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Education in the New Age - Chapter II - Civilization and Culture
The following sequence suggests itself as we consider the curriculum to be planned for the youth of the immediate generations:
Primary education | Civilization | Ages 1-14
Secondary education | Culture | Ages 14-21
Higher education | Spiritual | Ages 21-28
It is only our economic material emphasis and pressure which force the young to work before they are mature. [50] It should also be remembered (and this is being more widely recognized) that the quality of the young children now coming into incarnation is steadily getting better and higher. They are in many cases abnormally intelligent, and what you (in your technical parlance) call their I.Q. is frequently phenomenally high. This will be increasingly the case, until young people of fourteen will have the equipment and intelligence of the brilliant college men and women of today. It is not possible for me to prove the truth of these statements, but a study of the race and of the modern child in our more civilized countries will indicate trends and tendencies which may make my position sounder in your final estimation. You would all do well to study carefully this distinction between culture and civilization. Putting this same truth in other words, and recognizing as a basic premise the essentially supernormal potentialities of the human being, we might say that: The first effort of education to civilize the child will be to train and rightly direct his instincts. The second obligation upon the educators will be to bring about his true culture, by training him to use his intellect rightly. The third duty of education will be to evoke and to develop the intuition. When these three are developed and functioning you will have a civilized, cultured and spiritually awakened human being. A man will then be instinctively correct, intellectually sound, and intuitively aware. His soul, his mind, and his brain will be functioning as they should and in right relation to each other, thus again producing coordination and correct alignment. Some day an analysis will be made of the contribution of the three great continents - Asia, Europe and America to this triple unfoldment, as far as the Aryan race is concerned. The glory of humanity must, however be remembered; it consists in this: each race has produced those who have expressed the highest [51] which was possible in their day and time - men who blended in themselves the triplicity of instinct, intellect and intuition. Their numbers were relatively few in the early stages of mankind's unfoldment, but the process of speeding up the development is rapidly going forward, and many are today fitting themselves for the "higher education" in the true sense of the term. Much more will be accomplished when the educators of the world grasp the purpose of the process as a whole planned unfoldment, and will then give their attention to the instinctual, intellectual and intuitive training of the race in such a manner that the whole twenty-eight years of training will be seen as an ordered, directed process, and the goal will be clearly visioned. It will be apparent, then, that those to be taught will be gauged from the angles upon which I have touched: Those capable of being rightly civilized. This refers to the mass of men. Those capable of being carried forward into, the world of culture. This includes a very large number. Those who can add to the assets of civilization and culture "the equipment" required for the process of functioning as conscious souls, not only in the three worlds of instinctual and intellectual living, but in the world of spiritual being also, and yet with complete continuity of consciousness and with a complete triple integration. Not all can pass into the higher grades, and this must be appreciated. The gauging of ability will be based upon an understanding of the ray types (the science of esoteric psychology), on a comprehension of the condition of the glandular and physiological equipment, upon certain specific tests, and upon the new form of astrology. I would here make a simple request to the earnest student. Ponder on the following four statements: [52] The antahkarana expresses the quality of the magnetism which opens the door into the teaching center of the Great White Lodge. The antahkarana is the conscious integrating force. The antahkarana is the medium of light transference. The antahkarana concerns the continuity of man's perception.
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