No.48.
Freedom has its versions in all
the four planes, with ascent and in the descent,
No.49. So, we
have to define freedom in eight different ways.
·
We know in
the ascent man rises from the physical to the Supermind via vital and mental.
·
In the
mental range, there are four levels.
·
In the
descent, it is the Supramental emerging at each of these levels.
·
Also, as
soon as Man rises to the next level that level partially descends on the
previous level.
·
For
evolution, that descent should saturate the previous level by its energy.
·
Every human
endowment, therefore, will have infinite versions.
·
We
particularly consider 12 aspects in 8 planes fully explained under No. each subdivided into two and considered into
its negative and positive aspects.
·
That makes
for 384 versions.
·
Here, we
can give only indicative examples.
·
Mind in the
ascent acts as social mind, inhibited by psychological tendencies.
·
It is also
circumscribed by the social and individual consciousness.
·
One can
take any idea and try to consider it in this light.
·
There are
ideas mind is sensitive about which it cannot allow for a moment.
·
Imagine the freedom of the Mind and see how we are
encased psychologically.
·
One who can
do so can see what RATIONALITY is, how frightening it is even in contemplation.
·
So far such
an individual has not emerged in the world among human beings.
·
Imagine the
same freedom in the descent.
·
It means
the spiritual emergence in the mind.
·
It is
called the psychic being.
·
Suppose
that happens one will not be in the human surface mind, or the Rishi’s inner
mind.
·
He would
have crossed there and reached the subliminal mind.
·
The
subliminal is universal.
·
As it is
the meeting point of the Superconscient and the subconscient it can either be
dark or bright.
·
Neither
will help us.
·
We have to
remain in darkness and see the seed of light inside the darkness.
·
It is
called the integration of the subconscient and superconscient.
·
The
integration must be done in the individual SOUL.
·
After such
integration, it has to ascend to the Eternal.
·
This is
done by shedding the 7 ignorances one by one.
·
The Spirit
begins to evolve only when all the 7 ignorances are shed.
·
At that
point the Mental Psychic emerges.
·
It has the
Supramental Light, not power.
·
It is
always turned to the Divine.
·
Its
remembrance of the Divine is constant.
·
It has no
power, as it is in the Mind.
·
The power
is in the physical, not in the Mind.
·
By the time
the mental psychic develops into the physical psychic, it also rises through
the spiritual range to reach the Supermind.
·
At that stage,
it is Ishwara or the Supramental Being.
·
Opinions,
attitudes, motives, preferences, all the vitiating factors of the vital and
physical DENY the mind this FREEDOM.
·
Still, as a
one time experiment, one can discipline himself to enjoy this Freedom in the
ascent.
·
From that
poise, calling Mother brings the descent.
·
When the
call is answered, it is no longer revelation, but the FULL knowledge of the
Supermind.
·
Imagine
what software will be in use 50 years hence.
·
If you want
to have a taste of it, compare our present software with that of 1950.
·
What we
call Genius is intuition in one of the million facets of life.
·
Genius
belongs to the Intuitive Mind.
·
Can one
develop the genius to stumble upon the software in education in 2050.
·
I know one
who has all these potentials to create the software that can be used 50 years
hence.
·
He does so
many things like that, but he is not aware of that potential in him.
·
Should one
think of education in its evolutionary context and SEE all facets of education
mankind will use 50 years hence, this man can make a software of it.
·
It is the
result of FREEDOM in the plane of MIND during the descent.
·
The world
has not produced a multiple genius yet.
·
Teaching
becomes a distant, remote, insignificant secondary aspect in the context of education.
·
If we can,
with understanding and appreciation, move AWAY from teaching to education and
take one concrete step in this direction, the floodgates of higher knowledge
will be open when that step becomes an example of Perfect Perfection.
·
To describe
freedom in all the levels is not now necessary or not possible as the field is
infinite and the explanation will enter into the field of nebulous non-existent
theory.
50. As each plane
has every other plane in it ( for example,
the physical plane has the vital, mental in it) freedom, considered this
way has 24 versions.
·
A child
today will not be allowed to stand or walk and eat its breakfast. She will be asked to sit in one place, eat
the food, wash the hands and mouth and wipe them properly.
·
This is the
duty of the parents, failing which, the child will become a boor.
·
It is
obvious that the discipline is necessary.
·
How is it
enforced? Through threats, violence,
force, punishment, refusal of this or that,
all vital physical methods.
·
In
exceptionally cultured ancient families of natural goodness who cannot shout at
a child, one can see the child acquiring the same desired discipline WITHOUT
one harsh word.
·
One is
undesirable, the other highly desirable, but both are conditionings useless for
purposes of higher education. They are
directly obstacles to it.
·
How is a
child then to fit into the society? The
answer is -- ‘NOT necessary’.
·
No parent
in his sense can conceive of his child not fitting into the society.
·
If
anything, the child is a society by itself and others should fit into the
child’s society.
·
These are
all not only high concepts of human progress, but blatantly impossible and
highly undesirable in today’s context, social, psychological or even
spiritual. The Spirit of the Rishis has
become a childish play even as the bullock cart with silver trappings.
·
Before we
go into the theory of it and consider what little is practicable in our present
day schools, we must have a clear conception of the planes, their levels, their
parts and the English word that denotes it. Such words must be known not in
their linguistic, etymological, lexicography usage. ONE
needs to know those words RIGHTLY in the context of education.
1 2 3
Real – idea High poetry Decision
Mental
---------------
---------------
-----------------
Concept Sentimentalism determination
4
5
6
Insight Pure idealistic passionate adoration
heroism
Vital
-----------
----------------------
--------------------------
Cunning Heroism touched passionate physical
With cunning
attachment.
7 8 9
Physical
skill Rural poet Moving material
Folk tales
Physical
----------------------
----------------------
------------------------
Physical capacity Physical emotion Live non-moving
Matter.
·
These
qualities are always found mixed but maintain their individuality.
·
No.7 and
No.3 ; No.4 and
No.7; No.2 and
No.5 ; No.8 and
No.6 are directly related.
·
No.1 is
pure mind and stands aloof ; so also No.9
as they are two extremes. No.1
relates to Higher mind ; No.9 relates to
the Inconscient.
51. What is true of freedom is true of every other human
trait which we can limit to a dozen or more.
·
The number
of human traits in legion, we shall look at a dozen of them. Opinion, attitude, stubbornness, faith,
superstition, preferences, demand, desire, hostility, flexibility, generosity,
comparison etc.
·
It is
obvious that these words mean different things to different people and vary
according to the land, spare, event known as context.
·
What then
is EDUCATION in all the contexts?
·
To know
that is to know the wisdom of the world.
·
We restrict
the meaning of the word education to the mind and to the selection of the
teacher to the pupil inside the class within the context of a lesson.
·
Whatever we
are able to do in our schools, it is better to know all about education.
·
The Life
Divine is a book of philosophy that
describes the creation as the involution of God and His evolution.
·
Whatever He
has written there is a fact of His own spiritual experience, not an
intellectual argument valid or invalid in itself.
·
Of course,
He had ONE idea or vision or Experience, which He has expressed in 56 chapters.
·
The Book is
split into two books and the second book is divided into two parts.
·
The first
book is of creation, the second book is on evolution.
·
The first
part of the second book speaks of ignorance becoming knowledge.
·
The second
part describes Spiritual evolution.
·
In it HE
used plenty of Sanskrit words wherever the current meaning tallies with His own
idea.
·
His whole
philosophy is new and therefore He is compelled to employ new terms.
·
Such terms
are non-existent in Sanskrit as His philosophy goes beyond the Tradition.
·
English is
neither a spiritual language nor a classical one. It was developed by trade and parliamentary
democracy.
·
To write a
new philosophy naturally demands new terminology.
·
The only
language He knew was English. It never
admits of it.
·
Like the
princess who fell in love with the handsome face of a shepherd and made a
Kalidasa out of him, Sri Aurobindo has
taken infinite pains to employ a substandard language for any purpose and tried
to express a philosophy that transcends the experience of humanity.
·
The
simplest example one can easily follow is the word Silence.
·
In English
Silence means absence of noise. In
Sanskrit Silence mounam means absence of thought. To use the word silence in the sense of
absence of thought, any Englishmen will feel
not only absurd, but a violence of her idiom.
·
In Sanskrit
the word mounam has a certain amplitude. Sri Aurobindo has to necessarily go beyond it.
·
Silence is
there when we do not speak. It is the
silence of speech.
·
When we do
not think, a silence arises which is far more powerful; we are tempted to call
it mental silence but it won’t be exact as mind has innumerable faculties –
imagination, decision, etc. – behind each of which there is an appropriate
silence.
·
When all
these mental faculties cease to function, the Silence that arises can be called
mental Silence.
·
As there is
a Silence behind thought, there is a Silence behind feelings.
·
The silence
behind acts is more powerful and He says it sustains activity.
·
·
Equally
there is a Silence behind Ananda, Consciousness and Existence.
·
He calls
that Silence behind Silence.*
·
Even that
silence cannot be attributed to Brahman, as it is featureless.
·
Still,
there is a beyond which is His own yogic territory.
·
When the Infinite,
Eternal Brahman chooses to express Itself through Mind, Life and Matter and
their activities, the Silence that sustains that creation and evolution remains
undisturbed.
·
We
certainly cannot call it Silence in the other sense.
·
For want of
a better word or any word, He resorts to original creation and says it is the
Silence behind Silence, far richer and more integrated than the stage to which*
we gave the name.
·
Intuition,
insight, consciousness are very important words in His vocabulary. Supermind is His key word. He is not satisfied with any of them.
·
Often He
offers his own definition to words like Logic and Reason and divides them into
higher and lower. E.g. He calls His
logic the logic of the infinite.
·
Before
trying to read the book, it will be well to know what HE exactly means by each
word HE employs.
·
That is
possible only after half a dozen readings of the book.
·
He
consciously avoids, wherever necessary, the Sanskrit word lest it should mean
something else – the traditional meaning.
·
Jivatma in the tradition is a limited expression. To denote what HE means, HE avoids Jivatma
mostly and employs the word individual.
·
One of the
important messages of the Book is the Process of Creation.
·
Especially
for education, it is important to know this.
·
Brahman
comes into Existence. It becomes
conscious and senses its being conscious.
It looks at itself subjectively and becomes the spirit. It looks at itself objectively and becomes
Truth without losing its basic unity.
·
Time is
created when the spirit looks at itself.
Space is created when the spirit look at its movements.
·
The plane
of Supermind is created when the objective state of the spirit – Truth –
relates itself to the objective state of consciousness – knowledge. It is
called the plane of Truth – Consciousness or Supermind.
·
In the
plane of Time apart from Time and Timelessness He introduced a further concept
where they co-exist and called it Simultaneous Integrality of Time–eternity and
Timeless eternity.
·
To collect
his terminology and understand it as He intended – not what the tradition meant
– is a full scale study by itself.
·
Going
beyond words, we come to concepts.
·
The most
characteristic of those concepts is Freedom when He says that Freedom is the
final law and last consummation, giving it the meaning that Freedom is complete
only when it is free to lose itself.
·
Every
concept of His has this dimension and every term of his repeats it.
·
One may ask
what all this has to do with education?
·
Education
is the yoga of the society.
·
Presently
schools offer social education so that children may become good citizens.
·
Genius is
one who rejects the school and seeks education on his own.
·
It may be
called individual education, mental education or psychological education, none
of which will precisely reflect what we mean.
·
I have
called Education the experience of the Mind.
·
The
experience is decided by the experiencer.
·
Experience
is individual; but the experiencer is determined by the collective.
·
There is NO
question of the individual separating himself from the collective. All that he can do is to have an evolutionary
relation with the collective.
·
The
experiencer is the “ collective individual”, meaning what the collective has
permitted in the individual as his maximum reach.
·
To do yoga,
to study The Life Divine, etc. are problems I never touch upon in my
writings.
·
My view is
education can be best understood if one understands yoga as described by HIM.
·
As a
teacher or even as an educationist one has to act in a school or in the field
of education.
·
Action
means action of the teacher on the student in the context of education at a
given moment of teaching a lesson.
·
Actions are
judged by results.
·
An
understanding of yoga says the child and the teacher are finite out of which
the infinite knowledge emerges.
·
Surely we
can turn out better students from our schools.
·
Can they be
better than the best schools produce?
·
If we can
do so, it will be the minimum.
·
What then
is the maximum?
·
The maximum
is decided by the maximum receptivity of the child and the maximum opportunity
given by the school.
·
Socially my
aim is to produce a boy at the age of 18 or 20 with the potential maturity
of one at the ripe old age.
·
It is an
abridgement of Time apparently, but in fact it is hastening the ripeness of
experience -- maturity.
·
No school
that does not fully appreciate the evolutionary role of the computer can ever
abridge the Time spoken of above.
·
Maturity,
ripeness are not aspects that can be hastened, but that which enables them – Freedom,
awareness, choice, direction, better still self-direction, etc. – can be given
to the maximum possible extent.
·
The CHOICE
is made by the child.
·
Is there a
way to help the child make the right choice?
·
It is to
interfere and spoil the scope of the choice, making it into conditioning.
·
The
progress the teacher has made offers a scope for the child to receive what
direction it may choose.
·
Direction
is in place to prevent degeneration and dissipation.
·
It is our
conception that knowledge is in books.
·
It is not a
wholly wrong conception.
·
Knowledge
lies in life more than in books.
·
Real
knowledge lies inside more than in life.
·
Going
inside will tempt the child to go more inside seeking moksha.
·
Integration
of the outer with the inner is one essential part of education.
·
To be able
to go inside and discover the Truth first inside is the first step of
education.
·
To discover
that inner Truth in outer experience is Education par excellence.
·
All of us
do it in learning a language. We must do
so in learning life.
·
Our highest
aim is to learn the Spirit in Life.
52. Human life as we witness it, is an interplay of
forces.
·
Creation,
as we are repeatedly saying, is for seeking delight.
·
The delight
issues out of the Brahman hidden into itself and emerging.
·
The aim is
explained as a play of consciousness with consciousness being with being and
delight with delight.
·
This play
demands separation.
·
But the
basic unity is indestructible.
·
In the
inversion created by involution, knowledge converts into ignorance.
·
To know the
play of the forces in the human world it is necessary to know what happens in
the cosmos.
·
What
happens here in our world is, after all, an inversion of the process of
creation.
·
In the
beginning is the self-conscious unity of Being.
·
For the
sake of the play, it becomes Sachchidananda.
·
Supermind
is the nature of Sachchidananda – its objective status.
·
The
Self-Conscious Being presents itself as Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara with their
corresponding powers of Maya, Prakriti, Shakti.
·
Maya
conceptively creates while preserving the original oneness.
·
Prakriti
dynamically executes as Purusha stands aloof.
·
Shakti
conceptively creates and dynamically executes as Ishwara here is a part of Shakti,
by surrendering to it.
·
Simultaneously
the self-conscious Being divides itself subjectively as Spirit and objectively
as Truth. The objective status of consciousness is knowledge.
·
The action
of Brahma, Purusha, and Ishwara through Maya, Prakriti, and Shakti takes place
in the plane of Supermind which is the objective status of Sachchidananda.
·
Supermind
is called the plane of Truth-Conscious.
·
It is here
the ONE becomes the Many without actual separation, a differentiation without
distinction.
·
In our lower
world, Ego creates the separation converting the play for enjoyment into a
struggle for survival.
·
If the
self-conscious Being splits itself into Spirit and Truth subjectively, the
spirit by a similar process creates subjective Time and objective space.
·
Further,
the plane of Time splits into Time and Timelessness.
·
This is the
original division, between which the instrument of Mind is born.
·
Mind, by
definition, is an instrument of division.
·
But unity
and oneness being the real basis, Mind splits only the Force, not the Being.
The division meets with the absolute resistance at the level of substance,
resulting in atomic existence.
·
The ego,
the result of division, acquires a mental point of view, a life point of view,
and considers itself as a separate entity at the physical level.
·
Evolution
restores the division and aggregation to its original unity in Matter.
·
As unity is
the basic principle of Being, not division, when the division proceeds in the
consciousness, it comes to a dead stop when it meets with the substance.
·
The process
of division is infinite. Therefore, it
cannot stop. When further division is not possible, aggregation of divided
units begins.
·
Evolution
is to discover Sachchidananda in Matter, where the fleeting Ananda of Cosmos is
given permanency in the dense Matter below.
·
For one who
aspires for spiritual life, this is the only view.
·
In simple
words, the first step in divine living is conversion of Selfishness into
Self-giving to the universal life.
·
This is
exalted philosophy.
·
All that we
live today once started as exalted philosophy.
·
We have to
accept the new philosophy and create new attitudes that will express the new consciousness. That is our work in the school.
·
No work of
ours misses our attitude and motive behind that represent our old philosophy
of « Moksha which is seeking selfish salvation.
·
The new
salvation we seek is for the collective, not for the individual.
·
This we do
by the individual becoming the Eternal.
·
In
practice, this is selfishness becoming Self-giving on a universal scale.
·
In a
process of change – E.g. constitution, law, rule, procedure, custom, usage –
there are several stages, each insignificant change being exceedingly
important.
·
The new
syllabus we have to create must be on this basis.
53. In the individual, it becomes unique.
·
The
infinite in creation becomes the infinitesimal.
·
At that
stage, it becomes unique.
·
Except at
that stage everything belongs to a type big or small.
·
Uniqueness
enables creation to reach perfection.
·
Fingerprint
experts, handwriting experts, astrologers, and philosophers know this.
·
The Buddha
says the river is never the same from
moment to moment.
·
That
teacher who sees this uniqueness in a child will have discovered the potential
genius of human Mind.
·
Spiritually
all men and materials are equal.
·
We try our
best to condition ourselves and our children to a type.
·
As one who
has left any college course in the middle is not entitled to the degrees, Man
is not entitled to his infinity until he reaches his uniqueness at the level of
the infinitesimal.
·
One sees
the significance of perfection there.
·
When Sri
Aurobindo walked for ten hours a day to and fro a distance of 100 yards, he put
a clock at 4 points. He took care to walk the same distance in the same
time. It is one of the aspects of
Supramental perfection.
·
Punctuality
is Perfection in Time. Hence its value.
·
In rearing
a child, we are totally unconscious as we are so.
·
When we see
a film on the TV. or read a newspaper, it never occurs to us for a moment how
much care has gone into the production of the film or labour in getting a paper
printed. If we try, we will meet with a
mental blank. A film producer or a
printer in the press cannot afford to be so.
To him every detail matters because he knows all that has gone into
it. We must know a child like that.
·
A child is
a miniature of a man and a man is that of the universe.
·
To know a
child fully means to know the universal Wisdom.
·
The point
above is one essential point of that fabric.
·
Overmind
does it.
·
Overmind is
a deputy to the Supermind in the lower hemisphere.
·
When the
Overmind takes a subject, it does not stop until it reaches the infinitesimal,
as we have seen in the formation of Matter, its atomic existence, the physical
ego.
·
The mental
strength of the Indians is to go to the first principle. It emanates from the Overmind.
·
The role of
Overmind is to take one infinite possibility and develop it to its exhaustion.
54. In the act, it
becomes unique.
·
An act is
inanimate.
·
It can be
animate when done by a person.
·
Still, the
act has its own existence.
·
An ACT is
the unit of the universe.
·
In the
individual, an act is given the energy of his life.
·
An act is a
universe by itself.
·
An act is
to life what an atom is to Matter.
·
The point
at which it becomes unique is the natural terminus of involution.
·
It is the
point at which involution naturally can reverse itself into evolution.
·
Supramental
Consciousness has the power to reverse the involution into evolution at any
stage.
·
Uniqueness is
the turning point of natural evolution – becoming.
·
When the
Being is awake, it can change the course, reverse it, as it chooses.
·
That is
spiritual awakening.
·
The world
evolved from agriculture to modern society via manufacturing.
·
As the
centuries or decades pass, the Mind awakens.
·
It hastens
the change.
·
Now that
the service sector dominates and society has given a tool of technology –
computer –
·
Rural areas
can generate their own service sector and agriculture can be avoided to a great
extent.
·
Before
printing came in
·
Children
had to memorise the textbooks.
·
It is no
longer necessary.
·
All
civilised progress is such.
·
Suppose one
wants to analyse an act, he needs to know the process of creation.
·
In Creation
Brahman becomes the Self-Conscious Being, Sat Purusha.
·
The
Self-conscious being acquires three consecutive states of Brahman, Purusha,
Ishwara.
·
Maya,
Prakriti, Shakti are their powers.
·
What Maya
conceives, Prakriti executes.
·
Shakti does
both, i.e. conceives and executes.
·
It is done
in the Supramental plane which is the objectivised status of Sat.
·
In
addition, Sat creates Spirit and Truth by subjective, objective processes.
·
Spirit
again by a subjective–objective process creates Time and Space.
·
So far, it
is creation in the cosmos.
·
Only when
Time splits into Time and Timelessness is Mind created.
·
Mind
creates Life and Matter.
·
One can see
the ACT at every stage.
·
Maya, in
creating the Many out of the ONE, preserves the oneness.
·
The Mystery
lies in that preservation.
·
Minus the
Mystery, we are finite; with the knowledge of the Mystery we are infinite.
55. Uniqueness has its versions in the
individual, the act, the time, the space, the relationship etc, etc. [review point]
·
In theory,
everything is unique.
·
Before
things become unique, they belong to several levels of types.
·
We know the
fingerprint is unique.
·
All men
have fingerprints.
·
From that
generality, unique prints develop.
·
Going behind,
we can say all men have five fingers, two hands, similar bodies, etc.
·
Man belongs
to a type, his parts of the body to another level of a type, etc.
·
Our
interest develops around the process of the development of uniqueness out of a
type. And why should that development
take place?
·
Lila is a
play. The greater the variety, the
greater the delight.
·
Uniqueness
offers the greatest possible delight.
·
Music rises
to the climax when the uniqueness of the singer, that of the song, and that of
the tune synchronise.
·
Earlier we
said teaching is at its best when it becomes learning. At that point, the uniqueness of the teacher
meets in harmony that of the pupil, time, subject, context and every other
conceivable thing. The personal
becomes impersonal, the individual Universal, lower life higher life.
·
Sri
Aurobindo calls it the Virgin moment.
·
The latest
ideal in the West for fifty or a hundred years is “ I want to be myself”.
·
If only
means man wants to discover his unique quality.
·
If we take
one step away from the society – the crowd – the difference is great.
·
A teacher
who knows many pupils’ interests sometimes directs his teaching in such a way
that it touches the interest of several pupils.
At that moment, she is at her best.
·
There are
hundreds of further steps.
·
Scope for
improvement is infinite.
·
The
essential work lies in understanding the unique quality of each.
·
It comes
from the other man’s point of view, identifying with him.
·
Moksha is
our spirit dissolving in the spirit of the universe.
·
The MARVEL
He speaks of is Brahman emerging out of the Uniqueness of everything – the
infinite aspects – on earth.
·
In our
life, a little of this emerges as attention, interest, attachment.
·
It is a
FULL study to take out an exhaustive list of such points.
·
Only when
you know the uniqueness of things can we best correlate each item to the other
– as Aruna explained the word Salt can be related to various subjects.
56 . Hence,
Uniqueness becomes the infinitesimal
·
Mostly
Uniqueness goes with perfection at some level.
·
What the
Supermind achieves in Knowledge, Overmind achieves in Ignorance.
·
That occurs
in Matter.
·
Mind
divides the material force till it reaches the atomic existence.
·
When
division ends, aggregation begins.
·
Aggregation
achieves FORM.
·
One way of
expressing the aim of creation is to arrive at perfect form.
·
When form
becomes perfect, force again becomes consciousness expressing delight.
·
Perfect
form, end of involution, uniqueness, Delight emerging in Matter,
Self-discovery, evolutionary aim, knowledge emerging out of ignorance are
various ways of expressing the Divine intention.
·
The
infinite does not emerge out of the finite till it becomes the infinitesimal.
·
Uniqueness
can also be expressed as the process of the formation of the seven ignorances.
·
As the
Spiritual substance descends to become material substance, the one infinite
becomes the unique infinitesimal.
·
To be aware
of another person’s unique nature is almost to know where his divinity emerges.
·
The path of
the infinite to the infinitesimal is parallel to the other eleven aspects of
the Spirit becoming their opposites.
·
It is a
good exercise for the intellect to trace them on their paths.
·
When the
uniqueness is recognised and is allowed to grow on its own path,
-
the ugly
duckling becomes the swan
-
the idiot becomes
the genius
-
a mere
nobody becomes a celebrity.
-
shivering
fear changes into undaunted courage.
-
attention
to details achieves greatness to man.
-
He who
reacts from the nerves begins to speak from the mind.
-
Chronic
disease-ridden person becomes a picture of health.
-
He is on
the border of Becoming changing into Being.
·
Search for
uniqueness, is search for excellence.
·
Uniqueness
goes with high character.
·
Uniqueness
gives unique strength.
·
It is a
point where the Inconscient becomes super conscient.
·
At that point,
the gross crosses into the subtle.
·
It is the
same point where the objectless Ananda tries to express itself in the objects.
·
Uniqueness
is the gateway for the infinitesimal to realise its own original infinity.
·
Guru-shishya,
husband-wife , intimate friendship, professional-client relationships are
fertile areas for uniqueness to emerge.
·
In a class,
it is eminently possible.
·
Emerging
uniqueness can be an iconoclast and abolish all forms of established authority.
57. Therefore, the Infinite is in the finite.
·
Suppose the
Man in 1500 A.D or 500 A.D had been told that all the modern conveniences we
now have were in his own Mind or even brain, it would have been unbelievable.
·
Can we
speak to anyone today that the Love of Jesus, compassion of Buddha, the powers
of Lord Krishna, all that we have heard of paradise are INSIDE us, are in our
own Souls and Minds?
·
The world
we have now around us is created by our own Minds.
·
The Earthly
·
Sri
Aurobindo went to a Kali temple and Kali emerged out of the idol. At least a few hundred devotees have seen The
Mother and Sri Aurobindo live in their photographs.
·
Can we tell
any teacher or parent that he never understood the genius he was, but now at
least he must be able to see that Genius in his child? But it is true.
·
It requires
another dimension of Vision.
·
The world
is long used to the idea that people are poor, ignorant, dirty and only the
gifted few have brains, talents and affluence.
All our education has not taken us out of that superstition. We are out and out physical. These are superstitions of the physical
existence.
·
Till today,
in spite of the galaxy of intellectuals the world has produced in hundreds, if
not thousands, NOT one rational man has been born anywhere.
·
Sri
Aurobindo saw the imminent possibility of the advent of the Supramental Being
even before the birth of a rational mind.
It is not a mental or physical possibility. It is a Supramental possibility.
·
All of us
who are ardent devotees of Sri Aurobindo do believe in His prophesy, but want
it in our own social conditions and mental beliefs. Is it rational?
·
A
Supramental possibility demands the Supramental conditions and circumstances is
a rational statement.
·
How many of
us will be able to accept it and act on it?
·
To them one
can say that the Infinite is in the finite.
·
In practice
it means,
- any child can become a genius.
- anyone can earn any amount of MONEY.
- anyone can
solve all the problems of the world.
- Romance can
be Eternal.
- Anyone can
do anything he chooses to secure.
-
- Every
man on earth can live a life of the soul, provided he is dedicated to
RATIONALITY, Truthfulness, acts on Faith and not on mental beliefs, comes
forward to shed all his superstitions – total deconditioning of the mind.
58. Education reaches its final perfection when the
environment – teachers and parents – recognises the uniqueness of the
infinitesimal and understands it as the tip of the emerging Infinity.
·
Education,
in the original sense, is the experience of the mind on its own curiosity.
·
That way
mind is not conditioned but that education has no power to act on its own. It guides.
·
A conditioned
mind generates a conditioned response which can never be accomplishment in the
world, much less in the mind.
·
A child
lives mostly in the environment of the parents and teachers. Such a living can be either positive or
negative.
·
In either
case, it is not FREEDOM.
·
Mind learns
only in freedom. It is only then it
becomes education.
·
Such an
education even in freedom can be an amorphous, unorganised aggregate or
conglomerate or a type of pure chaos.
·
Even such
an education needs organisation for the idea to mature into a concept.
·
The concept
rises as impersonal and matures into the personal.
·
Unless it
is organised it will be an enlightened state of chaos.
·
That
organisation has two main characteristics.
·
One is
uniqueness.
·
The other
is its character of being infinitesimal.
·
That brings
us to the border where the infinitesimal crosses over to its original
intensity.
·
In Man or
in the child, i.e. in swabhava, that point is seen as sensitivity.
·
It is seen
as mental sensitivity, vital sensitivity and physical sensitivity.
·
Each
sensitivity exists in the consciousness and substance of that plane.
·
For yoga,
one has to cross or overcome the physical sensitivity of its substance. We see it in Siruthonder.
·
For
spiritual opulence to enter into our life, I wish one overcomes mental
sensitivity in the mental substance.
·
One who
overcomes mental sensitivity in the mental consciousness is a rational man.
·
In a class,
at least we must train our teachers to overcome the mental sensitivity in the
mental consciousness with respect to the behaviour of the child.
·
If this
condition is fulfilled, the boy at 15 can have the maturity of 60 years.
·
That
potential will become actual if the sensitivity moves from consciousness to the
substance in the mind.
·
It is
necessary that the teachers should be one step ahead.
·
At this
point one can see the value of the statement, “Theoretical clarity is practical
effectivity”.
·
That, I
say, is the tip of an iceberg.
59. A school that recognises this aspect and performs at its
best in this direction is an ideal school.
·
Our idea of
a school is it is a place where one learns the 3 R’s.
·
A better
idea is a school gives in 15 years the wisdom of ages.
·
A school is
a place where the student has to receive knowledge.
·
A school is
expected to build the character of the pupil.
·
A school
does to children what the parents cannot do.
·
A school,
in a smaller view, gets one a degree or certificate.
·
One goes to
school so that he may be employable by the society.
·
All the
theories of education, and the researches in education are mostly or have fully
tended towards one or other above ideas.
·
So, an
ideal school is one which accomplishes this feat efficiently and ideally.
·
As years
pass, the society moves from the physical to the mental.
·
So the cruel
punishments of the physical phase are slowly replaced by a humane approach
that, after all, the child is not a mere physical being.
·
Corporal
punishment tries to teach the mind through the cruel sensations of the body.
·
In
·
In the West
where thinking is insisted upon as a means of understanding, again the
physicality remains in the shape experimental confirmation, empirical facts,
relying on the sense-perceptible universe, thus centring Man in his physical
Mind.
·
It is not
realised that the child can learn better all by itself and schools only demand
of the child to conform to social superstitions.
·
No river
needs direction in its flow. Any
direction is an interference with its flow and a diversion of its waters. No child needs any direction for its
education. The family and school can
only warp or blunt its native capacity to learn.
·
I am
limiting myself to mental education and do not very much stray into the regions
of the Spirit.
·
Nowhere is
Education considered as the Experience of the Mind, as the world has not
defined to itself what Mind is.
·
Therefore,
we cannot expect any school to know the immense value of Freedom. They, at best, can only discipline.
·
Discipline,
at its very best, is destructive of human personality which is to receive
Education ultimately.
·
Nor have
the intellectuals of the world given us a complete definition of Personality.
·
To create an
ideal school, it is essential to understand three important components – Mind,
Organisation and Education.
·
By
organisation I mean here the capacity of the mind to organise its ideas into a
universal concept.
60. An ideal school is a school without being a school.
·
An ideal is
defined as a state devoid of imperfection.
·
It may be
true, but it much more than that.
·
An ideal
condition may be defined as one where most could be made out of the
opportunities that present themselves.
·
Sri
Aurobindo has described it in various forms all of which are relevant to us.
·
But, we
will be within our rights, when we describe an ideal organisation as one which
is capable of creating its own opportunities for maximum possible growth.
·
Sri
Aurobindo’s ideal conditions are:
-
Where the
Matter is Spirit
-
When the
Timeless moves into the plane of Time to create an integrality of both the
eternities.
-
It is a
condition when the Individual discovers the Universal and the Transcendent
within himself.
-
Where man
sees the uselessness or egoism of serving MAN and switches over to serving the
Divine. It is a kind of perversion.
-
Where one
sees the equality of Spirit in all men and all inanimate objects.
-
Where
contradictions are complements.
-
Where the
subconscient unites with the Superconscient in the individual.
-
Where no
Evil exists.
·
Should we
discover the truth of all these statements and all the others like this in a
School, obviously
-
it ceases
to be a school as we now know it.
-
This is
only a negative progress.
-
Positively the
ideal school should present the students the most conducive conditions where
their own minds would know how to deal with their social, mental environment
on their own -- by the mental curiosity generated inside themselves.
-
There is
not enough material in print that can enter such a mind except as FACTS of
various descriptions.
-
The ruling
ideas of the world, maybe 10 or 15 in all, will be OBVIOUS to him at a very
early age, of say ten or even earlier.
-
He won’t
make great progress in his mind, if he succeeds in conceptualising one of them
or all of them, as the moment his mind is FREE, all such ideas will be
self-evident to him. Nor will he make
progress in the best sense of the word, if he does so as a service to humanity. By then, he would have outgrown that
superstition which is a psychological superstition which arises out of
psychological ignorance – not knowing the existence of subtle and occult
worlds.
61. It means a school becomes a real school when it is a
family and the society, besides being a school.
·
A school
that can act as a family is certainly great.
·
Schools are
suppose to give a mental maturity which will enable the student to face the
challenges of the society into which he will enter.
·
A school is
not equipped to offer a pupil the challenging circumstances society will offer
him: nor is the pupil old enough while in the school to comprehend the
challenges, if offered.
·
How can the
teacher replace the family?
·
We know
many children receive the affection from the teacher which he misses from his
parents.
·
By the same
principle at higher levels the school can play the role of the family; and
further can give him the attention that is affection which few families now
offer to their children.
·
A family
mainly takes care of the child’s health and sees to it that he fits into the
society by his attitudes.
·
A school
can give several times more valuable information to the child than the parents
can.
·
More than
information, in matters of hygiene and sanitation he can certainly be better
informed at school.
·
A family
usually makes the child dependent on medicine.
·
A school
can disabuse his mind on that score.
·
At school
the boy can hear, if not learn, about the curing powers of the body which he
will never hear at home.
·
All the
challenges SOCIETY will offer him are there in potential in the school life.
·
An
observation that is a study can rearrange the life at school so that the school
becomes a miniature society.
·
Experience
teaches without exception. There is no event
in the society that cannot be discovered inside the school at least as a symbol
or devised for the benefit of the child.
·
No teacher
is now equipped for it.
·
Only when
the students of our school become teachers this is possible.
·
Children
from substandard and families can always feel the school better than their
families.
·
Should the
school replace the family and society, it will not be the school which it
is now.
·
It is very
difficult for the teacher to know the truth here.
·
Those who
are devoted to teaching and are at their best in it, will find this truth alien
to their emotions.
·
The
management must be fully convinced of its validity as a theory before it starts
practising.
·
The
teacher, the Management, even the parents may be wanting in this regard, not
the child.
·
The child
given this EDUCATION will be found to acquire the academic education as if it
is a matter of fact.
62. It is true that the child needs training until it is
weaned away.
·
As the
natural evolution progressed, the mother began to take care of its offspring
for some time.
·
Man is what
he is today because that weaning period is the longest in the human species. This is the
culmination of natural evolution, i.e.
animal evolution.
·
Sri
Aurobindo’s yoga is called Spiritual evolution.
·
Here the
process is reversed, especially in the field of education.
·
The lives
of geniuses have set an example for this phenomenon already by most of them
dropping out of the school system of education at an early date.
·
This is an
unconscious phenomenon.
·
To organise
this phenomenon consciously is the aim of the education we now propose.
·
The very
first step, however feeble, is taken already by encouraging the pupil to think
and weaning himself away from memorisation.
·
It is a
process of understanding by ACTIVE thinking.
·
Thinking,
as a process of understanding, is an activity of the Mind that is an instrument
of ignorance seeking knowledge.
·
It
accomplishes this result by confronting its opposite by a process of struggle
so that at the end it will discover the truth of unity between itself and its
opposite.
·
Silent
contemplation employs the same process but much faster. He who does so is called a Muni, one
who has attained mounam.
·
We are
familiar with the four levels of Spiritual understanding between the Mind and the
Supermind.
·
To rise in
the scale of this value, one needs to be weaned away from the society’s way of
thinking, the academic learning in the school and acquiring social and cultural
values from the family.
·
Even for
the individual to be benefitted from this weaning he needs to have good health
that can only be given by the family, the capacity to read and write which the
school gives and the social experience his career gives.
·
Minimising
this period is the aim of education.
·
Making the
training during this minimum period less rigid, authoritarian and dogmatic is
necessary.
·
How far it
is practicable in our present society is the question we now face.
·
It can only
be determined by an experiment.
·
But, the
principle remains true, whatever the social situation is.
·
Where the
line is to be drawn between what is to be taught and what is not to be taught
will emerge only in a practical situation a school offers.
·
How far we
can rise to the opportunity in the schools we now run will determine the border
line.
63. It is equally true that the child needs to be weaned
away at some point.
·
The child
in the West is taught to eat by himself from the age of 2 or even less. He is trained to do his work – bath, eating,
dressing, etc. – all by himself from such a young age. That develops
independence. Such kids do not accept
help from others. In
·
One
develops independence and individuality.
The other develops affectionate dependence. Both need not be
opposites. They can also be complementary.
·
The secret
of life, which He called mystery, lies in comprehending contradictions
as complementary.
·
Human
relationship is one of domination and submission. It evolves into neutral dependence. It can further develop into mutual
reinforcement.
·
In the
classroom, or in any relationship, instead of one dominating the other, the
GOOD should have the greater influence over the bad.
·
The
attitude of weaning away the child must dominate over the attitude of
dominating the child.
·
For the
teacher to do this, she must be in a frame of mind suitable to this attitude,
which means
-
She must
treat the child as a growing soul.
-
She must
NOT wish to shape the child’s personality but, she must be aware that the child
should himself shape his own personality.
·
In the
process of creation, the One becomes the Many without losing its oneness with
the Many. It also retains its unity with
the Many. Sri Aurobindo says the
unity is its being and the multiplicity is the power of its being. That multiplicity gives the Many its
individuality.
·
With
respect to weaning the child away from his dependence on the teacher and the
school, the same principle must be practised.
How it is to be translated into work in the classroom belongs to the
implementation part of it, which we will take up after stating the essential
points of the theory.
·
This
principle is not peculiar to the Mother.
It is as old as Thirukkural, ‘akalaathu, anukaathu theek kaaivaar
pola’. It says those who are relating to the king cannot afford to go too
near but when you are too far, you lose the benefit of the contact with the
power. It is an essential principle of
life that finds expression hundreds of times a day. When we accept a new way of life, we lose
common sense and give it the definition of Russell that common sense is the
superstition of stupid people.
·
Normally,
reasonable people will not raise the question, but in practice, we find about
everyone raising this question. Wisdom
lies in retaining the essence of the past and giving up the outer forms valid
only in the past. The question is one of
form and content not otherwise valid in any theoretical sense.
64. Determining the point of weaning away is a point of
educational maturity.
·
This is a
general point here we apply to weaning the child away.
·
This is as
old as “Thirukkural”. ‘ Peeliyai saakkakum achsirum saala mika peyin’.
·
Actually,
this is a principle of survival ever since life appeared on earth.
·
The weak
that manages to survive makes the minimum out of a situation.
·
To strong
that is greedy turns Midas.
·
The right
balance will make the maximum out of the situation.
·
To make
that maximum out of minimum energy is efficiency.
·
To
establish that efficiency permanently is organisation.
·
The animals
that act by instinct have accomplished that organisation vitally.
·
Man must
create a similar organisation in the Mind.
·
Further
heights are Spiritual and Supramental organisations.
·
The Spirit
acts by detachment. Supermind acts by
harmony while mind acts by compromise.
Life acts by overcoming conflicts.
·
There is no
point of life where this point of weaning is not there.
·
In a game,
there is a border. One should achieve
the maximum without crossing the border.
·
Though this
principle is not new, the application to a new field each time appears new.
·
Even in the
field of application, there is scope for originality -- original application.
·
The
original application of any principle to any field opens up infinite scope, as
each of the involved factors is infinite.
·
The point of
weaning away will differ according to the subject, branches of the subject, the
pupil, the pupil in different subjects, etc. etc.
·
Sound
changes into music which has different levels of perfection for each raga, each
song and each singer.
·
Overdoing
is never permissible in any field. It
spoils the whole thing. Hence the need
for rhythm and balance.
·
The rhythm,
balance, pupil, teacher, subject, etc. blend themselves sweetly.
·
Such a
sweetness reaches its perfection at some point.
And that is the point that interests us here as weaning away.
·
One
essential criticism here is the personal factor that achieves that blending.
·
Looking at
education as a minor version of yoga as well as a major version of teaching cum
learning process helps us to follow the significance of weaning.
·
The teacher
who sees the child is a potential genius can do this better.
·
To concede
this, the teacher must be unegoistic.
65. Even after weaning away, the child is capable of
wrongly organising itself outside the area of its formed talent.
·
A child is
a growing, living organism where energies are constantly at work.
·
Energies
are organised into skill, capacity, and talents where there is a central
organiser. It is conscious organisation.
·
In the
absence of conscious organisation, the energies are apparently thrown away,
wasted or dissipated. In fact, it is the
subconscious organising itself.
·
Family,
school, society, individuality, etc. consciously organise.
·
In the
absence of their influence, the subconscious part of the society begins to act. It organises subconsciously.
·
Even when
the conscious organisation is taking place, the subconscious too goes on
organising itself.
·
The child
becomes conscious only when its spirit is awakened.
·
The teacher
must not interfere with the responses of the child where the spirit acts.
·
The spirit
can act like a child, as a mad person or even as pisasu – evil spirit.
·
Only the
Psychic being acts rationally or spiritually.
·
The teacher
needs discrimination.
·
In the absence
of discrimination, an observation of the results of the responses of the child
will indicate the nature of the child’s response.
·
When we say
the child is wrongly organising itself in the absence of direction, we forget
the teacher is constantly wrongly organising herself.
·
As the
world is not quiet for a moment, the child’s personality does not fail to
organise itself all the time.
·
That
organisation takes place at the biological, social, psychological as well as
spiritual levels.
·
Wherever
personality is formed, the parent and the teacher are not to impose themselves
at that level.
·
Obviously,
the child will quickly outgrow both the parent and the teacher.
·
Beyond that
point the child needs freedom at the next level.
·
On the part
of the teacher, a great patience based on a greater understanding is called for
to extend that freedom.
·
Judgement
is called for from all sides.
·
Whatever is
achieved is achieved within the scope of that judgement.
·
Sympathy or
empathy helps.
·
Patience
includes both.
·
As we see,
it is not a one-sided movement.
·
The school
is inhibited from all sides. Still it
has a vast scope for positive initiative.
·
Our
exhausting that scope widens it.
·
It depends
upon our exhausting our positive energy.
·
Similarly,
we must aim at exhausting the receptivity of the child.