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Education as the Growth of Consciousness
ALL knowledge is within you. Information you get from outside, but the understanding of it ? It is from within. The information from outside gives you dead matter. What puts life into it, light into it is your own inner light.
All education, all culture means drawing this inner light
to the front. Indeed the word 'education' literally means, 'to
bring out.' Plato also pointed to the same truth when he said
that education is remembrance. You remember what is imbedded or secreted within, you bring to the light, the light of
your physical mind, what you have within, what you already
possess in your being and inner consciousness. Acquisition is not
education. Indeed a miser is not a rich man, rich is he who True education is growth of consciousness. It is consciousness that carries the light and the power of the light. We are born upon earth with this consciousness at the centre of our being. And a growing child is nothing but a growing consciousness. Growth of consciousness means an increasing intensity and an increasing amplitude or wideness of the light. Unfortunately, placed as we are under the circumstances of life as it is, this light of consciousness is not allowed to grow in its natural arid normal way. The external demands of life and the world put a pressure upon it which turns it away from its straight path. Things are demanded of this light or consciousness which do not belong to its nature, which are not an expression of its nature. As though it is twisted, tortured or smothered under utilitarian necessities. The brain should be a flowering of this consciousness, a developing vehicle for the expression of the increasing consciousness. Page 197 For that a guidance is needed so that one may always turn within and look for that consciousness, feel it growing, and with one's will and thought and act help its growth and development. A brain is not developed by the mass of information that may be pressed into it. Informations are necessary but they should be presented in such a way that they serve as fuel, helpful fuel to the mounting fire; they must not be merely piled up upon and around the fire or be as so many wet faggots crushing it down with their weight. A true learner is one who seeks sincerely this inner consciousness which is one's own; the true teacher is one who knows how to lead the learner towards this inner light. Page 198 |