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From Intellect to Intuition - Chapter Two - The Purpose of Education
Surely there must be something more to the educational process than just fitting a man to cope with external facts and with his arbitrary environment? Humanity must be led out and into a deeper and wider future and realization. It must be equipped to meet and handle whatever may come, so as to get the highest and the best results. Men's powers should be drawn out to their fullest constructive expression. There must be no standardized limit of achievement, the attainment of which will leave them complacent, self-satisfied and, therefore, static. They must always be led from lower to higher states of realization, and the faculty of awareness must be steadily expanded. Expansion and growth is the law of life and while the mass of men must be lifted by a system of education, fitted to bring the greatest good to the greatest number, the individual must be given his full heritage, and special culture provided which will foster and strengthen the finest and the best amongst us, for in their achievement lies the [28] promise of the New Age. The inferior and the backward must also have special training in order that they may come up to the high standard which the educators set. But it is of even greater importance that no man, with a special aptitude and equipment, should be held down to the dead level of the mass standard of the educated class. It is right here that the difficulty of defining education becomes apparent, and the questions arise as to the real goal and the true objectives. Dr. Randall realizes this in an article he wrote, in which he says: "I would like to recommend the defining of education as a possible exercise for private meditation. Let each one ask himself what he means by 'education'; and if he ponders the question deeply he will discover that in order to answer it he will have to probe down to the innermost meaning of life itself. Thinking earnestly about the meaning of education compels us to face the fundamental questions of life as we never have before... Is the goal of education knowledge? Assuredly yes, but knowledge for what? Is its goal power? Again yes, but power to what end? Is its goal social adjustment? The modern age replies emphatically, yes, but what kind of adjustment shall it be, and determined by what ideals? That education aims not at mere knowledge or mere power of any kind, but at knowledge and power put to right uses is clearly recognized by the most progressive educational thought, though not by the popular opinion of the day..." "The new education has for its great end, therefore, the training and development of the individual for social ends, that is, for the largest service to man..." "We commonly classify education under three heads - primary, secondary and higher. To these three I should like [29] to add a fourth, highest. The highest education is religion but it is also education." - Randall, John Herman, Education and Religion, World Unity Magazine, October 1928. It is interesting to note that the same ideas are expressed by Bhagavan Das at the First All-Asia Educational Conference. He says: "The rules of Religion, i.e., of the larger Science, enable us... to discharge all these wider debts and duties. Religion has been described as the command or revelation of God. This only means, in other words, the laws of God's Nature, as revealed to us by the labors, intellectual, intuitional, inspirational, of the seers and scientists of all religions and all nations... We have heard of the three R's long enough. This fourth R, of genuine Religion, is more important than them all... But it has to be carefully discovered and thought out first. It behooves all sincere educators to help in this work by applying the scientific method of ascertaining agreements amidst differences." - Das, Bhagavan, The Unity of Asiatic Thought, i.e., Of All Religions, page 12. Both East and West seem to feel that an educational system that does not eventually lead a man out of the world of human affairs into the wider consciousness of spiritual things has failed in its mission and will not measure up to the soaring demand of the human soul. A training that stops short with the intellect, and ignores the faculty to intuit truth which the best minds evidence, lacks much. If it leaves its students with closed and static minds, it has left them without the equipment to touch that intangible and finest "four-fifths of life" which Dr. Wiggam tells us, lies outside the realm of scientific [30] training altogether. - Wiggam, Albert Edward, The New Decalogue of Science. The door must be opened for those who can go beyond the academic training of the mind with relation to physical plane living.
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