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

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

44 NATIONAL EDUCATION previous associations formed or in- grained in the chitta or passive memory. We have a habitual way of looking at things and the conserva- tive inertia in our nature disposes us to give every new experience the shape and semblance of those to which we are accustomed. It is only more developed minds which can receive first impressions without an unconscious bias against the novelty of novel experience. For instance, if we get a true impression of what is happening and we habitually act on such impressions true or false if it differs from what we are accustomed to expect, the old association meets it in the chitta and sends a changed report to the intellect in which either the new impression is overlaid and concealed by the old or mingled with it. To go farther into this subject

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 45 would be to involve ourselves too deeply into the details of psychology. This typical instance will suffice. To get rid of this obstacle is impossible without chittasuddhi or purification of the mental moral habits formed in the chitta. This is a preliminary process of Yoga and was effected in our ancient system by various means, but would be considered out of place in a modern system of education. It is clear, therefore, that unless we revert to our old system in some of its principles, we must be content to allow this source of disturbance to remain. A really national system of education would not allow itself to be controlled by European ideas in this all important matter. And there is a process so simple and momentous that it can easily be made a part of our system.

46 NATIONAL EDUCATION It consists in bringing about passivity of the restless flood of thought sensa- tions rising of its own momentum from the passive memory independent of our will and control. This passivity liberatest he intellect from the siege of old associations and false impressions. It gives it power to select only what is wanted from the storehouse of the passive memory, automatically brings about the habit of getting right impres- sions and enables the intellect to dictate so the chitta what samskara or asso- ciations shall be formed or rejected. This is the real office of the intellect to discriminate, choose, select, arrange. But so long as there is not chitta- suddhi, instead of doing this office perfectly, it itself remains imperfect and corrupt and adds to the confusion in the mind channel by false judgment, false imagination, false memory, false

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 47 observation, false comparison, contrast and analogy, false education, induction and inference. The purification of the chitta is essential for the liberation, purification and perfect action of the intellect.

CHAPTER VI SENSE-IMPROVEMENT BY PRACTICE Another cause of the ineffici- ency of the senses as gatherers of Knowledge, is insufficient use. We do not observe sufficiently or with suffici- ent attention and closeness and a sight, sound, smell, even touch or taste knocks in vain at the door for ad- mission. This tamasic inertia of the receiving instruments is no doubt due to the inattention of the buddhi and therefore its consideration may seem to come properly under the training of the functions of the intellect, but it is more convenient, though less psychologically correct, to notice it here. The student ought to be accustomed to catch the sights, sounds etc, around him, distinguish them, mark their nature, properties and

SENSE-IMPROVEMENT BY PRACTICE 49 sources and fix them in the chitta so that they may be always ready to respond when called for by the memory. It is a fact which has been proved by minute experiments that the faculty of observation is very imper- fectly developed in men, merely from want of care in the use of the sense and the memory. Give twelve men the task of recording from memory something they all saw two hours ago and the accounts will all vary from each other and from the actual occurence. To get rid of this imper- fection will go a long way towards the removal of error. It can be done by training the senses to do their work perfectly which they will do readily enough if they know the buddhi requires it of them, and giving sufficient attention to put the facts in 4

50 NATIONAL EDUCATION their right place and order in memory. Attention is a factor in knowledge, the importance of which has been always recognised. Attention is the first condition of right memory and of accuracy. To attend to what he is doing, is the first element of discipline required of the student, and, as I have suggested, this can easily be secured if the object of attention is made interesting. This attention to a single thing is called concentration. One truth is however, sometimes overlooked ; that concentration on several things at a time is often indispensable. When people talk of concentration, they imply centring the mind on one thing at a time ; but it is quite possible to develop the power of double concen- tration, triple concentration, multiple concentration. When a given incident is happening, it may be made up of

SENSE-IMPROVEMENT BY PRACTICE 51 several simultaneous happenings or a set of simultaneous circumstances, a sight, a sound, a touch or several sights, sounds, touches occuring at the same moment or in the same short space of time. The tendency of the kind is to fasten on one and mark others vaguely, many not at all or, if compelled to attend to all, to be distracted and mark none perfectly. Yet this can be remedied and the attention equally distributed over a set of circumstances in such a way as to observe and remember each per- fectly. It is merely a matter of abhyasa or steady natural practice. It is also very desirable that the hand should be capable of coming to the help of the eye in dealing with the multitudinous objects of its acti- vity so as to ensure accuracy. This is of a use so obvious and imperatively

52 NATIONAL EDUCATION needed, that it need not be dwelt on at length. The practice of imitation by the hand of the thing seen is of use both of detecting the lapses and inaccuracies of the mind in noticing the objects of sense and in registering accurately what has been seen. Imitation by the hand ensures accuracy of observation. This is one of the first uses of drawing and it is sufficient in itself to make the teaching of this subject a necessary part of the training of the organs.

CHAPTER VII THE TRAINING OF THE MENTAL FACULTIES The first qualities of the mind that have to be developed are those which can be grouped under observation. We notice some things, ignore others. Even of what we notice, we observe very little. A general perception of an object is what we all usually carry away from a cursory half-attentive glance. A closer attention fixes its place, from nature as distinct from its surroundings. Full concentration of the faculty of observation gives us all the knowledge that the three chief senses can gather about the object, or if we touch or taste, we may gather all that the five senses can tell of its nature and properties. Those who make use of the six senses, the Poet, the Painter,