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Education in the New Age - Chapter I - Theory, Methods and Goals
It might be of value here if I clarified my use of the words "higher ego." As you know, if you have read A Treatise on the Seven Rays, Vols. I and II (Esoteric Psychology), the soul is an aspect of the divine energy in time and space. We are told that the Solar Logos circumscribed for His use and for the meeting of His desire, a certain measure of the substance of space and informed it with His life and consciousness. He did this for His good purposes and in conformity with His self-realized plan and intent. Thus He submitted Himself to limitation. The human monad followed the same procedure and - in time and space - limited itself in a similar manner. On the physical plane and in the physical body, this phenomenal and transient entity controls its phenomenal appearance through the two aspects of life and consciousness. The life principle - the flow of divine energy through all forms - temporarily seated in the heart, while the consciousness principle, the soul of all things, is located (temporarily as far as the form nature of a particular human unit is concerned) within the brain. As again you know, the life principle controls the mechanism through the medium of the blood stream, for "the blood is the life," and uses the heart as its central organ; whilst the consciousness principle [19] uses the nervous system as its instrument, with the intricate extensions of the organ of sensitivity, the spinal column. The objective of education should therefore be the training of the mechanism to respond to the life of the soul. The higher Self or Soul is the sumtotal of the consciousness of the Monad, again in time and space. The lower self or soul is, for our purposes, as much of that sumtotal as any one person in any one life can use and express. This activity is dependent upon the type and quality of the body nature, the mechanism produced by soul activity in other lives, and the effect of reaction to environing conditions. The increasing of soul awareness, the deepening of the flow of consciousness, and the development of an inner continuity of awareness, plus the evocation of soul attributes and aspects upon the physical plane through the medium of its triple mechanism, constitute the objective of all education. These aspects are, as you well know: 1. Will or purpose. This, through education, should be developed to the point where the manifested life is governed by conscious spiritual purpose and the life tendency is correctly oriented towards reality. The right direction of the will should be one of the major concerns of all true educators. The will-to-good, the will-to-beauty, and the will-to-serve must be cultivated. 2. Love-wisdom. This is essentially the unfolding of the consciousness of the whole. We call it group consciousness. Its first development is self-consciousness, which is the realization by the soul that (in the three worlds of human evolution) man is the Three in One and One in Three. He can therefore react to the associated groups of lives which constitute his own little phenomenal appearance; self-consciousness [20] is, therefore, a stage on the way to group consciousness and is the consciousness of the Immediate. Through education, this self-consciousness must be unfolded until the man recognizes that his consciousness is a corporate part of a greater whole. He blends then with the group interests, activities and objectives. They are eventually his and he becomes group conscious. This is love. It leads to wisdom, which is love in manifested activity. Self-interest becomes group interest. Such should be the major objective of all true educational endeavor. Love of self (self-consciousness), love of those around us (group-consciousness), become eventually love of the whole (God consciousness). Such are the steps. 3. Active Intelligence. This concerns the unfolding of the creative nature of tile conscious, spiritual man. It takes place through right use of the mind, with its power to intuit ideas, to respond to impact, to translate, analyze, and to construct forms for revelation. Thus the soul of man creates. This creative process can be described, as far as its steps are concerned, as follows: The soul creates its physical body, its phenomenal appearance, its outer form. The soul creates, in time and space, in line with its desires. Thus the secondary world of phenomenal things comes into being and our modern civilization is the result of this creative activity of the soul's desire nature, limited by form. Ponder on this. The soul creates through the direct agency of the lower mind and hence the appearance of the world of symbols which fill our united lives with interest, concepts, ideas and beauty, through the written word, the spoken word, and the creative [21] arts. These are the products of the thought of the thinkers of the race. The right direction of this already developed tendency is the aim of all true education. The nature of ideas, the modes of intuiting them, and the laws which should govern all creative work are its goals and objectives. Thus we come to the world of attributes which supplement the activity of the three aspects, in the same way that the three major rays are enhanced and aided by the work of the four minor rays. These four attributive unfoldments in man, through the activity of the soul in manifestation, are: 4. The attribute of harmony, produced through conflict. This leads to release and to the eventual power to create. This is one of the attributes which education should deal with from the angle of the intuition and should hold before its exponents as personality and group objectives. It is the attribute latent in all forms and is that innate urge or discontent which leads man to struggle and progress and evolve in order finally to make at-one-ment and union with his soul. It is the lowest aspect of that higher spiritual and monadic triad which reflects itself in the soul. It is the consciousness of harmony and beauty which drives the human unit along the path of evolution to an eventual return to his emanating Source.
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