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Education in the New Age - Chapter IV - The Angle of Parenthood
The family group (like all else in human affairs) has shared in the general separativeness, selfishness and individual, isolated exclusiveness, based on class distinctions, inherited tradition, racial attitudes and national custom. Families (under any category and bracket) present a united front to the world; parents defend their own children and position and situation, right or wrong; family pride, tradition, pedigree are over-emphasized, leading to the different barriers which today separate man from man, family from family and group from group. The grip of the past upon families is a factor which is largely responsible for the revolt of modern youth against parental control, though other factors - such as rebellion against enforced religion and old outworn standards and philosophies - are equally responsible. However, under the coming world order, educators will prepare the young people in school and college for participation in an active and consciously realized group life. For this they will be prepared by training them in the recognition of the four factors I have listed as essential to human progress at this time. These will, when grasped and practiced, produce the needed right relationships and eventually a harmonious world. Hierarchy, responsibility, group interplay, and forgiveness or sacrifice - these are the four categories of recognition which will enable each person to do his part and take his share in bridging between person and person, between group and group, and between nation and nation, thus establishing that new world of recognized corporate relationships [131] which will eventually produce the civilization of light and love which will be characteristic of the Aquarian Age. It is these four concepts which lie behind the Science of the Antahkarana, the Science of Meditation, and the Science of Service. Their connotations have to be interpreted in no sentimental sense, or in the coin of current ideas, but always from the angle of a trained intelligence and of a spiritually developed consciousness. Parenthood will not be regarded primarily as an animal function or as a purely social or economic function, which are the usual lines of approach at this present time. The establishing of a deliberately prepared or constructed thread of light (as a definite part of the world-antahkarana) between parent and child, even in the prenatal stages, will be carefully taught. Thus a close rapport will be brought about "in the light" yet without establishing undue mental control and authority. This latter sentence will show you how impossible it has been to date to hasten the teaching of this new science of the antahkarana. Today it is beginning to be possible to lay the foundation for this new teaching, because the young people in every land are forcing upon their parents and their teachers the idea of their essential and determined independence. The revolt of youth, in spite of all the immediate and individual disasters, has been a desirable thing and has prepared the way for the establishing of right and better relations, based upon the premises which I have laid down. It is of course impossible for me to do more than indicate here the basis of the new education which will prepare the youth of the world for the responsibilities and duties of parenthood. The entire problem is tied up with that of sex, and also with the problem of the state and its control, far more than is generally conceded. Those are two problems which are only emerging today into their full significance, and with them I cannot here deal. Parenthood is the result, and the ordained result, of the relation of two animal [132] bodies, and I would have you ponder - even if ineffectually - upon the wider group implications of this statement. Parenthood is what makes a state, a nation, and a group possible as far as manifestation is concerned, and here again the vastness of the problem is staggering. Parenthood has also a close symbolic relationship to the Hierarchy, for the family unit is the symbol upon earth of the Hierarchy, and it is through the two facts of sexual relationship and physical birth that the vast Hierarchy of Souls can achieve physical manifestation and attain spiritual perfection in the three worlds of human evolution. One could (and this fact should be carefully borne in mind) divide the Hierarchy into two basic groups: Those souls who have reached perfection and achieved the status of divine servers. Those souls who are in the processes of evolution and passing through the periods of continual incarnation. The idea of generation, birth and subsequent manifestation runs like a guiding thread through all esoteric thought. The ancient teachers of the race, sent out by the Hierarchy from time to time, ever employed the symbolism of natural process in order to illustrate and make clear the needed instruction, and lay that spiritual foundation of truth which will in the coming age lead the race into new ways and a new manner of thought. For the esotericist, there is the process of birth into the darkness of physical incarnation which - in its turn - is the foreordained preparatory process which leads to birth into light, carried forward in the light and producing the externalization of the body of light. This continuing process (for in all ages this birth into light has been going forward) will produce that future world of light which it is the purpose of the natural processes of evolution to reveal. This is the "second birth" spoken of [133] in the New Testament, in which a man is "born again" into the world of light and love. From the angle of the new education, these new concepts will govern the mental attitude of parents in the coming civilization, and for this the adolescent must be prepared. It is the misinterpretation of the newer concepts which is prevalent at this time and is thus producing the emphasis laid - in certain countries and among nationalists of all countries - upon the necessity to increase the birth rate. Attention is now being paid to birth rate, its rise and fall, to correct care of mothers and children, even in the prenatal period, and to the education of parents everywhere. Out of all this, new ideas and attitudes must eventually arise which will be in line with the coming world culture and concepts. But today, the motive for this solicitude is wrong. The interior impulse to deal with the whole problem of parenthood in a newer and better way is right. The objectives, however, which are held before the race are not the highest or the most desirable. The necessity of the times will eventually produce radical changes in the approach to family life, parenthood and the training of children, and for this a nucleus is preparing the way - or can do so if faithful, attentive and intelligent work is done.
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