep over it'. Fullest mental comprehension of
an idea gives rise to the FORM of that idea in the subtle spiritual plane When it moves into the
Illumined Mind of the Rishi who sees the idea as a vision. As mind uses
thinking for understanding, the Muni uses Silence for understanding while the
Rishi uses light.
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These
thinking, Silence, light are media for understanding. The yogi dispenses with
the media and has direct perception of the objective which is Intuition.
Reliance on the medium strengthens it. Non-reliance on the medium weans man
away from it. This is achieved by concentration, mantra, Japa.
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Intuition is a vast
field, as vast as the universe and comprises of all the subjects of the world.
It reveals to any faculty in us that is well-developed, to Ramanujam in
mathematics, to Beethoven in music, etc. while it is comprehensive.
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Intuition
itself is of various grades. It has four powers -- suggestion, discrimination,
inspiration and revelation.
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By the
suggestion of the atmosphere personified by the teacher if the pupil develops
subtle spiritual discrimination, he will soon find himself inspired. It can
lead to revelation.
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The tradition
is religious, i.e. one man's revelations are adored and followed by the many.
Sri Aurobindo asks for the spiritual, which means each discovering his own
spirit. In this article I speak of a spiritual method for education. Now,
how to use the spiritual force in the field of education?
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The learner
is raised from the human mind to the intuitive mind.
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Methods can be in grades. There is a highest method
available for us.
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Supermind lies
above the Overmind.
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Chit
Consciousness is the next higher layer.
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Chit gives out
Shakti Consciousness Force to create the world.
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The Divine
Mother is born here, known as Lokamatha.
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The lokamatha
we know of is the one of Mind; Sri Aurobindo's is of the Supermind, the
difference being the chief of a part and that of the whole.
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'The Mother' describes HER who was with us until 1973.
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To KNOW Her as Sri Aurobindo has
described is to fully know Her.
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After all, one knows
a thing in terms of what he already knows to depict the new in terms of the
old.
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To give up what
we know and what we are, is to decondition ourselves into a second childhood.
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To know HER brings us into Her
atmosphere.
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Devotees have
their prayers answered.
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It means She is
effective in the material physical plane.
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She can be
effective in the mental plane and we can raise it gradually till we reach
Intuition.
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To act here is
a labour of love.
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One's own
swabhava and the swabhava of the child are the greatest barriers.
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Mother, when let in, breaks all icons.
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