(continued from the February 2014 issue)
This vital education has two principal
aspects, very different in their aims and methods, but both equally important.
The first concerns the development and use of the sense organs. The second, the
progressing awareness and control of the character, culminating in its
transformation.
The education of the senses, again, has
several aspects, which are added to one another as the being grows; indeed it
should never cease. The sense organs, if properly cultivated, can attain a
precision and power of functioning far exceeding what is normally expected of
them.
In some ancient initiations it was stated
that the number of senses that man can develop is not five but seven and in
certain special cases even twelve. Certain races at certain times have, out of
necessity, developed more or less perfectly one or the other of these
supplementary senses. With a proper discipline persistently followed, they are
within the reach of all who are sincerely interested in this development and
its results. Among the faculties that are often mentioned, there is, for
example, the ability to widen the physical consciousness, project it out of
oneself so as to concentrate it on a given point and thus obtain sight,
hearing, smell, taste and even touch at a distance.
To this general education of the senses and
their functioning there will be added, as early as possible, the cultivation of
discrimination and of the aesthetic sense, the capacity to choose and adopt
what is beautiful and harmonious, simple, healthy and pure. For there is a
psychological health just as there is a physical health, a beauty and harmony
of the sensations as of the body and its movements. As the capacity of
understanding grows in the child, he should be taught, in the course of his
education, to add artistic taste and refinement to power and precision. He
should be shown, led to appreciate, taught to love beautiful, lofty, healthy
and noble things, whether in Nature or in human creation. This should be a true
aesthetic culture, which will protect him from degrading influences. For, in
the wake of the last wars and the terrible nervous tension which they provoked,
as a sign, perhaps, of the decline of civilisation and social decay, a growing
vulgarity seems to have taken possession of human life, individual as well as
collective, particularly in what concerns aesthetic life and the life of the
senses. A methodical and enlightened cultivation of the senses can, little by
little, eliminate from the child whatever is by contagion vulgar, commonplace
and crude. This education will have very happy effects even on his character.
For one who has developed a truly refined taste will, because of this very
refinement, feel incapable of acting in a crude, brutal or vulgar manner. This
refinement, if it is sincere, brings to the being a nobility and generosity
which will spontaneously find expression in his behaviour and will protect him
from many base and perverse movements.
And this brings us quite naturally to the
second aspect of vital education which concerns the character and its
transformation.
Generally, all disciplines dealing with the
vital being, its purification and its control, proceed by coercion,
suppression, abstinence and asceticism. This procedure is certainly easier and
quicker, although less deeply enduring and effective, than a rigorous and
detailed education. Besides, it eliminates all possibility of the intervention,
help and collaboration of the vital. And yet this help is of the utmost
importance if one wants the individual’s growth and action to be complete.
To become conscious of the various movements
in oneself and be aware of what one does and why one does it, is the
indispensable starting-point. The child must be taught to observe, to note his
reactions and impulses and their causes, to become a discerning witness of his
desires, his movements of violence and passion, his instincts of possession and
appropriation and domination and the background of vanity which supports them,
together with their counterparts of weakness, discouragement, depression and
despair.
Evidently, for this process to be useful,
along with the growth of the power of observation the will for progress and perfection
must also grow. This will should be instilled into the child as soon as he is
capable of having a will, that is to say, at a much earlier age than is usually
believed.
In order to awaken this will to surmount and
conquer, different methods are appropriate in different cases; with certain individuals
rational arguments are effective, for others their feelings and goodwill should
be brought into play, with yet others the sense of dignity and self-respect.
For all, the most powerful method is example constantly and sincerely shown.
Once the resolution has been firmly
established, one has only to proceed rigorously and persistently and never to
accept any defeat as final. To avoid all weakening and backsliding, there is
one important point you must know and never forget: the will can be cultivated
and developed just as the muscles can by methodical and progressive exercise.
You must not shrink from demanding the maximum effort of your will even for a
thing that seems of no importance, for it is through effort that its capacity
grows, gradually acquiring the power to apply itself even to the most difficult
things. What you have decided to do, you must do, whatever the cost, even if
you have to renew your effort over and over again any number of times in order
to do it. Your will will be strengthened by the effort and you will have only
to choose with discernment the goal to which you will apply it.
To sum up: one must gain a full knowledge of
one’s character and then acquire control over one’s movements in order to
achieve perfect mastery and the transformation of all the elements that have to
be transformed.
Now all will depend upon the ideal which the
effort for mastery and transformation seeks to achieve. The value of the effort
and its result will depend upon the value of the ideal.
-
‘Bulletin‘, August 1951
(concluded)
(CWM Volume 12, ‘On
Education’, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1978, Published by Sri Aurobindo
Ashram, Puducherry)
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