What is Education? It is to bring out what is hidden in the child.This is what generally we know. "Education is the manifestation of The perfection already in man". Sw. Vivekananda.

Why should we be educated?

• To get knowledge
• To have discrimination between good and bad.
• To earn money so that we and our family members will live happily.
• To become civilized.
• To know why we are born here.

The world is Karma Bhoomi for a human being.  That means only human beings have to enjoy the fruits of their own deeds which are either bad or good.  The other beings except the human beings are bhoga yonis.  i.e., they don’t suffer or enjoy for their deeds.  Though man’s body is fragile, he is gifted with a very powerful brain, by using which he is able to control complete animal and plant kingdoms.  He is not only trying to conquer the natural forces but also trying to reach the far ends of the space using his brain power developing various technical instruments.  The brain power has to be implemented for the world’s sake so that the world should be beautiful for living. But due to the past negative samskaras man is now intend to destroy the world.  He is becoming more and more self centered than other centered.  It is increasing rapidly recently.  Due to the modern education system, which is developing the commanding and selfish centres in the man and not developing the heart centre, which is much more important than the other centres, man is degrading himself than animals.  Particularly within the last 20 or 25 years, due to the modernization and advance technical development and foreign culture, the joint family system is destroyed.  As both the parents are working for the sake of fulfilling their children’s ambitions, there is no time for them to spend for the morality of their children.  As the joint family system is no more existing, or if the grand parents are living with them also, there is no time for the children to talk to the old people to learn wisdom about life from them.  The children, particularly the parents are more eager to teach their children the modern techniques in this competitive world, thus making them to be fit and more competitive in the society.  Not only that, now in the middle and upper middleclass category 80% people want their children to go to foreign countries, so that materialistically they will be well off there.

But do you think all these people are happy?  If you try to enquire, each person is tense and nobody is able to achieve what they want – thus nobody is at ease, resulting by the young age of 40, they are grasped by some disease, which now a days people think as natural.

Here the education system plays the main role.  On the name of education, presently we are making the students rote more and more about the world and its mysteries on the physical level only.  How the modern technology can be efficiently used, how to make life comfortable thus making the ‘I’ bigger and bigger.  Now modern man thinks he can achieve anything in the world with the help of money and modern technology.  Sadly, when we observe the world, it is not true.  It is only illumination that man is happy with all these things.  Hence the top people are sometimes get into deep depression or commit suicide or at least turning towards spirituality to get solace, which is not given by this world.  Presently many teenagers and rich people are bent towards the spiritualism as a last resource for their mental happiness.  But if we can introduce the same in the high school level onwards, besides the other materialistic subjects, the child’s development will be wholistic from the beginning itself.  In the old China the young children were taught to sit quietly for an hour at least silently daily, so that their spiritual centre can be opened.  In Tibet every house used to offer one child at least to the monastery to become a lama.  They used to be proud of that.  But now we are proud if at least one or more children or all the children are in foreign countries.

We are not bothered about the human relationships but always calculating with what we earn.So in the education system values should be taught, meditation and sharing with others have to be taught.  The child who does not go to school is like an unlit bulb.  School should be considered as a light house giving connection to the bulb.  If properly trained, the child will become a 1000 watts bulb after coming out of the school, brightening his surroundings with his wisdom.  In the school the teacher’s role is to remove the negative samskaras of the child and developing the good samskaras.  Actually here comes the work of parents as well as teachers.  But the child spends normally minimum 6 hours of his day continuously in the school.  Hence teacher’s role is very important.

What is the role of school in spirituality?  The child is like a rock in which is hidden a beautiful statue.  By removing the unnecessary chunks of rock, a sculptor reveals a beautiful statue.  If the person is good sculpture, then only a beautiful statue is carved.  If he is an ordinary person, he cannot reveal the beauty which is hidden in the rock.  Hence in the modern society the teacher is the sculptor and the child can b compared to a rock.  A good teacher not only can bring out all the hidden good qualities of the child, but also will be able to remove the unnecessary past negative samskaras which are hidden in the child’s mental body.

We should train the child in such a way, in the future he should be able to take up a job which will be not only satisfactory materialistically but also for his spiritual developments which is more important.  All the animals are governed by instincts.  As soon as they are born they know what to do.  With minimum training they will be able to survive.  Only man has to be trained for so much time to become a proper human being.  Some people think that spirituality comes on its own.  But it is not true.  A child is not left on its own to learn alphabets.  Hence spirituality also should be taught from the school level.  From a tender age we can teach meditation and how to sit quietly for some time daily and the value of sharing.  Before the adolescent age, they should be taught the purpose of the life, how to make the world beautiful and how great men tried to create a beautiful world when they were alive.  The essence of all religions should be taught.  The oneness in the humanity and how to develop the godliness is more important.  All the prophets all over the world say the same things again and again.  But we only fight that our prophet is the best – denying to practice his teachings.  Hence the world is always full of unhappiness; though there are saintly persons who show people how to be happy.

To attain this first important thing is to educate the teachers in proper way.  Plato said that only Sanyasi should become the king.  In education also the teacher’s role is very important.  If an officer of any other category is wrong, it will be over when his period ends.  But if the teacher teaches wrong it will affect generations after generations.  Unless the teacher‘s attitude is correct he/she should not be given a teacher’s post.  The teacher’s post is not only dependent on the degrees but spirituality of the person.  The teacher should be a role model, by seeing whom, the students will be inspired through out  their complete life.   To attain that, our Gurukulams in the olden days were perfect.

The caste system according to the birth is not correct.  A person should have all the four qualities, i.e., spirituality and meditation for sometime in a lonely place, courage like kings to attack the negativity in the world, to know how we are benefited materialistically and spiritually in every deed we do like merchants, and ready to do any physical work if necessary as a low born.  If we teach this in the schools itself, we can produce super human for the coming generation.  We are not denying the modern technology, but with all comforts we should not think- this is the only place we enjoy. Mixed with spirituality, we can enjoy the world more happily.  When a person shares whatever he is having with others and uses the modern technology makes himself and others happy, staying in aloneness (which makes him an individual, not depending on others for his happiness) their world can be heaven here only.  Actually there is no heaven or hell somewhere above the world and after the death.  At the time of death we see our past life as a cine reel, seeing all our mistakes is the hell.  When you see what the good deeds we have done to make others happy is itself heaven.

Considering from the great philosophers’ side (Leadbeater/Powell/Anne Besant etc.,), the fragment of divine life is manifested here as the triple spirit.  Of these three aspects one, the spirit itself remains upon its own plane, that of Atma.  The second, that of intuition or pure reason and expresses itself through the matter of Buddhi.  The third aspect that of intelligence puts itself down two planes and expresses itself through the matter of higher mental plane.  This is known as ego or personality.

The ego expresses itself on the lower plane as personality which is also triple manifestation.  Intelligence or higher manas, reflects itself in lower manas.  Pure reason or buddhi reflects in the astral body.  The spirit or atma reflects itself upon the physical body.

The ego and personality are joined through anthakarana which is channel between these two.  When they are perfectly joined the antahkarana disappears and the ego works directly (for e.g., great souls like Ramana, Aurobindo, Annie Besant etc.,) The ego and lower manas are not different; they are like Sun and its rays.

This tiny fragment of ego is seen as golden man the size of a thumb or brilliant star of light. (Angustha pramana). The ego is always pure, it is a mirror of divine love and it is never wrong.  He is ignorant of certain matters and the very purpose of incarnation is to remove the ignorance.

But the fragment of ego, which has been put down into lower matter, becomes so vividly and keenly conscious in the matter, that it thinks and acts as though it were a separate being.  It forgets that it belongs to the less developed but far wider consciousness of the ego and sets up in the business of life on its own account, and tries to do as it wants, rather than the ego wishes.

According to our culture man has five bodies or five koshas  - the physical (annamaya kosha), etheric double (pranamaya kosha) Mental (manomaya kosha) Vignanamaya  and Causal (karana sareera).  Whenever there is a gap in the causal body there is a possibility for the lower vehicles to run into some sort of evil action.  Thus for example, the astral elemental may take possession of the man and rushes him into committing crimes.  In such a case the ego is not sufficiently awake to step in and prevent the action, or perhaps he does not understand that the passion or greed of astral body may force the lower self into the commission of crime.  Evil, therefore does not come from the higher self, because if the ego were more developed, he would check the man on the brink of evil thought and the crime would not be committed.

In ordinary man, the ego has neither much grasp of the personality nor a clear concept of his purpose in sending it forth.  Whatever it gains by experience is passed to the ego, but together with this real development, it gathers a good deal of knowledge, which is useless and develops prejudices.

In order to assist the ego in controlling his vehicles and to help him to utilize them for his own purposes, a very great deal can be done by parents and teachers during infancy and early childhood.  For it makes a vast of difference when the good rather the evil germs in the child’s bodies are aroused first.  If by exceeding care before and after birth, parents are able to excite only good tendencies, then the ego will naturally find it easy to express itself along those lines a decided habit is set up in that direction.

Meditation is method of drawing the attention of the ego.  Meditation and the study of spiritual subjects in this earthly life undoubtedly make a very great difference in the life of the ego, for meditation opens the channel between personality and ego and keeps it open.  It should be borne in mind that physical meditation is not directly for the ego, but for the training of the various vehicles to be a channel for the ego.

If a person wishes to attract the attention of the ego, he must make the personality useful to him.  As soon as he begins to devote the greater part of his thought to higher beings, in other words, as soon as he rally begins to live, the ego will take more notice of him.

The ego is well aware that certain necessary parts of the evolution can be achieved only through the personality, in its mental, astral and physical bodies. He knows therefore that he must sometimes attend to it, bring it under its control.  But we can well understand that the task may often be seen uninviting, that a given personality may appear anything but attractive.  If we look at the many personalities around us, their physical bodies full of drugs and poisons, their astral bodies reeking with greed and sensuality and mental bodies having no interest beyond money making,  it is not difficult to see why an ego surveying them from his lofty heights might decide to postpone this serious effort to another incarnation, in the hope that the next set of vehicles might be more amenable to influence than those upon which his horrified gaze now rests. 

A similar state of affairs frequently happens in the early stages of a new incarnation.  From the birth of the child, the ego hovers over it and in some cases tries to influence the development while it is still young.  But as a general rule, he pays little attention to it until about the age of seven, by which time the karmic elemental should be practically finished.

But children differ so widely that it is not surprising to find the relation between the egos and personalities involve differs widely also.  Some child personalities are quick and responsive, some are dull.  When dullness and non responsiveness are prominent, the ego often withdraws his active interest for the time, hoping that as the childish body grows; it may become clever or more responsive.

By reviewing all the above information, we can say that the parents and the teachers play a very great responsible in developing the young soul into a higher soul.  By removing the negative tendencies and developing the positive aspects, gradually we can make super humans almost in one incarnation.

                                                                                                -Smt C.Syamala