Quest Magazine

Printed in the Spring 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Torres, Gasper. "Theosophy and the Child" Quest  102. 2 (Spring  2014): pg. 60-63

By Gaspar Torres

In Theosophy we find a different concept of the soul than is found in other religious, philosophical, and scientific lines. For a student of Theosophy, the soul of a child is not like a blank page created by God, but a soul with a wealth of experiences that comes to a new stage to continue its development from a previous point that has been reached. The soul is already accompanied by a series of conditions. When we study these in view of the teachings on reincarnation, they enable us to help that soul advance more quickly toward the goal of human evolution. The soul can be helped to use its new body in the right way to accelerate its unfoldment.

On the other hand, when these factors are unknown, it is possible to hinder the progress of that soul and to lose a great number of opportunities for making better use of the new incarnation. It is undeniable that the present average level of human evolution is still poor: we are as a whole more animal than truly human. We need to weaken the lower impulses and reinforce the spiritual ones. But if this is not done with an understanding of the law of evolution and the characteristics that accompany a child at birth, it becomes very difficult to be truly useful to that soul. The nineteenth-century poet and hero José Martí­, probably the first Cuban to write about Theosophy, expressed some illuminating ideas on how to correctly raise a soul in a child's body:

There is no more difficult task than the one of distinguishing, in our existence, the clinging, acquired life from the spontaneous and natural one—to separate what comes with man from what has been added by the lessons, legacies, and ordinances of those who have come before him. As soon as he is born, they are already standing next to his cradle with large and strong bandages in hand: the philosophies, religions, parents' passions, political systems. And they tie him up and restrict him, and already the man is, for his whole life on this earth, a bridled horse . . . To strengthen the human will; to leave to the spirits their own seductive form; not to tarnish virgin natures with the imposition of artificial prejudices; to enable them to take for themselves what is useful, without confusing them or impelling them along a predetermined path—that is the only way of populating the earth with the vigorous and creative generation that it lacks!

Only what is genuine is fruitful. Only what is direct is powerful. What another bequeaths to us is like a reheated delicacy. It is the duty of each man to reconstruct life: as soon as he looks within himself, he reconstructs it. (Martí­, 7:230)

As he strikingly points out, we have to acknowledge that the new personal soul that is beginning to use the new body needs to be stimulated to identify within itself, and to manifest, the divine spiritual essence from which it emanated, without erroneously identifying with the body and the inferior life that animates it.

If we know from Theosophy that the child is a monad trying to manifest itself by means of the immortal soul through the personal soul, we can encourage that manifestation. We can avail ourselves of the positive characteristics that the personal soul brings from its spiritual soul or ego. But the soul also brings skan­dhas, or accumulated karma, from previous lives. These are not in harmony with the higher ego, but are a result of past entanglements with materiality. They will tend to drag the soul down to lower expressions that are in harmony with the elemental life of its lower bodies—physical, emotional, and mental. We need to prevent these inferior impulses from appearing.

C.W. Leadbeater explained that the baptismal ceremony in the Christian church had a deeper purpose: to help the soul of a newborn—through the holy water and holy oils used in the ceremony—to express in its physical body all the best that the soul may have brought from prior lives. It is also intended to minimize the lower tendencies held over from those previous stages that will incline the individual toward a life dominated by materiality.

A child who is more than one year old is less likely to be influenced by ceremonies of this kind; as a result, this is undoubtedly an indirect form of help. After this early stage, the child could be helped in various other ways to advance his evolution and keep his attention away from what may drag him down. Eventually he will be old enough to manage what is happening within him and to be more aware of his true goals as a soul rather than being a mere toy of the forces and blind energies of his bodies. A small child has little discernment of these things, as his emotional and mental vehicles are not totally harmonized with the physical one. If the negativity carried over from previous incarnations can remain latent until adolescence and youth, the individual can decide the course of his life more consciously, comparatively free from the negative impulses of the past. If we are always alert to stimulating the highest in the individual, we will also stimulate a yearning for self-knowledge which, once born, will remain for the rest of the incarnation.

We all know that a small child, luckily, does not remember his past. Thus he participates in the original innocence of the pure soul and is not too strongly inclined to repeat that past, the good or the bad. (Even the good needs to be realized by the soul in a new form rather than as a mere repetition or imitation of what it has already done.) Although the soul may bring the impulse for that new expression from its spiritual side, it enters in a body with lower tendencies, due not only to the legacy it receives from the parents, but also to negative inclinations from previous lives that tend to awaken in the presence of the elemental life of the bodies. Thus there are always two forces present: selfishness and a focus on the separate, lower life, and the higher soul, which tends to search for the lost unity. As a result, the elemental life will thrust us downward, to the mineral stage, while the soul will thrust us upward, to accomplish our evolution, which has already passed the mineral, vegetable, and animal stages, and which through human life has the capacity to return to the primordial Unity.

In the first stages of the human cycle we have to descend to manifestation in the densest forms of existence. There we enter into a relationship with the tendencies of the elemental kingdoms that we have to root out completely in the second half of the cycle. An adult who does not understand this may see tendencies in a child that, from an orthodox religious perspective, may look like the result of "original sin"—a concept that is one of the most lamentable sources of misunderstanding, ignorance, and superstition. In reality these tendencies are nothing more than an interplay of forces that place themselves in opposition to each other between the ascending arc of the human soul and the descending currents of the elemental life—a complementary expression of life in the universe.

We should not, then, impose iron disciplines on children in order to prevent "diabolical" forces from dominating them. We should also be flexible enough to inspire them to do the right thing from their souls, understanding the struggle that we all are waging in order to learn the most important lessons of evolution. It would be helpful for this endeavor to study C. Jinarajadasa's Flowers and Gardens. Here, using the allegory of a dream, the author puts us in contact with certain ideals to realize in ourselves and to utilize in the education and guidance of children. He draws the analogy of a beautiful garden in which flowers are the symbolic expression of the flowering of the spiritual soul in all human beings, especially children, who can attain it more easily.

In the West we have Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi in the nineteenth century and Maria Montessori (assisted by Annie Besant) in the twentieth as figures who helped to eradicate the ancient educational notion that "with blood the letter enters" and move into a new type of education based on the awakening of the interest and love of knowledge in the child. Nevertheless, a great deal remains to be done to provide an education that is truly useful and conducive to the best development of the spiritual soul. Only Theosophy in its widest scope can provide the appropriate framework for these improvements. Theosophical teaching exists for the sake of practical learning: it is eminently practical. If we erroneously regard it as mere theory, it is due to our lack of vision, as all Theosophical knowledge is in itself a practical invitation of immense and immediate value if we open our eyes to its usefulness.

The two cycles of seven years that span from childhood to youth—that is, from seven to fourteen and fourteen to twenty-one—provide the most important stages in which we can give our children and youth a firm foundation for a fruitful spiritual life. This cannot be done with theories or with mere words, but requires inspiring ethical examples so that the child can compare his own impulses with the behavior of his elders and his environment. Whatever is imposed on the child will never be completely assimilated by the soul. It will only result in fear of punishment or reprimand, and the repressed desire to continue the unsatisfactory behavior will reappear as soon as the fear dissipates.

Some children are docile, others are rebellious. Hence it will require great attention to decide how best to guide them according to their individual characteristics. We can generally classify children into three large groups, corresponding to the three great margas or paths: those who are active; those who are emotional; and those who are curious or who like to investigate. We need to adapt our incentives and responses to their temperaments, which we will discover through their preferences and behavior. For those in the first group, we will promote physical activity; for those in the second group, we will encourage expressions of love, both in art and in devotional activities; and for those in the third group, we will foster their inclinations toward study, which can make them ponder, reflect, and keep their minds as unprejudiced as possible so that they can be prepared for ascending to the levels of wisdom. In each of these three approaches, the stimulus employed should have a keynote of generosity and nobility so that the child will not deviate toward selfishness. At the same time, stimulating what is most prominent in the child's character does not mean that we ignore or neglect other aspects of his being, because, as the soul ascends, everything is integrated into the higher unity of Life that encompasses all its manifestations.

We need to be constantly attentive to the possible deviations from any of these paths. We also want to bring adequate stimulation and focus to whatever the child may be doing, feeling, or thinking. But we must be careful not to pressure children, even unconsciously, to behave as we think is best for them on the basis of our own desires. The tendency, especially on the parents' part, to want their children to be as they wish, and not as the children decide, remains very common even though parents have been frequently counseled to respect children's spontaneous inclination to express what they naturally feel. No soul has to do what another one tells it to do; it needs to mature in order to decide its life for itself, at the appropriate age; its elders should never impose their preferences, or their frustrations, on it.

We need to be especially careful always to accompany our words with our example. This is especially important in regard to ethics. If we want children to be truthful, it is crucial to refrain from lying to them under any circumstances. There is nothing more destructive for a developing personality than the contradiction between what its elders say and what it sees them do. When one family member tries to emphasize some ethical value, such as truthfulness, while others at home behave differently, it is almost impossible for the child to find a reasonable answer, especially if he has not totally reached an age of full discernment and understanding. Consequently, the child is almost always infused with hypocrisy, which so greatly stains present society and which was one of the disgraces most condemned by the Masters and by H.P. Blavatsky. If we can preserve the innocence of early childhood, we can foster the growth of a human being who can avoid falling into the trap of others' deceptions, but can still, from his own conviction, maintain his sincerity, truthfulness, and unselfishness. These will enable him to continue his spiritual development without the impediments that a lack of ethics would impose.

As a final point, we would like to emphasize the importance of gradually communicating to children the sense of responsibility that should characterize every human soul in adult life. At one stage of development—the age of the "why's"—the child asks about everything and needs answers. But as he continues to grow, both physically and psychologically, he has to begin to find out for himself what he should do, choose, study, and work at. We cannot develop persons who are dependent on others. Human evolution consists of expressing the uniqueness that each one of us needs to discover for ourselves. At the same time this should be for the benefit of all, and not merely an exhibition of conceit.

Although Theosophy instructs us about the existence of spiritual teachers and divine beings, it also admonishes us that those beings will not do the work of self-realization. Each one of us needs to accomplish this on his own. Thus he will be able to ascend to the stature, first of superman, and then of divine being. This process continues until each one of us attains the regency of a planetary or solar system, just as our system is governed by the Logos who has brought our monads to the point where they may reach the summit that the Masters have attained. This summit may recede, but it will never vanish: there are always new heights to reach and express in manifestation. We begin at the human level and will continue to ascend until we arrive at those divine summits.

Humanity completes a cycle of seven kingdoms that started with the three elemental ones in the descending arc, and which, after reaching maximum darkness in the mineral, has been searching for the light. It first looked for that light instinctively, in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and now needs to do so consciously, at the human level. As Annie Besant said: "I would rather be blinded by the light, than sit willfully in the twilight or the dark."

Sources

Gaspar Torres was born into a Theosophical family and has been active in the Theosophical Society from his youth. He has served as national president of the TS in Cuba; made presentations at the TS international headquarters in Adyar, the Theosophical Caribbean Basin, and the Inter-American Theosophical Federation; and has supported TS work internationally. This article is based on a talk given for the TS in Bogotí¡, Colombia, in August 2010.

Printed in the Spring 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Chin, Vicente Hao. "The Goal of Education" Quest  102. 2 (Spring  2014): pg. 56-59

By Vicente Hao Chin

The aim of education is to prepare young people for life. What is this life that we are preparing for?

In standard education, life is implicitly defined as social life, that is, the young students are being prepared to adapt to society. The values, habits, attitudes, and skills being inculcated are those that are approved by current society. Five centuries ago, these values would have been different.

Today's colleges, for example, devote an inordinate proportion of the curriculum to subjects that are meant to heighten skills for certain professions, such as marketing, financing, banking, or computer science. The implied message is that the aim of college education is to "succeed" in one's career. As a result, the meaning of the individual's life is frequently defined in terms of career.

This assumption"that life is to be defined in terms of professional values"is both superficial and shortsighted.

It is superficial because human life is more than professional life. It is also about relationships, joy, sorrow, meaning, love, harmony, contentment, and spirituality.

Such a view is also shortsighted because it does not consider the larger purpose of human life. Human life has a metaphysical or transcendent aspect that goes beyond the changing values of society. Because educators, philosophers, and religious people cannot agree about this purpose, this aspect has generally been relegated to a secondary place among public and secular institutions. Religious schools, on the other hand, assume such a metaphysical foundation of life but translate such a perceived larger purpose into the curriculum in a dogmatic and unhealthy manner that makes people fearful, superstitious, and sometimes irrational.

Preparation for life must embody a view that is both commonsensical and profound, based on the accumulated wisdom of humanity. Such a view must be understood and not just be blindly believed.

Here are some thoughts on what we are preparing children for:

• To be able to effectively face the challenges of the natural and social world of an adult. This includes sufficient knowledge about health, language, culture, technology, etc., as well as general knowledge that enables children to navigate the labyrinth of modern society.
• To live a generally happy and fulfilling life. This has emotional, cognitive, and ethical aspects, that is, knowing how to handle our emotional nature, as well as having a reasonably effective philosophy of life and an ethical way of living based on sound, universal moral principles.
• To have effective and fulfilling relationships. Failure in relationships is perhaps the major cause of human unhappiness.
• To be able to discover one's calling and pursue it meaningfully to the best of one's ability.
• To pursue one's highest potential in terms of human growth. This natural drive is called by many names: the drive towards maturity, self-actualization, or self-realization.
• To be able to meaningfully contribute towards the welfare and happiness of human beings, as well as of other sentient creatures in nature; to help humanity attain a state of collective harmony and mutual benevolence on an enduring basis.

An individual who is able to achieve most, if not all, of these goals would be a fulfilled human being. We can hardly ask for more. To realize these potentials is the highest goal of education.

In the light of the above, much of modern education is a failure, both in the so-called developed and in the developing countries. In the economically developed countries, we find an elevated level of stress, anxiety, alienation, and divorce, as well as high incidences of crime, drugs, and suicide. In the developing countries, there is a high degree of injustice, corruption, insecurity, inequality of income, illiteracy, and social superstition.

The goal of many progressive schools and alternative education methods is to correct the present imbalance of school curricula, as well as to provide an environment that will nurture wholesomeness of character in the individual. They avoid the many harmful methods that characterize many of our modern schools, such as competitiveness, use of grades in the measurement of competence, and the use of fear and coercion in motivating students to study.

A Preparation for Life

Formal education, then, is a systematic preparation for life in its broadest sense, rather than merely preparing for social adaptation.

An uneducated person, in this larger context, will have to find out the solutions to the puzzles and difficulties in life by trial and error, and will have to depend upon his or her native intelligence, resourcefulness, and endurance. An educated person, however, is exposed to a systematic and accelerated way in which these lessons are learned beforehand, thus lessening the chances of pain and suffering when one faces life as an adult.

Good education, therefore, is one that will prepare a person to face life in its totality, contributing to the happiness and fulfillment of the individual, whereas poor education essentially fails in this task.

Education involves at least three aspects:

Integrated understanding of life. Good education provides an adequate and balanced map of reality that addresses significant facets of life and nature that affect one's happiness and sense of meaning. At present, the general maps of reality given by schools are based on a popular understanding of life, which is characterized by serious internal contradictions. This view teaches that honesty is good but at the same time teaches that honesty is impractical. It teaches love but at the same time views genuine love as too idealistic. In the long run, this approach fails in many significant ways, both for the individual and for society. For the individual, it results in unhappiness and psychological fragmentation. For society, it leads to insecurity, destruction, conflict, and war.

Development of sound character. Dealing with life involves the development of certain qualities, such as perseverance, kindness, absence of fear, a sense of justice, and truthfulness, that harmonize one's nature with reality. Character development entails a clarity of values"about what is right and wrong, what is more important and less"and the ability to act in accordance with these values. In its loftiest levels, good education will include the nurturing of the transcendent life.

Acquiring of life skills. Life skills are capabilities that address the demands of life in current society. Certain levels of knowledge about language, computers, commerce, and politics are needed for an individual to function well in present society. Those who do not acquire such knowledge will tend to be relegated to job functions that are basic and survival-oriented and may lead to a sense of unfulfillment in life.

Generally, standard schools all over the world focus mainly on the third need"to be able to cope with the demands of society: earning a living, becoming well-informed about history and current events, acquiring current social values, etc.

This third aspect, while important, does not in itself lead to deep fulfillment in life. Success in it may provide satisfaction, but does not necessarily ensure happiness and meaningfulness. This third aspect also tends to wrap the individual in the cocoon of current social values, blind to the larger picture of what life and existence are all about.

The task of the educator, then, is to formulate a program that will meet all of these three needs. A school that merely satisfies the third need will be nurturing young people who will likely encounter insurmountable walls later when their life skills are not adequate to meet deeper issues, such as happiness, effective relationship, self-mastery, or spirituality.

Integrated Understanding

Children learn about life and its rules through exposure to, and interaction with, people and environment. Their inherent or instinctive reactions to such exposure help form their personalities. Examples of such reaction patterns are pain avoidance, curiosity, tendency to repeat pleasure, instinct for survival, fear, need for security, and need for approval.

Exposure and reaction automatically develop a worldview in the child, and this worldview is his or her understanding of what life is. It is not consciously formulated, but unconsciously formed. Thus, for instance, becoming a bully is an unconscious reaction to insecurity"the need to assert oneself through aggression in the face of perceived threats.

The child's worldview, therefore, is simply an amalgamation of distinct and disparate learned reactions to environmental situations and pressures. It has two characteristics:

The worldview is unintegrated, that is, contradictory views within it can coexist because children still have a poor capacity for integration. They do not think things through thoroughly and do not yet understand the meaning and implication of life issues.

Such a worldview is also unexamined, that is, there is a tendency to accept the statements of adults or media with little questioning, and thus perpetuate it even if it leads to dysfunctionality.

Schools tend to perpetuate this lack of integration as well as a failure to review the validity of popular worldviews. This is due to a number of factors.

The adults themselves (teachers and administrators) harbor the same contradictory elements in their own lives and worldviews so that they do not consider these as unusual or abnormal. Thus the contradiction between "Honesty is the best policy" and "Honesty is often impractical" is left unresolved. The contradiction between the virtue of love and the justifications for anger is left unresolved. That God is omniscient does not appear to them as inconsistent with the Old Testament teachings that God regrets having done something or that God changes his mind when someone prays to him.

The ability to review or question the validity of a statement or a presumed fact is a sign of intelligence. The standard school system often does not encourage this because it is too troublesome to have to explain everything to students. Besides, many teachers often do not know the answers, and get irritated when they are asked questions they cannot answer. They often resort to the power of their authority to inhibit such questioning. A typical teacher would get irritated if asked, "Why do I have to study how to solve square roots?" or "Why do we have to memorize the capital cities of the provinces?"

It is easier to require children to do a certain assignment than to motivate them to do the assignment.

For this reason it is important for a school to have teachers who are psychologically active, creative, and free. They themselves are not afraid to question things and hence tend to integrate their own understanding of life. They are willing to reject beliefs that are inconsistent with validated views of life. This necessarily means that the administrators or heads of schools should similarly be open, creative, and free, and do not feel threatened when assumptions are questioned by teachers, students, and parents. These all bring us to the issue of the education of the educators themselves, that is, the universities that prepare them to become teachers and administrators. These institutions themselves often embody unintegrated views of living, thus producing unintegrated educators. We find ourselves in a chicken-or-egg dilemma. This is where truly progressive schools become important; they are willing and ready to break this pernicious cycle and start with solid foundations.

Character Building

The ability to face the challenges of life entails the development of certain character qualities, such as one-pointedness, self-mastery, absence of fear, respectfulness, and friendliness. It also entails clarity in one's ethical views and a willingness to practice them in life.

The home and school environments are the primary training grounds for character. This is not so much taught as learned from example. Again, this is difficult to teach, primarily because many parents and teachers have not sufficiently developed these character qualities within themselves. It is difficult to teach integrity if parents or teachers have problems in making their actions consistent with their teachings.

But at the same time character building can be systematically taught, provided that the teachers are clear bout values and principles as well as the methods of inculcating such values, and provided that they themselves are genuinely trying to arrive at such integration. For example, a child who is psychologically secure does not become a bully, because there is no psychological motivation for bullying if the teachers and the school environment consciously endeavor to be affirming and supportive. Honesty can be strengthened in an environment that does not penalize honesty.

Character development is not simply about values and virtues. It also involves a quality of self-awareness about internal psychological conflicts that need to be integrated and resolved. A virtue like love cannot manifest when a child is not aware of the uncontrollable rise of anger. When anger takes over, there is a compulsive desire to hurt others"an act that is the opposite of love.

Thus character building does not simply involve knowing about right and wrong, but also requires the self-mastery that enables one to act according to one's views or convictions (being honest, free from fear, etc.). The development of this capacity is the self-transformative aspect of education: the mastery of one's behavioral patterns and the awakening of one's higher nature. All schools must include self-transformative insights and skills into their curricula.

Learning Life Skills

Skills differ from character and worldviews. While character goals are quite universal regardless of era and culture, skills are often dependent upon culture, social convention, and the prevalent technology.

Communication skills are among the most important skills that a young person needs to develop. With character as the foundation, the ability to communicate effectively smooths the individual's relationship with others. This includes the capacity to genuinely listen and to speak assertively without hurting or offending others. An inordinately high percentage of human unhappiness is due to relationship failures. Communication skills are the second-level foundation of effective relationships and social skills. The first level, as we have seen, is character quality, for without this, communication skills become little more than a technique or a form of manipulation.

The development of intellectual ability is needed more and more as the world grows more and more complex. It is said that the volume of information in the world doubles every twenty years. To be able to appreciate the essentials of such information and use them in one's professional life has become a necessity in the modern world. A good school is one that is able to adequately prepare young people to acquire these skills such that they become effective in their chosen career or life work. But the demands for professional excellence must not stifle the deeper quest for an integrated and meaningful life. The school itself must nurture the balance between the outer and the inner, between the material or social and the psychological and spiritual. The lopsided life is the breeding ground of insecurity, competition, self-centeredness and antisocial behavior.

A wholesome school, then, must be able to prepare students to meet the demands of an adult life in terms of career, social skills, self-mastery, self-awareness, clarity of values, and an integrated philosophy of life. Without such an integral approach, schools will tend to produce dysfunctional individuals who may be competent accountants or engineers but who are dismal failures in life"unhappy, unfulfilled, and a bane to themselves and society. Right education and wise educators play a pivotal role in breaking the social cycle that perpetuates the formation of the maladapted life. They also prepare the ground for a meaningful, happy, and productive life, which forms the basis of a harmonious, benevolent, and enlightened society.

Vicente Hao Chin, Jr., is past president of the Theosophical Society in the Philippines as well as founder and president of Golden Link College. His works include Why Meditate? and The Process of Self-Transformation. This article is a revised adaptation of a chapter of his book On Education.

Printed in the Spring 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Moody, David Edmund. "Freeing the Mind: Krishnamurti's Approach to Education" Quest  102. 2 (Spring  2014): pg. 50-55

By David Edmund Moody

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895—1986) was among the most admired spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. One central thrust of his teaching was the cultivation of a mind that is totally open and free of conditioned responses. Several schools were organized along the lines of his thought. Here David Moody writes of his experience teaching at one, the Oak Grove School in Ojai, California. —Ed.

Krishnamurti's figure was diminutive; his dress was casual but tasteful; and he took my outstretched hand in both of his. His hands were warm and dry to the touch, but so sensitive and delicate that one did not wish to grasp them too firmly. He asked if we had met before, and I said we had not, although I had put a few questions to him from the audience at his public talks in Switzerland three years earlier.

He escorted me into the cottage, and we sat down there with the director of the school, Mark Lee, and two or three others. Krishnamurti asked if we all understood what the school was for, why it had been established, and what was our mission and function there. He touched my arm repeatedly in a gesture of reassurance. His manner was warm and friendly, and he said we would meet many times in the months ahead to discuss all the issues associated with the school.

The mission of the school was, in fact, unmistakable. It had been spelled out in black and white in a statement composed by Krishnamurti and was, in any case, apparent from the whole of his philosophy. The school's aim was nothing less than to work a revolution in the consciousness of mankind—to bring about a way of life that was whole, sane, intelligent, and informed with a sense of the sacred. The central element in this intention was to "uncondition" the mind of the student, a process that entailed unconditioning the teacher as well. In this way, a new kind of mind would emerge, one that would affect the consciousness of the world.

The school operated under the auspices of the Krishnamurti Foundation of America, a private, charitable trust designed to facilitate Krishnamurti's speaking schedule and to preserve a complete and authentic record of his work. In its first year, the school had only a handful of students, ranging in age from nine to twelve. Until permanent facilities could be constructed, classes were conducted on the ten-acre property at the far eastern end of the Ojai Valley. There, set amidst orange and avocado groves, were Pine Cottage, an office building, and a large, ranch-style residential structure known as Arya Vihara, Sanskrit for "noble dwelling." By extension, the entire property was often referred to as Arya Vihara.

Mark Lee, the director of the school, had taught and served for several years as principal of the elementary section at Krishnamurti's Rishi Valley School in Andhra Pradesh, India. Warm and congenial, with an aristocratic bearing, Mark was in his late thirties and stood well over six feet tall. He was highly presentable in manners and appearance, and thoroughly devoted to Krishnamurti and the work of the school.

The summer before the school opened, I had been hired by Mark to serve as the main academic teacher. The trajectory of my career at the age of twenty-eight had been somewhat uneven, and I had doubts about my suitability for this role. I had dropped out of a Ph.D. program in political philosophy at the University of California in Los Angeles, and my only teaching experience was as a private tutor. On the other hand, my interest in the field of psychology was deep and had been cultivated from adolescence as well as in my undergraduate years at the University of California in Berkeley. The study of investigators as diverse as Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, Abraham Maslow, and P.D. Ouspensky had perhaps prepared me to appreciate the scope and cogency of Krishnamurti's contribution. In any case, the depth of my interest in his work was no doubt the greatest strength I brought to my employment.

Even in its embryonic stages, the school exhibited certain characteristics that were destined to endure for many years. Each morning began with an assembly attended by all the students and staff. Mark Lee or one of the members of the staff would make a short presentation of something he or she had read or realized, designed to inspire and edify young and older alike. Then there would be a moment or two of silence before classes began.

Academic subjects were taught in the morning, art and games in the afternoon. Our aim was excellence in all areas, but the students had their own agendas, which did not always coincide with ours. One young boy named Eli was bright and curious but physically was as restless as a monkey; he could not be contained in a chair or even in the classroom. Eventually he squirmed his way out of the school completely.

Lunch was a vegetarian affair, prepared on the premises for the staff. Meat was excluded from the menu as a matter of ethical principle, although students' families were not required to do likewise at home.                                                                                                                                  

At the end of the day, the teachers and students gathered together for a short meeting that Mark called "wrap-up." Any unresolved issues that had arisen during the day were supposed to be addressed and settled before the students went home. But wrap-up rarely had the intended effect. The students were tired and restless and in no mood for civilized discussion. Eventually the practice was discontinued.

The spacious lawns at Arya Vihara, the orange groves, and the family atmosphere gave the school a sense of charm and even, at times, an enchanted spirit. But I had high expectations for myself, the students, and the school, and was not easily satisfied. The management of classroom behavior is an art that every first-year teacher must master, and some never do. The challenge was exacerbated at Oak Grove by Krishnamurti's philosophy of education: he insisted that the student should feel no sense of compulsion but nevertheless should behave with awareness and consideration for others.

A few weeks after our introduction, my first private meeting with Krishnamurti occurred, this time at my initiative. I wasn't sure how to approach him and asked Mark Lee for guidance. I was told to just knock on the back door of his cottage and see if he was available. I did so late one afternoon and was greeted sweetly by Mary Zimbalist. Mary was a slender woman, middle-aged, with exquisite taste, porcelain beauty, and an acute intelligence. In response to my request, she said she would see if Krishnamurti was available. A moment later, he appeared and motioned for me to come in.

The back door of the cottage opened into the kitchen, where a small table and two chairs were situated under a window. We sat down there, and Krishnamurti waited for me to collect myself and state my business. I was too much in awe of the man and aware of my proximity to him to speak freely, but I managed to articulate the essence of the issue that had driven me to seek him out. "What is the law in the classroom?" I inquired.

Krishnamurti's educational philosophy entailed the radical principle that reward and punishment were equally pernicious as a basis for shaping behavior or cultivating learning. Progressive schools such as Summerhill might forgo punishment as an operating procedure, but simultaneously to renounce "positive" incentives was symptomatic of the uniqueness of Krishnamurti's approach. What remained unclear to a first-year teacher was what procedures remained, after reward and punishment were abandoned, in the event that misbehavior occurred.

Krishnamurti grasped the meaning and import of my question without any further elaboration. He held his head in his hands for a moment and then began to speak. In paraphrase, he answered along these lines:

The actual misbehaviors the students may exhibit, and my particular responses to them, must not be my primary concern. By the time those behaviors take place, the battle has already been lost. What is needed is to prevent the very possibility of misbehavior before it ever occurs. This requires creating an environment, an atmosphere, that is so special, so orderly, so clearly designed to take care of the student in every way, that he or she will immediately recognize it and respond by behaving accordingly. The student's attitude will be, as the British say, that some things simply "aren't done."

To clarify the point, Krishnamurti employed the analogy of smoking cigarettes in a church. There one often feels the presence of some sacred quality. To smoke cigarettes in that presence would be simply unthinkable. He asked if I could cultivate a similar atmosphere in the classroom.

It was certainly not clear to me that I could cultivate such an atmosphere. I redirected the conversation back to the terms that made sense to me.

"So, there is no law in the classroom?" I asked. He seemed to shake his head to indicate, "No, there is not," although I gathered that was not really the lesson he wanted me to take away from our conversation.

In late December, Krishnamurti embarked on a series of meetings with teachers and parents designed to articulate in detail the basic principles of the school. Why had it been established? What was the basic nature of the student and of society? What principles should guide educational processes and practices? These meetings occurred on a weekly basis for three months and left an indelible record of Krishnamurti's philosophy and intentions. The meetings were recorded and meticulously transcribed and represent an enduring testament to his vision for the school.

The quality of Krishnamurti's persona was somewhat different on these occasions than it had been in my previous encounters with him. These events were more public and more formal, and his attitude and manner were adjusted accordingly. The audience consisted of some thirty or forty parents, teachers, and other members of the school community. They were invited not only to listen but also to participate in a dialogue about the purposes of the school. Krishnamurti took his responsibility most seriously, and that attitude was reflected in the quality of his interaction.

He typically entered the room at the moment the meeting was scheduled to begin. He did not wear a tie, but his clothing was selected with care and good taste. He sat in a folding wooden chair with a cardigan sweater draped over his arm or arranged neatly on his lap. As he sat down, he might glance around the room and smile shyly at a few of those whom he recognized. Whoever was managing the tape recorder that day would approach him and attach a small microphone to his shirt. He would continue to sit for a minute or two, collecting himself and allowing a few latecomers to get settled before beginning to speak.

Most of the twelve conversations that year began with Krishnamurti articulating an overview of the purpose of the school and the reason for the meeting. But soon the monologue would evolve into an active exchange with members of the audience. These exchanges were often somewhat charged and animated, as Krishnamurti sought with all his energy to convey the meaning and import of the challenge we were facing together.

During the course of these meetings, Krishnamurti presented a set of observations that represent a practise  of his entire educational philosophy. Perhaps his foremost principle was that conventional education is far too narrow in its exclusive concern with the accumulation of knowledge and the cultivation of the intellect. Such a focus, he insisted, cannot possibly prepare a student to meet the whole of life. Education should address not only the intellect but all the dimensions of the child, including the physical, emotional, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual. Attention to right relationship, manners, and behavior is also essential. 

School itself, he maintained, is fundamentally a place of leisure—not in the casual, conventional sense of a time of relaxation and entertainment, but rather as freedom from occupation and pressure. Only in a state of leisure is it possible to learn—to observe, to inquire, to discover something new. 

Right education will cultivate in the student a global outlook, a realization that all of humanity is linked and shares a common, basic psychological condition. The individual is not, in any deep respect, different from mankind everywhere. The school's work is not to reproduce an American mind, or a European mind, or an Indian mind, but rather a mind unconditioned by identification with any national, ethnic, or cultural group.

The role of the teacher entails unconditioning himself as well as the student. There is no blueprint or method for this process because any prescribed method can only produce a mechanical result. What can be done is to explore the meaning of conditioning and the actual, living reality of one's own state of mind. 

Conditioning is essentially the weight of tradition, the burden of past generations, the accumulated patterns of thought and judgment imposed on the individual by society. Education in the traditional sense is an agent and facilitator of the conditioning process. In a profound reversal of convention, Krishnamurti proposed instead that education become the process of unconditioning the human mind. 

In one of the early meetings, I asked Krishnamurti to clarify the essential nature of conditioning. I had my question prepared in advance and waited for the appropriate moment to present it.

Krishnamurti: You understand: the whole [of] Western civilization, from Freud, Jung, and all the others—and also in India, which is an old tradition—has established this tradition that introspective analysis, professional analysis, is the only way. That is, examine the origin of the mischief—whether you are put on the pot rightly or wrongly as a baby—and work from there. We are asking quite a different thing: whether it is at all possible, without this self-critical or professional analysis—can the mind be unconditioned? 

David Moody: One of my difficulties in inquiring into this is a lack of real clarity regarding, simply, what is conditioning?

Krishnamurti: What is conditioning? Your mind, sir, one's mind, the human mind is the result of centuries of experience.

Moody: Even that I don't follow. As I see it, my mind is the result only of my own experience, since I've been born. I don't understand what you mean by "centuries of experience."

Krishnamurti: Your brain, one's brain, is the result of time, isn't it?

Moody: Only the time since it's been born.

Krishnamurti: Time in the sense of growth, accumulation, experience, knowledge, hmm? And the brain cells containing this knowledge and functioning through the response of thought in daily life.

Moody: Yes. 

Krishnamurti: These many, many years, or centuries of accumulation—passed on, generation to generation—both heredity and social changes, economic pressures, religious beliefs, or scientific beliefs—all that is the conditioning of the brain, of a mind. 

I had anticipated a response along these lines and was prepared with a follow-up question, one with a sharper focus.

Moody: Is the conditioning, then, essentially belief? A set of beliefs?

Krishnamurti: Belief; ideal; accepting conflict as necessary—

Moody: All of these being forms of belief, are they not?

Krishnamurti: Not only belief, but an actuality.

Evidently Krishnamurti felt that conditioning includes beliefs but goes even deeper. Beliefs are consciously held ideas, but conditioning shapes our very perception of what is actual. 

Krishnamurti: Suppose one is brought up as a Catholic, hmm? You have all the paraphernalia of rituals; accepting authority; accepting Jesus as the only savior, son of God; and the Virgin Mary; and ascending to heaven, physically. These are all dogmas, asserted by the church and accepted through two millennia, two thousand years, as an actuality. Right?

Moody: Accepted as an actuality—which means belief.

Krishnamurti: They go beyond that, beyond belief—it is so. In India, there is the same old thing in a different form, which is not only a belief but, to the believer, it is an actuality.

As a student of Krishnamurti's work, I found these meetings intensely interesting. Nevertheless, they did little to allay my continuing unease about the basic principles regulating student behavior in the school. In the very first meeting, Krishnamurti described the approach to discipline developed at our sister school in Bramdean, England, the residential secondary school at Brockwood Park. There, he said, there was "literally" no authority. 

At the same time, he emphasized, freedom does not entail the liberty to do whatever one likes. On the contrary, freedom is only possible if each individual behaves responsibly vis-à-vis the group. Thus, there were indeed rules at Brockwood Park—lights out at ten, for example—but these were arrived at through a process of discussion and general agreement. If a student did not abide by these rules, he or she would not be compelled to do so by a system of threats or rewards, but ultimately it might become impossible for that student to remain in the school.

To achieve a smoothly functioning school by these means required a substantial investment of time in dialogue with the students—and these were secondary students in a residential school. It was not at all clear that such an approach could be transplanted to a day school for elementary students in the United States. 

There was a small chicken coop on the property at Arya Vihara that had been built many years earlier by Krishnamurti himself. Mark Lee kept a few chickens there, not only for their eggs, but also as an educational project for the students, who participated in their care and feeding. I was concerned, however, that one of our  students sometimes harassed the chickens when no one was looking. I was told, for example, that he liked to hold the chickens upside down by their feet and swing them around. One afternoon, this student insisted on staying in the coop at a time when he belonged in the classroom. I ordered him to come with me back to class, but he refused. 

I felt caught in an impossible situation. I had to get back to the classroom to look after the other students, but I was afraid of what would happen to the chickens if I left the boy there alone. No amount of dialogue could resolve the situation in that moment. This incident epitomized for me the inadequacy of Krishnamurti's principles regarding discipline in the school.

Had I had sufficient poise and confidence, I could have raised this issue in the weekly meetings Krishnamurti was conducting. Unfortunately, I was not able to do so in a group of that size, with many guests who were not familiar to me. In early spring, however, I succeeded in arranging a small-group discussion with Krishnamurti for the purpose of revisiting my concerns about student behavior.

Each time I encountered him, Krishnamurti revealed another facet of his personality, and on this occasion, he was at his most relaxed, engaging, and agreeable. In this meeting, he responded more sympathetically to my dilemma. Reward and punishment were still inappropriate, but he allowed a principle of "cause and effect," in which the student's action might have concrete consequences in terms of the options available to him or her in the future. Thus the student who refused to get out of the chicken coop might lose the freedom to enter it in the future. This restriction would not be imposed as a punishment—designed to inflict pain or discomfort—but rather as a natural effect of his or her own action.

After this principle was articulated, I often watched to see which teachers grasped its spirit and understood the distinction between it and reward and punishment. Such a teacher could adapt the principle creatively to new circumstances. 

In later years, the school had wooden walkways that caused a pounding noise when students ran on them. "No running on the decks" became one of the most basic—and often abused—rules in the school. When a student was caught running, a simple reprimand or reminder was usually not sufficient. A punishment, such as detention after school, would be counterproductive. The correct application of the principle of cause and effect was for the student to go back to the point where he or she had started running and return at a walking pace.

Printed in the Spring 2014 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Boyd, Tim. "The Science of Wonder" Quest  102. 2 (Spring  2014): pg. 48-49

By Tim Boyd

Like many other spiritual groups in the world today, the Theosophical Society expends a great deal of effort in trying to harmonize the teachings and experiences of the spiritual life with contemporary science. In our times the last thing anyone wants is to be regarded as "unscientific." This pressure to kneel at the altar of science has been both a blessing and a curse in popularizing the truths about consciousness and the inner life.

The great blessing of science, and of the scientific method which underlies it, has been the structure of knowledge that has been built over time. This structure provides a time-tested description of the workings and laws of the natural world that serves as the springboard for future additions to humanity’s knowledge base. Practically all of the known processes of nature have been examined and described—from fire to atomic energy, from photosynthesis to cell regeneration.

It is also the nature of the scientific process to continually recheck its own conclusions. It is not static, and no doubt all of its theories will one day be discovered to be wrong at worst, or true but partial at best. Thus science is best viewed not as the final word, but as the latest word. The theory that the earth was the center of the universe was superseded by the observations of Copernicus with strong support from Galileo. In his own lifetime the great genius Albert Einstein and his theories of relativity were challenged by findings in the upstart science of quantum physics. The famous exchange of words between Einstein and quantum physicist Niels Bohr captures the differences in their points of view. Einstein, commenting on the apparent randomness of quantum theory, famously said, "God does not play dice with the universe." In the face of experimental evidence demonstrating the correctness of quantum theory, Bohr’s equally witty reply was, "Who is Mr. Einstein to tell God what to do?"

From the perspective of the ageless wisdom, everything has and results from consciousness—plants, rocks, animals, people, as well as the materials and inhabitants of unseen, nonphysical realms. In The Secret Doctrine H.P. Blavatsky states, "Everything in the Universe, throughout all its kingdoms, is conscious: i.e., endowed with a consciousness of its own kind and on its own plane of perception." One example is the phenomenon of a tree’s roots that find leaks in water and sewage lines, sometimes following a pipe for a mile. The technical name for this attraction is hydrotropism—literally a turning toward water. Heliotropism is a similar term describing plants turning toward the sun. In the mineral kingdom the pattern and formation of crystals show a similar quality of consciousness. Snowflakes, diamonds, table salt, and countless other minerals each have a specific arrangement and pattern dictated by the consciousness of that material. Scientists observe and describe these phenomena without allowing for an obvious, if unquantifiable, cause that lies beyond their accepted scope. Science examines and describes the effects of consciousness, but not consciousness itself.

In contemporary science, studies abound that demonstrate the profound transformational effects of spiritual practice. There are also literally thousands of studies that demonstrate the existence of what Indian spirituality calls the siddhis—paranormal powers which tend to be latent in most of us. Familiar forms of these powers, such as clairvoyance, telepathy or thought transference, psychokinesis, and precognition, have been rigorously tested and repeatedly verified.

So why aren’t these studies common knowledge? Why is any attempt at a fact-based discussion of these issues routinely dismissed within the scientific community? The problem is not with science, but with the limits that the scientific community places on itself. The prevailing view among mainstream scientists is that true science must limit itself to the physical world, the world that can be observed and measured by the five senses, or with the aid of those instruments which enhance the senses. From the point of view of the spiritual practitioner, this is a serious limitation. Consciousness cannot be perceived by the physical senses.

Although paranormal capacities are dismissed by most physical scientists, modern practitioners of ancient spiritual traditions routinely apply the word "science" to their practices and teachings. The Dalai Lama has frequently said that each of us has access to the greatest laboratory possible to test and develop the teachings on compassion and wisdom—the laboratory of our own minds. In her writings HPB often referred to the "secret science" and "occult science." One of her definitions of Theosophy was couched in distinctly scientific terms: "Theosophy is the accumulated wisdom of the ages, tested and verified by generations of seers." There is no essential difference between physical science and the science of consciousness (Theosophy). It is strictly a matter of what band of the spectrum of consciousness is the focus.

How can this method be applied? Let’s take a common human emotion—anger. We begin by observing what is happening inside of us when it arises. We observe that anger gives a powerful surge of energy. We also observe that it tends to go out at other people or situations. If we look closely at what is happening in our bodies, we see that the surge of energy is experienced as a heat, often focused in the head. We observe that angry outbursts tend to drive people away from us and fuel the anger in others. Seeing these things, we experiment. We might try suppressing our anger and check the results. We could try expressing it—shouting at people, striking them—and see what happens. We might draw on the accumulated knowledge of others who have addressed this issue. Sometimes they advise us to focus our breathing on the place in the body where the anger is felt, from the moment we first feel it until it fades. As a result of these experiments, we might form the hypothesis that anger is essentially an energetic experience and that regulation of the breath and focusing the awareness can moderate or relieve the uncontrolled effects of anger. We might also come to a more generalized conclusion that all emotions are energetic in nature and can be addressed by similar means. This would call for further experimentation.

It is unfortunate that our normal approach to such things is far less scientific. Over the course of our lives most of us develop a set of habitual responses which as often as not give us unsatisfactory results. We forget what has been called "the first law of holes"—"when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you should do is stop digging."

Great spiritual teachers throughout history have rooted this scientific approach in their teachings. Much as the physicist presents mathematical formulas to be tested, wise men and women have passed down similar formulas for us to test and verify in our own lives. Below I share two such formulas with the suggestion that you take each one as an experiment. Through your self-experimentation you will be able to confirm the theory, reject it, or modify it according to your own findings. In the Buddha’s words, "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense," and "only accept what passes the test by proving useful and beneficial in your life."

The first formula comes from The Voice of the Silence. "Self-knowledge is of loving acts the child." The experiment necessarily involves an initial determination of what constitutes a "loving act," followed by some consistency in behaving in that way. If the theory is correct, this behavior should result in a deepening sense of connection with the Self, the transcendent consciousness of the deepest recesses of our being.

The second formula is attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Although it is unlikely that all of the words were actually his, its value is self-evident. "Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of creation there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that never would otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings, and material assistance, which no man can have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

Little more needs to be said. The experiment? Commit and observe.