राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा प्रणाली एवं भारतीय मानस (श्री अरविन्द - एकात्म शिक्षा दर्शन)

24 NATIONAL EDUCATION of the will, falsehood being rejected whenever it rises into the mind and replaced by truth, fear by courage, selfishness by sacrifice and renuncia- tion, malice by love. Great care will have to be taken that unformed virtues are not rejected as faults. The wild- ness and recklessness of many young natures are only the overflowings of an excessive strength, greatness and nobility. They should be purified, not discouraged. I have spoken of morality ; it is necessary to speak a word of religious teaching. There is a strange idea prevalent that by merely teaching the dogmas of religion children can be made pious and moral. This is an European error, and its practice leads, either to mechanical acceptance of a creed having no effect on the inner and little on the outer life, or it crea-

THE MORAL NATURE 25 tes the fanatic, the pietist, the ritualist or the unctuous hypocrite. Religion has to be lived, not learned as a creed. The singular compromise made in the so-called National Education of Bengal making the teaching of religious beliefs compulsory, but forbidding the practice of anushtana or religious exercise, is a sample of the ignorant confusion which distracts men's mind on this subject. The prohibition is a sop to secularism declared or concealed. No religious teaching is of any value unless it is lived, and the use of various kinds of sadhana, spiritual self-training and exercise, is the only effective pre- paration for religious living. The ritual of prayer homage, ceremony is craved for by many minds as an essen- tial preparation and, if not made an end in itself, is a great help to spiritual progress ; if it is withheld, some other

26 NATIONAL EDUCATION form of meditation, devotion or religi- ous duty must be put in its place. Otherwise, Religious Teaching is of little use and would almost be better ungiven. But whether distinct teaching in any form of religion is imparted or not, the essence of religion, to live for God, for humanity, for country, for others and for oneself in these, must be made the ideal in every School which calls itself National. It is this spirit of Hinduism pervading our Schools which —far more than the teaching of Indian Subjects, the use of Indian methods or formal instruction in Hindu Beliefs and Hindu Scriptures—should be the essence of Nationalism in our Schools distinguishing them from all others.

CHAPTER IV SIMULTANEOUS AND SUCCESSIVE TEACHING A very remarkable feature of modern training which has been sub- jected in India to a reduction ad absurdum is the practice of teaching by snippets. A subject is taught a little at a time, in conjunction with a host of others, with the result that what might be well learnt in a single year is badly learned in seven and the boy goes out ill-equipped, served with imperfect parcels of knowledge, master of none of the great departments of human knowledge. The system of Education adopted by the National Council, an amphibious and twy- natured creation, attempts to heighten this practice of teaching by snippets at the bottom and the middle and suddenly change it to a grandiose

28 NATIONAL EDUCATION specialism at the top. This is to base the Triangle on its apex and hope that it will stand. The old system was to teach one or two subjects well and thoroughly and then proceed to others, and cer- tainly it was a more rational system than the modern. If it did not impart so much varied information, it built up a deeper, nobler and more real culture. Much of the shallowness, discursive lightness and fickle mutability of the average modern mind is due to the vicious principle of teaching by snip- pets. The one defect that can be alleged against the old system was that the subject earliest learned might fade from the mind of the student while he was mastering his later studies. But the excellent training given to the memory by the ancients obviated the incidence of this defect. In the future

SUCCESSIVE TEACHING. 29 Education we need not bind ourselves either by the ancient or the modern system, but select only the most per- fect and rapid means of mastering knowledge. In defence of modern system it is alleged that the attention of children is easily tired and cannot be subjected to the strain of long application to a single subject. The frequent changes of subject gives rest to the mind. The question naturally arises: are the child- ren of modern times then so different from the ancients, and, if so, have we not made them so by discouraging prolonged concentration ? A very young child cannot, indeed apply him- self; but a very young child is unfit for School teaching of any kind. A child of seven or eight, and that is the earliest permissible age for the com- mencement of any regular kind of

30 NATIONAL EDUCATION study, is capable of a good deal of concentration if he is interested. Interest is after all, the basis of con- centration. We make his lessons supremely uninteresting and repellent to the child, a harsh compulsion the basis of teaching and then complain of his restless inattention ! The substitu- tion of a natural self-Education by the child for the present unnatural system will remove this objection of inability. A child, like a man, if he is interest- ed, much prefers to get to the end of his subject rather than leave it unfi- nished. To lead him on step by step, interesting and absorbing him in each as it comes, until he has mastered his subject is the true art of teaching. The first attention of the teacher must be given to the medium and the instruments, and, until these are per- fected, to multiply subjects of regular

SUCCESSIVE TEACHING 31 instruction is to waste time and energy. When the mental instruments are sufficiently developed to acquire a language easily and swiftly, that is the time to introduce him to many langu- ages, not when he can only partially understand what he is taught and masters it laboriously and imperfectly. Moreover, one who has mastered his own language, has one very necessary facility for mastering another. With the linguistic faculty unsatisfactorily developed in one's own tongue, to master others is impossible. To study Science with the faculties of observa- tion, judgment, reasoning, and compari- son only slightly developed, is to undertake a useless and thankless labour. So it is with all other subjects. The mother-tongue is the proper medium of Education and therefore the first energies of the child should

32 NATIONAL EDUCATION be directed to the thorough mastering of the medium. Almost every child has an imagination, an instinct for words, a dramatic faculty, a wealth of idea and fancy. These should be interested in the literature and history of the Nation. Instead of stupid and dry spelling and reading books, looked on as a dreary and ungrateful task, he should be introduced by rapidly pro- gressive stages to the most interesting parts of his own literature and the life around him and behind him, and they should be put before him, in such a way as to attract and appeal to the qualities of which I have spoken. All other study at this period should be devoted to the perfection of the mental functions and the moral chara- cter. A foundation should be laid at this time for the study of history, science, philosophy, art, but not in an

SUCCESSIVE TEACHING 33 obtrusive and formal manner. Every child is a lover of interesting narra- tive, a hero-worshipper and a patriot. Appeal to these qualities in him and through him, let him master without knowing it the living and human parts of his Nation's history. Every child is an inquirer, an investigator, analy- ser, a merciless anatomist. Appeal to those qualities in him and let him acquire without knowing it the right temper and the necessary fundamental knowledge of the Scientist. Every child has an insatiable intellectual curiosity and turn for metaphysical enquiry. Use it to draw him on slow- ly to an understanding of the world and himself. Every child has the gift of imitation and a touch of imaginative power. Use it to give him the ground work of the faculty of the artist. It is by allowing Nature to work 3

34 NATIONAL EDUCATION that we get the benefit of the gifts she has bestowed on us. Humanity in its education of children has chosen to thwart and hamper the rapidity of its onward march. Happily, saner ideas are now beginning to prevail. But the way has not yet been found. The past hangs about our necks with all its prejudices and errors and will not leave us ; it enters into our most radical attempts to return to the gui- dance of the all-wise Mother. We must have the courage to take up clearer knowledge and apply it fear- lessly in the interests of posterity. Teaching by snippets must be relegat- ed to the lumber-room of dead sorrows. The first work is to interest the child in life, work and knowledge, to develop his instruments of knowledge with the utmost thoroughness, to give him mastery of the medium he must use.

SUCCESSIVE TEACHING 35 Afterwards, the rapidity with which he will learn, will be found that, where now he learns a few things badly, then he will learn many things thoroughly well.

CHAPTER V THE TRAINING OF THE MIND There are six senses which minister to knowledge, sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste, mind, and all of these except the last, look outward and gather the material of thought from outside through the physical nerves and their end-organs, eye, ear, nose, skin, palate. The perfection of the senses as ministers to thought must be one of the first cares of the teachers. The two things that are needed of the senses are accuracy and sensi- tiveness. We must first understand what are the obstacles to the accuracy and sensitiveness of the senses, in order that we may take the best steps to remove them. The cause of imper- fection must be understood by those who desire to bring about perfection.

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 37 The senses depend for their accu- racy and sensitiveness on the un- obstructed activity of the nerves which are the channels of their information and the passive acceptance of the mind which is the recipient. In themselves the organs do their work perfectly. The eye gives the right form, the ear the correct sound, the palate the right taste, the skin the right touch, the nose the right smell. This can easily be understood if we study the action of the eye as a crucial example. A correct image is reproduced automatically on the retina, if there is any error in appreciating it, it is not the fault of the organ, but of something else. The fault may be with the nerve currents. The nerves are nothing but channels, they have no power in themselves to alter the information

38 NATIONAL EDUCATION given by the organs. But a channel may be obstructed and the obstruc- tion may interfere either with the fullness or the accuracy of the informa- tion, not as it reaches the organ where it is necessarily and automatically perfect, but as it reaches the mind. The only exception is in case of a physical defect in the organ as an instrument. That is not a matter for the educationist, but for the physician. If the obstruction is such as to stop the information reaching the mind at all, the result is an insufficient sensitiveness of the senses. The defects of sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, anœthesia in its various degrees, are curable when not the effect of physical injury or defect in the organ itself. The obstructions can be removed and the sensitiveness remedied by the purification of the

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 39 nerve system. The remedy is a simple one which is now becoming more and more popular in Europe for different reasons and objects, the regulation of the breathing. This process inevit- ably restores the perfect and unob- structed activity of the channels and, if well and thoroughly done, leads to a high activity of the senses. The process is called in Yogic discipline, nadi-suddhi, or nerve-purification. The obstruction in the channel may be such as not absolutely to stop in however small a degree, but to distort the information. A familiar instance of this is the effect of fear or alarm on the sense action. The startled horse takes the sack on the road for a dangerous living thing, the startled man takes a rope for a snake, a waving curtain for a ghostly form. All distortions due to actions in the

40 NATIONAL EDUCATION nervous system can be traced to some kind of emotional disturbance acting in the nerve channels. The only remedy for them is the habit of calm, the habitual steadiness of the nerves. This also can be brought about by nadi-suddhi or nerve-purficiation, which quiets the system, gives a deliberate calmness to all the internal processes and prepares the purification of the mind. If the nerve channels are quiet and clear, the only possible disturbance of the information is from or through the mind. Now the manas or sixth sense is in itself a channel like the nerves, a channel for communication: with the buddhi or brainforce distur- bance may happen either from above or from below. The information outside is first photographed on the end organ, then reproduced at the

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 41 other end of the nerve system in the chitta or passive memory. All the images of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are deposited there and the manas reports them to the buddhi. The manas is both a sense organ and a channel. As a sense organ it is as automatically perfect as the others, as a channel it is subject to disturbance resulting either in obstruction or dis- tortion. As a sense organ the mind recei- ves direct thought impressions from outside and from within. These impressions are in themselves perfect- ly correct, but in their report to the intellect at all or may reach it so distorted as to make a false or parti- ally false impression. The disturbance may effect the impression which attains the information of eye, ear, nose, skin or palate, but it is very

42 NATIONAL EDUCATION slightly powerful here, in its effect on the direct impressions of the mind, it is extremely powerful and the chief source of error. The mind takes direct impressions primarily of thought, but also of form, sound, indeed of all the things for which it usually prefers to depend on the sense organs. The full development of this sensitiveness of the mind is called in our Yogic discipline Sushmadrishti or subtle reception of images. Telepathy, clairvoyance, claraudience, presentment, thought- reading, character-reading and many other modern discoveries are very ancient powers of the mind which have been left undeveloped, and they all belong to the manas. The develop- ment of the sixth sense has never formed part of human training. In a future age it will undoubtedly take a place in the necessary preliminary

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 43 training of the human instrument. Meanwhile there is no reason why the mind should not be trained to give a correct report to the intellect so that our thought may start with absolutely correct if not with full impressions. The first obstacle, the nervous emotional, we may suppose to be removed by the purification of the nervous system. The second obstacle is that of the emotions themselves warping the impressions as it comes. Love may do this, hatred may do this, any emotion or desire according to its power and intensity may distort the impression as it travels. This difficulty can only be removed by the discipline of the emotions, the purifying of the moral train- ing and its consideration may be postponed for the moment. The next difficulty is the interference of