The Ascent of the Spirit

by Swami Krishnananda

It needs no mention that the striving for knowledge by means of education has a double function to perform, namely, to take note of the empirical facts and experiences of life on the one hand, and to be consistent with the demands of the absolute values on the other. Since the temporal values are inseparable from the metempirical, the laws of every realm have to be paid their due. “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” Though appearance cannot be identified with reality, it needs no saying that appearance bears some relation to reality. Thus, though all programmes and enterprises in life seem to be involved in the phenomena of transiency, it cannot be gainsaid that our efforts bear a relevance to the truth that we are aspiring for. The very acceptance of phenomenal experience simultaneously calls for the recognition of there being such a thing as reality. Our whims and fancies, hopes and aspirations, struggles and achievements must bear a connection, though remotely, to reality. The reflection is not the original, but the reflection indicates what the original would be like, even as a shadow is, after all, cast by a substance that is there. The human mind need not be in despair that its struggles are a mere pursuit of the will-o’-the-wisp. Our education, our knowledge, is wholly empirical, no doubt; but it cannot end with the mere empirical, it has a function to perform beyond itself, like the medicine administered to cure a disease.

The basic psychology behind education should be “not to disturb the degree of reality involved in any state of experience.” The Bhagavadgita exhorts: “The faith of the ignorant is not to be shaken” while the wise one performs the function of imparting knowledge to the ignorant. The standpoint of the student in any stage of education cannot be ignored, though it may be regarded as an inadequate standpoint in comparison with a higher level of knowledge. Education is similar to the artistic process of the blossoming of a flower-bud, gradually and beautifully. The bud is not to be opened suddenly by exerting any undue force; else, it would not be a blossom, but a broken structure serving no purpose. The teacher is always to be hidden behind the student, though he is with the student at all times. He is not to come to the forefront, either as a superior or an unpleasant ingredient among the constituents that go to form the feelings, aspirations and needs of the student at any particular level. The task of the teacher is indeed a very difficult one to perform. One who is untrained in the art of thinking through the minds of students would not be a successful teacher. The most immediate of realities is always to become the first concern, whether in the social, educational or philosophic field. The visible objects are concrete things and they are the only realities for the child. Hence comes the need for the kindergarten stage where object-lessons are imparted by the presentation of concrete examples. If these examples are pleasant forms of vision and audition, they would add to the success of the process of education. A discipline or training need not necessarily be bitter or unpleasant. It can also be sweet, lovable and delighting. The method of teaching is more a subject of psychology than anything else. For, it involves on the part of the teacher a knowledge of not only the purpose of education in its different stages but also of the differing methods that have to be applied in teaching in these varying stages. It may be said that, for all practical purposes, no stage of experience can be regarded as wholly false or utterly wrong but that it holds a particular degree of reality in its bosom. Every child is dear to its own mother, whoever she be and in whatever conditions she may find herself at any time.

From this consideration it would follow that the syllabi of studies chalked out in the present-day curricula of education are not totally out of point, for they bear relation to some stage or other of reality; but their mistake is that these stages are wholly confined to the field of sensory experience and do not touch even the fringe of what is beyond the empirical level. Though a lesser truth is also a necessary feature of truth, it should never be regarded as the whole truth. The subjects that are taught in the educational fields today are no doubt truths in their own limited ambits—in fact, every experience based on every perception is a phase of truth which cannot be denied at the time of its experience or perception—but since they are not the whole truth, they present unforeseen problems in the long run, which are at the background of the restlessness and the sense of insecurity crawling through the veins of the modern educated individual. The stress on the need for the lower truth should not mean either an ignorance or the neglect of the higher.

This investigation and study of the position of the human individual in the universe should direct him to the correct way of approach in launching upon the methodology of education. And what is life but a continuous process of educational training? One would realise oneself to be always a student if only there is to be an honest self-enquiry in the interest of the pursuit of truth, for truth alone triumphs. The present system of teaching adopted by the modern educational psychology is quite good, so far as it goes, but only so far as it goes. It is necessary, as we have observed, that the more stringent manifestations of reality should be taken into consideration first of all, with immediate priority. The social and the physical structure of one’s environment is obviously the foremost of such manifestations. One feels, by the very circumstances of the environment, that there is a world outside, there are mountains and rivers; sun, moon and stars; summer and winter and rains; which come periodically as seasons in the year; men and animals, people connected with us as relatives and those not so connected, etc. This is to give a crude picture of one’s notions concerning the astronomical world, the geographical features and the social relations with which one seems to be associated in some way, though not very distinctly present in one’s active consciousness. As these things are the immediately observed facts, their features would be naturally the first of subjects that have to be introduced into one’s studies, though in a very moderate form of a mere outline of information. We may call these the seeds of Astronomy, Geography, Sociology and Civics. These may include as a necessary consequence one’s moral obligations to the society of human beings and animals. And so, we enter the field of Ethics as an inseparable part of the studies, for the ethical rules cannot be isolated from social obligations in which one’s life is intertwined. There is then the natural development of the consciousness of one’s material needs and the ways of procuring the same, taking notice at the same time of such needs of other people also around oneself. Here we sow the seeds of Economics in its very basic formation. Up to this level of concern and procedure of studies, we may regard one’s education as fundamental and primary.

A more advanced outlook of life takes one to its involvements in its immediate connections with what is elaborately called the Political Structure of the country. One becomes conscious of the enforcers of law, visible as certain personalities considered as heads of the immediate environment of the community, the village, the district and even the still wider jurisdiction of the province. This knowledge and the relevance of this knowledge to one’s personal and social life combines in itself the elementary principles of the civic and political atmosphere in which one lives. This raises the question of the necessity to be properly informed about the nature of the Laws and regulations that govern one’s day-to-day existence, though these are not immediately visible in everyday life. Nonetheless, their influence upon one’s life may be tremendous like that of the rise of the sun every day, though people are not always conscious that the sun rises and sets daily. Further on, there comes also the need to know the manner in which these traditions have come down from the past by the exigencies of the time’s process and the nature of the events that have occurred in relation to people’s lives lived before us many years back, and this is the study of History. Allthese items of one’s basic education come together to form the Culture of the human nature in general, which is variedly to reveal itself in its manifestations as human thought, feeling and action. Here we come to the second stage of education; all which may be regarded as still elementary, meaning whereby not what is ‘inadequate’ but ‘fundamental’ as the most essential rock-bottom of the grand edifice of education.

Now we are to enter the third stage wherein we begin to feel the need also for certain other aspects of study, which present themselves as essentials in their own way, though they are not so essential as the unavoidable phases of education, detailed above, which were organically connected with one’s creature-existence itself. These needs of the third stage are sometimes called ‘diversions’ or ‘pleasure’ which are sought by the ‘emotions’ of human nature. These are the fine arts which contribute to bring a new type of delight to one’s personality through the visualisation of beauty. Beauty is something difficult to explain, but something which everyone knows and feels by actual perception of it in physical and mental life. Objects that are beautiful attract one’s attention and give a satisfaction even by their mere proximity, let alone the actual possession and enjoyment of them personally. Usually, beauty is regarded as a kind of perception evoked by a certain pattern of the arrangement in the form of the object which is called beautiful. Though the same object may not appear beautiful to all persons under the same conditions, and there is thus a subjective projection of beauty upon the objects of perception, there is nonetheless a general form of beauty which is acceptable and perceivable to every human being. These general forms of beauty may be categorised particularly under what are known as architecture, sculpture, painting, music, dance, drama and literature. Anacquaintance with these sources of beauty would call for a study of these subjects, a branch of knowledge designated as Aesthetics.