This is Part 2 of selected portions from a Teachers Training Workshop conducted by Sri Sraddhalu Ranade in 2004 in New Delhi.
Online premiere: 15, April 2023.
Sraddhalu (0:01:03):
THE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CHILD
What is the relationship I should have with the child which will help the flow of knowledge and the awakening of knowledge?
There are three kinds of relationship a teacher can have with a child. The most obvious, simple, is authority. ‘I am boss’, like the teacher who came, ‘I am the teacher, you better don't try to fool around with me’. It's useful sometimes, but overall it is more damaging than helpful, because a child's mind and heart close up. I want to get the child to open like a flower. And what do you do to open a flower? Well, you bring the sun in front, and the flower blooms. So I want to become a friend, a helper, someone the child loves and trusts. And that's the ideal relationship. Unfortunately, sometimes when you are too nice, too helpful, too free, children take advantage. And this is the problem with all the loving, sweet, nice-nice teachers. We are taken advantage of. By the end of the year, our class is in chaos and I can shout at the top of my voice, ‘Please keep quiet! Please keep quiet! Can't you understand you are disturbing the next class?’ . No help.
Whereas the authoritarian teacher has held control all through with the same children. So is it wrong to be loving? No. Loving is necessary, otherwise you are not going to get your point across. There is no teaching if there is no relationship. The error we make is in our understanding of love. We think love is indulgence. As parents, many of us make the same mistake, ‘Because I love my child, I give him whatever he asks for, I can't say ‘No’ because I love him. That's indulgence, that's not love. True love is when I can deny him what he wants because I know I love him. And that's true love. Love backed with strength. Weak love is not love. It is dependence.
As a nation, we are making the same mistake because it's the mind set we have ingrained in our children. We say, ‘Oh we want to be friends with you our neighbours, but in order to be friends we are weak, and say, ‘Don't worry, we will be weak, you can be strong, but let us be friends’. And they don't respect weakness, they respect strength. The day you are strong and from a position of strength say, ‘I don't need you, but because I love you, let's work together’, then they respect you and love you back. It's the same point here. As a teacher, I will love, but I will know where to draw lines on behaviour, responses, interaction. So when children go cross the line, I immediately say ‘No, in this class we are not going to do this’.
And children appreciate you for that. I learned this the hard way. The first three, four years of my teaching, I had my class going completely out of control within six months, and I didn't know what I was doing wrong. And at the end of the year, I would give them a report card they had to fill for me, of how I am as a teacher. And consistent response from them was, ‘You must be more strict with us, please make us, please give us more discipline’. They want it. They know it. They need it. They respect it when you give it. So disciplining will not be with anger, but it will be with firmness, with love, and they respect it.
We will discuss how to build the class discipline, and how to lead this whole movement, and the intricacies of disciplining children in the session tomorrow afternoon. But this is just to set the relationship, free open flow. I remember one of our best maths teachers in our School, he began mathematics very peculiarly. He was told, ‘You have to teach maths’. He said, ‘But I don't know how to teach maths, I don't know maths’. He was told, ‘No, I see your possibility in it, you go and teach’. So this teacher goes to the students and says, ‘You know, I know as little as you do, but together we will learn’. And he started in this way. To this day now, it's 30, 40 years he's been teaching, he is the best mathematics teacher, because of this attitude, this approach, this relationship he has with the student, the same he started with he has retained throughout. Even when a student comes up with something he didn't think of, he says, ‘Wonderful, I didn't think of it’. He is a friend, a guide. If nothing can be taught, this is the only relationship we can have.
(00:05:42):
But there is a third relationship. The first was authority. The second was friendship. There is a third, which also you will apply but very rarely, where you become the child. When a child is telling you, ‘You know, such and such a thing, I have learnt this, I do that, I know this’, and you listen with wonder at something new that you didn't know was possible, and he's telling you from what he read or what he did, and you listen with wonder, you become the child. And at that point you will find something unusual happening.
The child comes up into his own as an adult almost and shares with you something deep within him, and sometimes opens himself fully to his most vulnerable core, and at that point you may be in a position to implant a seed, a word of encouragement, a gesture, a look, an appreciation, which is planted there as a seed and then determines the entire course of his life. You know of cases where children have been turned completely from a single event. Even Shruti may narrate this to you tomorrow, I'll say it now for her.
How she turned to mathematics? In her biodata you heard she is into mathematics. That's unusual normally. People don’t, women don't pursue maths too far, but not in higher mathematics generally, it's not common. But how did this happen? She says: ‘Earlier I was very bad in maths class, I used to daydream all the time, then one day the teacher called me and said, ‘You know, I think you can do very well in maths, and you will do very well in the next exams, I want you to sit next to me right up in front’. ’
She got the eye contact with the teacher and paid attention because of the personal connection. And that's it. She came at the top in the next exam. And that's it. From then on it was the most interesting subject. What made it possible? That personal connection, being able to implant a seed through that. And this is our real task as teachers. All else comes as a part of a larger process. This is our real task.
All of you look back at your childhood. You will find, there is one teacher who was able to touch you in some way, sometimes through personal interaction, sometimes just by his example, and that influence has stuck and even determined your teaching style today. Isn't it? And that made the most difference. So you will have occasions for that also. Be conscious that there will be such occasions.
So these are three kinds of relationship on which knowledge flows. The bond of the relationship is always love. Love is the track on which the train of knowledge will flow. Love is the basis of our relationship. Love is not a weakness. It is a strength. It is not indulgence. It is detached. It knows what is right and acts from love. Love is utter self-giving, where you pour yourself, pour all that you have, all that you are into your child.This being the base of communication of knowledge, the element of air,
THE FIRE OF KNOWLEDGE
We now move to the third element which is the fire of knowledge. This fire of knowledge, is knowledge something different? Isn't it what goes into the brain, what is awakened, what is information? No. Knowledge is something quite distinct from information. That aha experience, the awakening, if I asked you to draw it, how would you draw it? ‘Aha, it's a wonderful insight, I just awakened, I just discovered’, how would you draw it? What are the images or symbols you would use?
Audience: Smiling face.
Sraddhalu: Smiling face? Yes.
Audience: Bulb.
Sraddhalu: A bulb? Yes. What would your smile carry? A glow of light, a radiance of smile. Light, bulb, flame, these are the images associated with dawning of knowledge. Even the terms we use, ‘dawning of knowledge’, it's like light has come and revealed. Darkness is when it's all there but you can't see. And when light comes, you see it all, that's knowledge. Isn't it? Intuition comes in a flash, we say, like lightning, because it reveals in a flash. The images are all of light.
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The knowledge is always described as a flame of knowledge. It burns. What does it burn? It burns impurities and makes it pure. That's what the flame does. You feed it anything, it burns it and what comes out from the flame is pure, it's broken up into ecologically sustainable forms. You take plastic which is most poisonous, burn it entirely, it breaks into fundamental molecules which are pure. Burning the flame dispels darkness, reveals with knowledge, it gives heat, intensity, concentration. The flame points upwards in an aspiration. So these are the symbols we use, but they are not by coincidence because that is the character of knowledge.
And the knowledge is something in the traditions we describe as pre-existent. We say, all knowledge is already there somewhere. There is a famous story in one of the Upanishads where the young boy has studied for 24 years, he comes home and his teacher who is also a great Rishi asks him: What have you studied? And the boy says, ‘I have studied this-this-this, all that there is to know’. And then the father-Rishi says: My child, have you learnt that by knowing which all is learnt? That by knowing which all is known? And the child says: Is there such a thing? If there is, please tell me!
We have this idea consistently through the ages that knowledge is something which you can acquire in a way which is different, by knowing something you can get all that there is to know. All knowledge is pre-existent. And our relationship to knowledge is that of a receptacle. I am the bowl into which the knowledge is poured.
Mind, we say, is a reflector of knowledge. That's why traditionally they say, ‘Still your mind, that the sun above reflects in it’. And there is a deep truth in that. You will find, the greatest discoveries of science have not been thought out. They have been perceived. Your greatest insights are seen. The word you use is ‘I saw it’, ‘I understand it’, ‘I see it’, ‘I feel it’, because it's there. It's not that ‘I create it’. Knowledge is never created. It's only received and held, perceived. So what is the relationship we have to have with knowledge to be able to receive it? The primary requirement: humility. Without humility, you cannot receive knowledge.If you try to grab knowledge, if I try to grab sand, it leaks out of my fingers. If I placed my hands in an anjali, I can receive even water and it will not leak out. So knowledge has to be received with humility, the attitude of humility in the student as well as in the teacher, otherwise the flow of knowledge doesn't take place well.
And in teaching, you grow. By giving knowledge you do not lose, you gain. It's an interesting character of knowledge. Money you give, you have lost what you give, but knowledge grows by giving. It doesn't stay static. It's not like a flame lit a flame, the flame actually grows brighter, because each time you give, you have to present it, communicate it, in a way that you rediscover. That's why we can teach the same subject for years and still find it interesting, otherwise we'd get bored. Replace me by a tape recorder. No, I enjoy teaching, because I am growing while I teach. And our effort shall be to kindle the thirst for knowledge in the child. And as we have seen, if that is begun, the rest follows. This much I will say about knowledge for now.
We move on to the next element, which is water. Water: the teacher, you and I. We are going to dwell on it much more tomorrow and day after. So for now I will just lay out the basic idea, what I started with, teaching is not just a job. It's a sacred task. And now you can see how important it is. I started by saying, it is sacred. Now you see how much is involved in it, how important it is to the child, to us even as a means of growth. And we must keep that factor in mind, every day remind ourselves, because we tend to forget.
When teaching has become boring, it's because you forgot what teaching was all about. And I want you to look back now to: Why you became a teacher? Why is it you didn't take a different track? And you feel, introspect, in yourself: What was the compulsion to teach? Yes, there will be occasions where you found, where ‘I couldn't do what I want to do, so I took to teaching also’. But why did I take to teaching even then? I could have taken to something else, I could have become a secretary, for example. No, I wanted teaching over that.
(0:15:29):
So everywhere, in each one of us, whatever the circumstances of not being able to do else, something else or not, we chose teaching over other things. Why? Try to feel in your heart. What was that compulsion? There is something where you wanted to be with the children. You wanted to share, to give, to grow together. You wanted to enjoy that movement of being together, learning together, playing together with children. Why? It's a deep impulse. And if that deep impulse is there, in that impulse is all that you need to become an effective teacher, like the child who taught you how to love, the impulse was there, he awakened it. And in this seed of why you chose, you will find all that you need to be a teacher. And in the discussions tomorrow and day after, we will gradually draw out part by part some of the facets of that seed.
Coming now to the next element, the earth, the child, we are going to undergo now a paradigm shift. We have already redefined the paradigm of education. Now let's redefine the paradigm of the child himself. Yes, already we've discussed, the child is the soul in evolution. We've discussed, what, which part we need to address, how we need to address it. But: What is the content of what I will address for the child? What is the priority I will set?
I ask you one question now: All that you have studied so far in your whole life, all the exams you prepared, a dozen at least, of all those exams, what is it that remains for you today in your life? How much remains? Tell me in percentage. How useful was it in percentage? 5%? 10%? Bulk of what you are today, what you know today, you have acquired after completing your formal studies. Isn't it? You came into your own afterwards, you rediscovered what you are capable of, after you stopped formal studies.
What you did in formal studies, was it then all wasted? It was not. It left you with something. The content of the study you have forgotten, but the training of the study moulded your character and your capacities and your faculties. That's valuable. Your capacity to think clearly has come from certain types of activities, mathematics, logic, philosophy. Your perspective of the world has come from the time spent in the geography, history, sciences. Your self-confidence has grown from the games you played perhaps, or from the presentations you made, the discussions you had, the debates you went into. Your ability to communicate has developed from various subjects and activities.
What remains with us is the faculties of our personality that we developed, not the content of information we played with. And if this is what really matters ultimately, why bother with the rest? Does it matter to you that you don't remember your differential calculus, for example, or your algebra? No, it doesn't matter mostly. And where you have to do it, well, you can just verify a book or with a few minutes’ practice get back that capacity you had then, because the capacity is held within you latent, the faculty is developed. Even if I have forgotten the details, I can get it back today.
So what shall we do? We will consciously focus on training faculties to begin with. And to support faculty development, we will bring in any subject we want, but we won't worry too much about the content of information. Yes, certain things, certain aspects of information, we think are essential. You must know how many states your country has, the kinds of cultures which are there. Sure. But if you didn't for some reason because your temperament wasn't too interested, it's no big deal. The point is, whether through whatever you learnt, you develop the faculties that were necessary for that age.
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So we are going to make a huge shift of perspective: faculty development first – all subjects used to develop the faculty. And interestingly we find, whatever faculty you pick, you can train it by any subject. I want to develop, say, my capacity for observation. I can teach it through English language training, I can teach it through mathematics, through biology, through painting.
I want to develop rational thinking. Again, certainly mathematics may be more easy to focus on rational thinking, but through language development, I can also bring rational thinking, through grammar analysis, through drawing I can bring rational thinking when I discuss perspectives. Any subject. Any faculty can be trained by any subject. Any subject can be used to train all faculties. Certainly some subjects are more conducive to some faculties, but still.
It's a very important change we are going to make. I am going to think of when I plan my class content: What faculty am I aiming at? So let’s first look at what are the different faculties that have to be developed in a child, sequence-wise, because there's a natural sequence. My faculty of abstract thought is not effective if the faculty of observation is not trained. Isn't it? If I didn't observe factual information first, where is the question of making a logical deduction from it? So, first and foremost is the faculty of observation by which we know our world. And that's developed very early on.
But you must consciously train it. There are many ways to train it. The senses can be trained. In the afternoon we'll take up specific examples. Right now I'll just go through the sequence of faculties. Having observed through all five senses, not just one, when we say ‘observe’, we think of eyes only. Did you hear? Did you pay attention? You just held something, did you notice whether the cloth was rough or smooth? Did you notice the peculiar smell of the room when you enter a new room? All these are also part of training.
Because any one observation through one sense nourishes observation through other senses. Train all five, you will take all five to their peak. Observation also involves inter-sensory connections, that your sight provokes awakening of hearing. I'll give examples of that in the afternoon when we specifically dwell on examples of how to train the senses. But I just leave you with this thought right now.
Then with observation comes the motor skills, basic and fine motor skills, control of your own body, nerves, muscles, balance, harmony, beauty, etc. Next level beyond that, is what you do with what you observed. With observation what is the next natural step when you have observed many things? You notice similarities and differences. This noticing similarities and differences seems so basic when I mention it. Isn't it obvious they would notice? No. The fact of training your observation to notice similarities and differences makes a very big difference to your logical development.
Because if you don't know what's the same and what's different, you can come to wrong logical conclusions which is being done all the time in the media today. They'll pull up an event which took place 50 years ago and compare it with an event which took place now. Actually there is no fair comparison because of: certain differences which are ignored completely; and similarities in completely different situations are forgotten. So we have to develop both: difference, and similarity. You can do it with playing cards. You can do it with flowers. You can do it by a, taking a walk in the garden looking at the leaves. You can do it with faces and images. Many ways. You can do it through games also.
Next, having observed similarities, differences,—comparison,—comes association: ‘Arrey, this is similar to that!’ Again, the power of association needs to be trained. If you do not develop it, the knowledge from the past, the experiences of past, cannot be made valuable for the present. So, let's give an example of how this chain proceeds. I smell smoke. Immediately there is an association of other experiences of smoke. Eyes scan, observe. The association tells me that ‘Oh, there is actually uh this smell is similar to that, and that was cooking, so there is no danger of fire’. Conclusion come by the logic.
Now there are actually layers of mind which deal with these different operations. There are specific terms which are useful to know, because then we will understand the mental training better.
The first layer of mind is what we call the ‘chitta’, the substance of which the mind is made. It is that which holds as memory all the impressions that come into you. This substance is extremely uh elastic. It can take impressions of all events that happen in your life and there is an automatic memory which is recording everything.
Your problem is when your intellect tries to search in this substance for a specific memory, it can't find it.
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Your conscious memory is not very effective. Your subconscious memory is automatic and perfect. You'll be surprised to know this: If I ask you ‘How many steps have you taken since you woke up this morning?’, you won't remember it. But if I put you under hypnosis and ask your subconscious mind ‘How many steps you took?’, it will say ‘Exactly 516’, because it has been registering. Every single detail of all that happens to you is registered in your subconscious automatically.
When we say ‘memory’, we mean the conscious memory which has to access the subconscious memory and pull out information. That depends on the plasticity of this stuff of mind, chitta. And that's what we discussed briefly earlier: stilling the mind is what makes it capable of receiving from observation as well as remembering, perceiving precisely in detail. So this is the chitta.
And it is in this that the basic memory is held of observation. Next manas, which is the sense-mind, the mind turned to sense-experience drawing on what comes. What does it do? From the observation it does the comparison, association, or ordering, organising and even to a certain degree the rudiments of thought, but it is throwing up the thought impressions. You wake up from sleep, this is the realm which is most awake at that point, at that point you feel uncomfortable, ‘I am feeling hot, cold’. Your logic is not yet operational, just the sense is throwing up an idea of discomfort, then the logic comes in and says, ‘Oh the fan has stopped, why is that? Oh again there is a power failure’.
So, you see how that comes later. But the thought substance from which the thought of power failure came, came in this manas. The thought substance has to be also trained because otherwise the logic which will take material to make deductions is not going to be correct.
Next comes the intellect proper. This intellect, we call it the ‘buddhi’, is the part of mind which is self-aware. Till the sense-mind you are not self-aware. That's why when you wake up from sleep, you are not aware of: ‘I’ am thinking. It's when you are fully awake, then you say, ‘Oh, I am thinking, I am uncomfortable’. So the part of mind that can stand back from itself is that. This is crucial. No creature on earth, except the human, has this ability. It's what makes us capable of changing ourselves, self-awareness. There are two animals which have something similar, close to human self-awareness, but not the full self-awareness.
How do we know this? I’ll give you a very interesting exercise, which an example of an experiment done: You place an animal in front of a mirror. Most animals think, it is someone else. The more sophisticated animals recognise that it's not someone else, it's an image. But they can't yet make out that it is themselves. How do you know if they cannot? You put a spot on the tail of the animal and then put him in front of the mirror. When he sees the spot on the tail of that animal, in the mirror, if the animal turns back and looks at itself, its own tail, it knows ‘That is myself’, a sense of ‘I’-ness is there. There are only three creatures, three animals, which can do that: the monkey, the dolphin, and the human. No other animal. It's such a precious gift.
But even the monkey, dolphin do not have it to the extent that they can think for themselves: I want to do this. I want to change myself. I want to learn better. I want to concentrate. My mind is not clear today, I'm going to will myself to become more clear and concentrated. This is what makes us capable of infinite progress. This is the buddhi. But broadly in its operation, it has two branches of functions: the left brain, and the right brain. The left brain is primarily analytic. The right brain, primarily synthetic. The left brain looks at numbers, quantities, grammar, structure, information. Right brain looks at meaning, colour, sense, feeling, perception, intuition, comprehension.
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Now which is more important? If you do not have the power of comprehension and insight and conversion of that into creative expression, life is quite damp, there is no question of progress, that is why the right brain is called ‘the master of knowledge’. It knows the oneness of knowledge. The left brain cuts up experiences into smaller and smaller pieces to acquire control over detail. The left brain is the one that expresses what the right brain knows. That's why it is called ‘the servant of knowledge’ of the right brain.
If our education emphasises primarily the left brain as it does today, and with the left brain you try to know and understand, necessarily your knowledge will be fragmented and defective. You will find extraordinary people have the right brain equally developed. But if you have only right brain: ‘I am a great poet, I have great ideas, great inspiration, but I can't express it well, my vocabulary is poor, my language skills are poor, I have no clarity in my thought when I express it’. What's the use? You want to develop both.
Just to show you how sharply different their functionings are, I'll narrate to you what happens to a patient under certain kinds of epilepsy: They cut off the link between left and right brain, so the two brain halves function separately. Now such a person is asked to look at a picture in the laboratory with his right eye, now his right eye is connected to the left brain, the body is cross-connected from the brain, so with his right-eye-left-brain, he sees.
‘What do you see?’ ‘I see a sun, I see a tree, I see some water.’ ‘What do you think about the picture? Do you like it? What do you feel?’ ‘I don't know.’ Now the same person with his left-eye-right-brain, when he looks at it: ‘What do you see?’ ‘Ooh, it's a beautiful sunrise!’ ‘What is it made of?’ ‘I don't know.’ The two operations are so distinct. And therefore it is necessary to train both halves of the brain distinctly, consciously, deliberately.
But it's not enough to train the two halves, you have to then harmonise the two that seamlessly your consciousness flows: from experience to expression, from observation to insight, right to left, left to right. The connection in between also has to be trained. Let me let you in on a secret. Nature already has made that connection in between larger for women than for men. That's one of the reasons why women are more expressive of their emotions and are able to understand and empathise with another’s emotions more easily. They are also supposed to have a better functioning intuition, you say ‘women's instinct’, ‘women's intuition’. They just know things. Men don't have that as much.
But, men having a smaller link between left and right brain have more interconnections in that small link, and so they tend to try to rationalise things too much and also tend to be blocked on spontaneous emotional expression. But, with training, both can acquire the full harmonisation of left and right brains. The women tend to lose the rational element which comes from limiting the contact between left and right. Men tend to lose the wider enjoyment of life which comes from widening that contact. By conscious training you are able to widen the contact and yet limit its scope at will, as needed by the situation.
So: train left brain ,train right brain, harmonise the working of both. And it's necessary if you want a complete development. A genius is one who has actually done all three. And all of us can do it. Because there is a fourth layer above the buddhi, which is the part of the mind which opens spontaneously to intuition and spontaneous knowledge. It is there from which the creativity flows down.
All creative people begin with an insight, a perception, of something received, and then organised, formulated, and expressed, whether a scientist, whether a musician, whether a leader or a teacher. So, that fourth part is what will help to harmonise, give you true knowledge, and the harmonised brain expressing it makes you a genius. And it's possible for each one of us to open our possibilities to their extreme and cross beyond the human limit. This is what we should try to do.
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SEVEN TYPES OF INTELLIGENCE
In modern studies, we tend to categorise the intelligence into seven different types. It's important to know this: I don't think the categorisation of seven is so crucial. Intelligence essentially is one. These are seven facets of its expression based on your temperament and training of the brain and lower faculties.
Now there are some who by temperament tend towards auditory inputs. As we have seen earlier many different categories, now you'll see how it links to the seven types of intelligence. Such people are very good with what we call ‘musical intelligence’. They can hear a piece of music, play it back instantly, sing it out instantly, they are very sensitive to small nuances of sound, pitch, flavour, tonality, rhythm, etc. This is one kind of intelligence.
The second kind of intelligence is the logical intelligence which is the type which is good at maths, which looks at chains of logic. And you must in your class try to provoke all seven types of intelligence. Whenever you plan a class-content, think of: Where can I bring in some element of music, tonality or rhythm? In, for logical intelligence: Where can I bring in logical conclusions?
Next, linguistic intelligence. These are people very sensitive to grammar, intonation, choice of words, precision of expression, they are the kinds who will make a difference between ‘It's a fine day’ and ‘It's a beautiful day’. When you come back from a movie, ‘How was the movie?’. ‘Oh, it was great.’ Okay, common response. What do you mean by ‘great’? Find out the exact word to describe what you feel. ‘Oh, the music or the movie was very entertaining, was inspiring, was uh provocative, was well-crafted’: all of these can be translated into ‘great’, which is a very general term. And there's a tendency today in the modern mind to try to flatten out vocabulary because we don't want to take the trouble to express ourselves precisely.
You listen to any film star interviewed on TV before, in the promos to a film, and they say, ‘Oh you know this director, he's just wonderful, he's just too much, he's just too great, he is incredible’. All superlatives. Where is the scope for lower levels of description? None. Everything is ‘best’, ‘too much’, ‘too good’, ‘too great’. ‘Awesome’ is the term used in America today, ‘Oh that was awesome’. If everything is ‘awesome’, where is the scope left for precision? Anyway. Look for precision of expression. And these people have that ability, they can pick up languages quickly, they are very careful with their words, encourage children to do that. Yourself also try to plan out the precise words you will use to describe experiences.
Spatial intelligence is the fourth, which gives you a sense of the three-dimensional extension of things: clay modelling, working with three-dimensional construction kits, drawing, painting also, where you have to convert a three-dimensional experience into a two-dimensional image. These people have the ability of visualising things. Even as you explain something in class, they are making models in their mind, which is a tremendous advantage. And you must consciously awaken it.
Now here comes a catch, both for logical mathematical intelligence and this spatial intelligence: There is unfortunately one difficulty faced by women and it is a biological difficulty just as we saw the left-right brain connection is, has differences, there are other such differences. As teachers, if we do not recognise the difference, we will not know how to deal with it. You notice an interesting pattern in maths classes. In the younger classes, girls perform better than boys, substantially. As they grow into higher maths, college level, most girls drop out and only boys remain performing far better than girls.
Why? It has to do with the brain. And unless we understand it, we cannot apply the corrective action. What's the difference? In lower maths, mathematics is primarily a question of observation, memory and basic logic. Girls are far more naturally sensitive to the physical senses. That's why you come home after having gone to a wedding and you tell your husband, ‘Did you notice the lipstick colour she was wearing?’. And he says, ‘Duh, what lipstick? What dress? What jewellery?’.
He has not seen anything. Men tend to not be as observant unless they have consciously trained. And if you have trained, you will find the richness of life.
(0:40:23):
Women have no idea how dull a man's life can be, men have no idea how rich a woman's life can be, just because of the sensory difference. They can't imagine it's possible to be so sensitive to the senses. And when you have trained it, you realise, ‘wow, life is so rich, so beautiful’. Unfortunately, most men miss out this whole dimension of experience. Anyway, the point I was making: Because it is, mathematics is primarily at the level of the senses, women do better, because they have that biological advantage. As it grows to the more abstract mathematics, it involves visualisation. For which, in men, because of a particular hormone in the blood, that centre is spontaneously developed. Now it's part of the brain's design that if that particular hormone is there, that centre becomes active.
In a woman, that centre is dormant because that hormone is not logging, testosterone basically. Now the advantage a man has, he can visualise and do spatial rotations. So you will see men take a map, stare at it and figure out which direction the road is, because in their head they have rotated the map. Women take the map and try to turn [audience laughing] it to match the direction of the road, because the specialised centre for rotation has not been developed. It's there but it's subdued.
Why? You know that's how Nature designed our body for specialised functions. But today, remember, we started with the ideal of wanting to exceed nature: ‘I want every girl child in my class to have this ability of spatial rotation’. If she agrees to struggle with it, she can acquire it. If she doesn't struggle with it, then some girls will have it, those who have higher testosterone levels. That's it. But then you are falling back on your biology. You are becoming a victim by choice or by ignorance to your biology. And if they take the trouble of developing it, that centre develops, and they can rotate in their minds.
And the same with men. Men have so many aspects relating to interspatial, interpersonal intelligence which are suppressed because of the same difference of hormones. By conscious effort, they can overcome it and learn to identify with others and understand others better. That's why men are uh proverbially poor at interpersonal relations, women are far more subtle to the nuances of family dynamics, but they can overcome that disability. These are all disabilities, because you have ignored training those faculties.
Okay. So we are talking of spatial intelligence. Get girls also to take it up. But in the channel of learning which is natural for them. Now one of the things I do with children at the age of 10, 11 to help this faculty develop, we get them to make things with three-dimensional Meccano construction kits. You look at a picture and you make things. Now the problem is most of the construction kits were designed for boys because boys are supposed to be more interested in this. So all the pictures are cranes, machines and gadgets. A girl looks at it and doesn't find it so interesting. ‘What's a crane? What am I going to do with a crane?’, she says.
So I tell the girl children: ‘Okay, don't look at this picture, I want you to make a house. Can you make a face? Can you make a human being?’ Yes, they can. And they find it interesting. ‘Can you make a flower?’ ‘Can you make a whole scene of a house with people inside and flowers with a construction kit?’ And they do it very well. And through that, that faculty is developing. But I had to find their natural groove for that particular temperament and then, yes, they struggle a little more to begin with, but if they sustain for a year, I find they can do as well as the boys.
Those who give up halfway remain stuck at whatever level they have achieved, but it is still superior to what they would have if they didn't do that much. So this is spatial intelligence. Again, plan your class content. How will I bring in spatial content? Addressing it to these specific differences of temperament and interest also.
Next comes kinaesthetic intelligence, bodily intelligence. This is a very interesting intelligence. Let's try an experiment. I'll ask you to bring your two fingers together, not in front of you, but above your head without looking. From a distance, bring them together rapidly and touch the tips. Rapidly, not too slow. The first time you, okay, not small movements but from far, and continuous. [laughter] You miss it, isn't it? Now the same thing you do in front of you with eyes closed. Eyes closed.
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You achieve it. With eyes closed you managed in front of you what you couldn't do with eyes open above you. Why? You are doing the same movement. What's the difference? Anybody has an explanation?
[Audience answering]
Again?
[Audience answering]
Okay, you can see your fingers with your eyes closed? Very well.
[laughter]
Yes-yes-yes, it's a very important point. It's precisely this bodily kinaesthetic intelligence, ‘I know where my finger is, even though my eyes are closed, when it's in front of me’. Why not when it's above me? Why can't I see it when it's above me?
[Audience answering]
Face. Yeah-yeah in front of your stomach you do, you will still get it. Because we are more conscious of this space around our body in front of us and totally unconscious behind us, below us, and a little conscious above us. Try to do it behind your back, you will miss by 2 or 3 inches. Try. Bring your hand together behind, it's far worse than above. We are totally unconscious of this space behind. This is bodily kinaesthetic intelligence. Not just around, but within the body.
Can you feel the, without moving your hands become aware of the tips of your five fingers? Just become aware of each tip, sequence, first my thumb, index, middle finger, ring finger, little finger. Yes. No problem? Most of you can do it? Okay. Now, without moving your toes, feel the tips of all five toe fingers. If you manage the thick, last two, you probably couldn't distinguish easily, you have to struggle. Interesting, isn't it? Now move the toes like this and then feel.
Can you now distinguish each one of them? Because there is sensation coming distinctly from each. It shows you that your bodily awareness in the fingers is far more developed than in your feet. Why? We never bothered to develop it.
Houdini, that escape artist, you may have heard his name, Harry Houdini, one of the greatest escape artists, he had trained his toes to be so flexible like his fingers, he could do this with his toes and with his toes, take a key and open a lock with a uh lock, pick lock. That kind of a, he could tie a knot with his toes and undo a knot which was tight, like your fingers. When you see actually the movies where his toes go like this, just like your fingers, you can't do that. If you try to move a single toe, try to move the middle toe. Can you do that? Duh! Literally the feet go duh! Where is my middle toe? All the toes move together, and it’s like this.
Imagine your hands were like that. You'd actually move around like this, like monkeys, you could never do this nor this, you'd just go like monkey holds, grabs the glass like that, you can't do this sophisticated control. Why? We developed it on the fingers, we didn't develop it on the feet, and all over the body. This bodily kinaesthetic intelligence includes within your body and around your body. Those who have practiced dance have a good bodily intelligence. Those who have done gymnastics have it. Those who have learnt singing have it in this region of the throat. Those who have developed writing, drawing, painting have it in the hands much more than other parts.
Now all these different activities awaken the bodily intelligence. You will see when you take a car for repair, there is something deep down below the engine, some tube is cracked, the engineer looks like that, stares at it, and then turns away, sticks his hand in, and takes it around so many pipes and hot things and then reaches out and pulls out exactly the wire that you need. He has looked at it once and then his body knows how to get to it. That's part of bodily intelligence. Bodily intelligence also because of bodily awareness is seen in the way you walk, your body language, the way you talk.
How sensitive are you to the fact that your legs were crossed and your foot was moving? Many of us don't even realise. How sensitive are you when you walk to the movement of your legs, rhythm of your body swaying, the hands moving? Generally we are not conscious.
Try this experiment now when you break for lunch. When you get up and walk, try to be as conscious as you can of your whole body and all the muscles involved when you walk. And when you do it, you will find spontaneously a kind of harmony. You will walk with more grace because you are aware of your arms, legs, stomach, hips, thighs. And because you are aware, automatically the brain links them all and becomes harmonious. You can watch a person walk and say, ‘Oh, this person has practiced dance or gymnastics’. I have tried it and I found it's always worked. I ask them, ‘Do you practice dance regularly?’, they say ‘Yes’, because the body is conscious. So this is bodily intelligence.
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So this will again for a class activity you think of: What can we do for manipulating objects with skill and even in action with the body, expressing with the body? Say, with the class, you are doing a poem, can we express that sentiment through your body’s movements, an action?
Next comes intra-personal intelligence. This is the ability to know what is happening within you. How conscious are you of your thoughts and of your feelings, your motivations, your desires, your impulses? Can you change those motivations and make them what you want them to be? Now you will find studious students, the ones who give their homework on time, are conscious of the parts in them which feel uh lazy and are able to overcome the laziness by choice. The others are not aware of the element that is lazy and therefore become victims of their laziness.
This intrapersonal intelligence is what makes you capable of organising yourself and being able to dynamise and motivate yourself. All good self-motivators are, have good intrapersonal intelligence. So we are going to awaken that by introspection. Ask a child: What do you think of this? How well have you done this? Can you observe? We'll discuss a little bit of that when we do the project method, how children can be asked to self-evaluate themselves and do course correction on the project. And that helps to develop this intrapersonal intelligence.
The better you are at intrapersonal intelligence, the better you become in interpersonal relations. Because if I know myself well, I can understand why others behave the way they do. So that brings us to the next, interpersonal intelligence, which is awareness of other people's moods, feelings, thoughts, behaviour, what makes them do what they do, what can I do to help them do what I want them to do, collective work generally.
So again for the class you will try to think of what opportunities are possible for group activity and learning to deal with collective issues. Now you can see any activity can be potentially used for developing all seven facets of intelligence. But some are more conducive to others. Fine. No problem. But remember, all intelligence being essentially one, if you have developed one well, you can extend it to develop others also. So this being the buddhi level, above that, that fourth faculty of intuition which we touched upon, this still leads us to the faculties relating to mental development.
THE EMOTIONS
What about the emotions, the moral nature? As I said earlier, we are still very much children as far as our emotions are concerned. How will we develop them? Certainly preaching doesn't help, as we have seen, it creates this dichotomy and division and self-justification. What we are going to do is to try to create experiences of values, of emotions, and learn to deal with them. How will we do that? Narration of stories we saw was one of the most powerful means.
Now I will offer you others. The second method will be for older groups, that we will get them to enact situations. We are doing a play. And in the play, I am the person who is suppose to get angry. So I have to actually create the symptoms of anger. By consciously creating the anger and dropping it as needed for the acting, I am learning to acquire control over the anger.
I am learning to develop courage by becoming the person in a situation where he has to sacrifice himself and feel that. So as a director of the enaction, you will tell them: ‘Look, you are the king, you have to feel yourself responsible for the country and you must be humble before the people whom you are supposed to serve.’ ‘And you are the guard for the king, you have to protect him with your life, you must be willing to die for him. What is the kind of heroism which is in you? Feel that. And let that radiate.’ So you create those moods and emotions. And by familiarity they acquire control over those.
There is the third kind of activity, where you introspect on different situations, moods, circumstances, discuss those moods, ‘How would you handle it? What happens to you when a similar situation comes?’, which is basically bringing those emotions into the realm of the intellectual awareness, which also helps to liberate them from habitual grooves.
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And finally, a fourth approach which is where you are going to get them to play collective games. You’ll say: What's it got to do with personality, character development or values? Let's take an example. Suppose we get them to play basketball: my team of five versus that team of five. What happens now? Somebody has aimed and missed from my team, and I blow up: ‘Come on man, we did so much, how can you miss’. And big drama. Next time, I aim and miss, and I get the same dose. Ouch, it hurts: ‘I tried my best, can't you understand that?’ Next time he misses, I hold back my anger: ‘I'm not going to shout at him, I know what it's like, it happens’. I've just learned to hold back anger, not because I wanted to, but, well, that's how we'll win as a team.
So the collective identity demands the subservience of the individual identity. And that's the training. If we want to win as a team, well, I better learn to cooperate with all. And on the contrary, instead of getting angry, I go over to this guy and pat him and say, ‘Don't worry, next time we'll do it, come on’. So here's a situation which you would never experience in life, where someone has hurt you, and you go over to the other person and console him for having hurt you. But you have to do that in basketball, in any collective game for that matter. And that's building character. That's building the leadership.
That's controlling and guiding and turning your emotions upwards, away from their habitual inferior groove to a higher light. The anger I have because we missed now is turned to greater action, and I make a conscious effort to work together with others, subserve my ego. Now this is excellent training for personality and character.
You will find no better training for character than games of this kind and outdoor activities where you actually go out on a safari literally and fight it out in Nature. Survival. Well, that you can't do too easily, but these you can do every day. So this will be the other element of training. But for the emotions other than this basic training, there has to be the refinement.
What is culture? The word ‘culture’ means to refine, bring out the aesthetic dimension, without which the joy and beauty of the nuances of life are missed out. What makes life beautiful is the culturing of these finer dimensions. What would it be like if this whole hall was painted with garish colours? You'll say, art, modern art, an excuse for not training the finer culture. And what if you say, we painted beautiful pastel shades, colours, patterns, images, you enter the room and you feel ‘Oh it's so beautiful’.
Isn't that worth it? Because beauty as I said earlier is an expression of God in matter. In emotions it is power. But power cannot be ugly, it must also be harmonised like beauty. If you want to express your highest potential, your deepest insights, your most beautiful visions, and hopes, and ideas, it is only by culturing your emotions to be able to express the most harmonised and refined forms. All of us, think about it, all of us dream of perfect love.
Have you ever seen somebody who has experienced perfect love in human history? If at all the love was perfect, it lasted perfectly for a few days or weeks. That's all. Either the person died or their love got corrupted. If he died, then you say ‘immortalised’. See, their perfect love has got immortalised. Luckily the fellow died. If he had continued to live, it would have got corrupted. You can be sure. Thank God he died.
So now you can praise, you know, Romeo and Juliet, and all the great lovers where one of them died or both. You never find love, and yet you are seeking it all the time. Why? Because deep down inside in that fourth dimension of the psychic, it exists.
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It exists, and so I know it's possible. I know there is something, somewhere. Somehow, one day I can get it, and I seek it. Not only love, beauty, harmony, perfection, they're all there somewhere as they are in the seed. And culturing is bringing that possibility out and organising it in the details of life. Without that, life has no meaning. So culturing of emotions includes these dimensions.
How will you do that? Some of the best ways is through literature. Beautiful writing. Inspiring poetry, music. Elegant, subtle dance. Between themselves, poetry, music and painting are, Sri Aurobindo says, the perfect education for the soul. Because they bring out all these special qualities which are immortal, the most valuable which are not there in life. And this is the way we are going to culture ourselves to bring them out. And these must be a part of the education. Not extracurricular. Not co-curricular. You are still not making it curricular. It should be curricular. And if the school doesn't support it, as parents you have to support it, as teachers you have to encourage the child and the parents and say: ‘Look, I want this child to do these extra things, it's good for him’. Unfortunately as parents, you say: ‘[Teekay, bacchaehaey, thub thuk subcorrow.] Now your 10th are coming! Board exams! Stop all other activities! Unfortunately, that is counter-productive.
Because it is these creative dimensions which awaken that same creativity in the mind which makes the consciousness quiet, open, and beautiful, and receptive to what you want to learn and express, without which you become dull, lose interest, and become hard, coarse, inhuman. So much of western society has degenerated because of this lack. Their music is dehumanising, their forms are dehumanising! And that’s why ‘modern art’ is a typically creation of the west. All the ugliness possible comes up, even the perversions which children are exposed to, in the Internet today. And I can tell you, it will grow worse. Because there is a conscious attempt by all these influencers, ‘multi’-’national’ influencers, to reach out, especially to the East, to bring people into their grip of addiction. Children are going to face this all the time.
The only protection they have is a sensitivity and refinement that, faced with something coarse, you say: ‘Yuk. How horrible!’ and stop. If you have not awakened the sensitivity, you say, ‘Wow, this is interesting’. It’s attracting! Because I don’t know that there is something more beautiful here! And you will find, children today who fall into these traps are the ones who did not get that sensitivity and culturing at home, they are the ones who come from broken homes, they are the ones who are neglected, who have not received love, who have not put themselves into these kinds of creative activities, because their sensitivity did not grow.
That’s all there is to it. The best protection you can offer the children today is: culturing; and sensitising. The two great degenerations in the children today are lack of power of concentration and lack of sensitivity. I'll come to concentration in a while. Sensitivity, without which all the ugliness comes. Concentration, without which there is no knowledge, power of attention has gone. Well, we'll come to that later.
For now, we are taking of, speaking of this culturing. Arts are a necessary part. Even if a child is a ‘science student’ so-called, allow him to continue, encourage him to take up artistic activities because that's right brain. Your science is defective if you don't have right-brain insight. And I can tell you this from my own experience, because though I would conventionally be called a ‘science student’, I had equal exposure to music, dance, singing, painting, as a normal part of education. The result was, today when I sit down to create a computer programme, I work very differently.
In my mind, I treat it like a painting: there's a big picture; what's the experience I want the user to have; from the big picture, what are the different elements, the parts. And I can straight away start writing the programme with less errors, with a better interface, more rapidly. What I'm trying to say is: Science and art are divided artificially. Our energies and our emotions are closely allied. When emotionally I'm depressed, I lose energy. When emotionally I'm optimistic, my energies come back. When I have hope, direction, purpose.
So to train the emotions and the energies, because otherwise the energy is like the horse, it is a good servant but a bad master, if you let the horse lead your chariot, it will get thrown around all over the place, but the horse has to be tamed and then bound to the chariot. And who leads? He who controls the reins, the mind. The mind is the controller! The reins are our sense-mind. The horses are our life-energies. The chariot is our body. Without the horses, the body will go nowhere. Without the mind, the horses will go haywire. But the horses must be tamed before they will submit to the mind. So training of your vitality to tame it, organise and discipline it.
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You will see those who have trained their vitality can work endlessly and are always optimistic even in the face of difficulties. Or the reverse, those who are always optimistic have lots of energy. Notice among your friends. Those who are pessimistic, always with negative critical attitudes, you'll find them depressed, low, weak physically. Those who are optimistic and cheerful, always strong vitality and very little drop of health, they don't lose, they don't fall ill easily. We can consciously make our orientation positive and give it a certain turn by which we remain always optimistic and full of energy.
There is also another dimension to it, that is, we can open ourselves to infinite energy, because in fact we are swimming in an ocean of energy. Isn't that what science tells us? In one cup of water, there is enough energy to boil away all the oceans of the world. All around us is energy. ‘Prana’ we say. But why do we get tired? Notice children. They run-run-run and when they are tired, they sit down, rest for 5 minutes, and back they spring and run again. A newly born, okay, not newborn, a 3-year old child has more energy and dynamism than his mother, she gets tired of running after him. Where does he get so much energy? It's not just calories, it's the psychological state. So this is the life-energy, connection of the emotions, the ability to draw infinite energy.
Finally, there is also the training of the body. I touched upon it right at the beginning, the basic health, suppleness, regularity, rhythm, discipline, but endurance, strength are also dimensions which have to be trained. Can I persist in doing work that I don't like to do for as long as needed? It is essential to be effective in life.
There is a very famous general in the Indian army by the name of Hanut Singh. He is a man who had trained his body. He used to practice asanas and pranayam every day. And during the Indo-Pak war he was on the battlefield on his feet for three days and three nights without sleeping a wink, fully clear headed, full of energy, on his feet. That kind of capacity. It's not that he practiced it every day, but he had trained his body to be aware and cooperative. Gymnastics, dance, any such activity involving the whole body, games, must be a part of the curriculum again. There is a dimension to it. Your physical training affects your emotions, we saw earlier. It affects your intellect also. Let me dwell on that.
If you move your finger, if you coordinate your five fingers, there are points in the brain which are controlling each finger. And each time you train your finger to do something which they couldn't do, like perhaps touch these two, you don't normally do this, can I slowly bring them to do this and then make them face each other and touch it. I am training the awareness of my fingers, it is actually creating new nerve connections in that part of the brain which controls the finger.
Any new learning of the body involves creating new connections in the brain of that part, precisely the connections which will be used by the intellect for its thought process. In other words, by certain kinds of disciplined physical activity, you actually become more intelligent. So please let us not make this mistake of cutting off physical activities from intellectual training. There has to be a holistic, integral, that's the word we have here, ‘integral education’, without which the whole cannot reach its highest possibility. So this being the physical, emotions, mind, we have covered in detail all the different parts.
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THAT BY WHICH ALL IS KNOWN
There is one central or, should I say, two central faculties I have not touched so far. These two central faculties exist on all levels, though predominantly in the mind because we are mental creatures, without which no other faculty can develop fully, with which every faculty can develop to its maximum. Wouldn't you like to know that by knowing which all is known in faculties at least? Well, these two faculties are concentration and willpower. These are two great forces, energies, powers in our psychology by which you can learn whatever you want to learn, you can overcome any difficulty and any limitation. Nothing stands in the way of one who has developed power of concentration and will.
In fact, Swami Vivekananda goes so far as to say that without concentration nothing at all can be learnt. What he says, there is only one method by which to attain knowledge, that which is called ‘concentration’. The very essence of education is concentration of mind. From the lowest man to the highest yogi, all have to use the same method to attain knowledge. He gives examples. He says:
“The chemist who works in his laboratory concentrates all the powers of his mind, brings them into one focus, and throws them on the elements; the elements stand analysed, and thus his knowledge comes. The astronomer concentrates the powers of his mind and brings them into one focus; and he throws them on to objects through his telescope; and stars and systems roll forward to give up their secrets to him. So it is in every case: with the professor in his chair, the student with his book, and with every man who is working to know.”
Then he goes so far as to say that you can judge a man, the value of a man, by his power of concentration, because that's what determines what he will do, what worth he has intrinsically for doing anything he does. And he concludes, he says: “To me, the very essence of education is concentration of mind, not collection of facts.”
You see, to get knowledge, even that maths experience where we saw things and had the aha-experience, it was because mind concentrated on that point to know, and then we got to it. So, “concentration of mind”, not the knowledge of, “not the collection of facts”. “If I had to do my education once again, … I would not study facts at all. I would develop the power of concentration and detachment, and then with a perfect instrument collect facts at will.” In a sense this is what we have been saying earlier. If you develop your faculties of which the central faculty is concentration, all factual content you can gain at will.
Today if you were asked, whatever subject you are teaching, if you are asked, ‘Okay, from tomorrow onwards I want you to teach another subject’, will you say, ‘Oh, I cannot’? You will say, ‘No, I am not familiar, give me a week, I need to familiarise myself with the subject’. But that's it, you need a week only, not 10 years of study, because your power is developed, your power of concentration and other faculties. And if your power of concentration is more developed, you won't need a week, you will need two days.
In fact, as students recall, when you work with concentration or even as teachers you're correcting notebooks, when you work with full concentration, you can complete the normal work of one hour in 20 minutes. But it's not common, because we have not trained the power of concentration. Imagine this most powerful faculty is untrained in us. We hold attention only for a few seconds at a time. Anything longer, mind lapses after a while. And that's the problem with students today. They can't hold attention. They are interested, they are dutiful, they want to know even sometimes, but when they start listening to you, somewhere along the way you have said something interesting, immediately, then mind turns and they start talking to someone else.
This inability to hold attention is one of the characters of the modern age, for two reasons it comes: One, the cutting of subject into snippets of 40 minutes which weakens the concentration of mind. With the first 20 minutes anyway you take time to build concentration. The last 10 minutes in dispersing, preparing for the next class, hardly 10 minutes of held-concentration comes in a class, typically. There is another reason, television. It is one of the most effective means of weakening the power of mind.
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It's interesting, you will notice in your class, children who are more concentrated and those who are incapable of concentration, not unwilling but incapable, ask them how much time they watch of television. You will find a very clear pattern. Sometimes when parents complain ‘My child is not able to concentrate at all’, then I ask ‘How many hours do they watch of TV?’. And the first response is, ‘Not much, just the usual’. So I say, ‘How much?’. ‘Not much really, you know, just whatever sometimes they do.’ ‘How much?’ Finally they come out with ‘Three hours a day’. Oops! That's the source.
Because in that half hypnotic state, your mind dulled, that's why you are called ‘couch potato’. You are just like that, in an inertia, a mental inertia. And further, because of the flickering screen and the hypnotic effect, you lose, it's not just that you don't develop concentration, you lose concentration.
Instead, if they want to entertain themselves, encourage them to read books. Not comics, where there is visualisation already done for you, but books where you have to visualise as you read. I say, read Harry Potter, surely your power of concentration will increase, because you are engrossed in it. Take whatever book you find interesting, I don't care if it's a story book or a science book or a text book, get engrossed. That's it. And your power of concentration develops.
Because concentration is like muscles. The more you use it, the stronger they grow. The more you don't use it, the weaker they become. Disuse is, unuse is weakening, it's not staying static. And of course if you want to consciously train, you would train it the way you develop your muscles. What do you do with muscles? I don't take up a hundred-kilo weight, I take up one kilo and pump away for 10 minutes. A very boring activity, you might say, but at the end of those 10 minutes I put it away, I feel the difference in my muscles.
So take up an exercise of concentration, take up something which you find boring, doesn't matter but hold your attention on it as long as you can and then let go, everyday for a few minutes. Take a flame, concentrate on it. Draw a dot on a white wall, concentrate on it and hold full attention. It's not just eyes, attention of mind. We're training concentration of mind, not eyes. So you must think of nothing else except the dot and hold your attention on the dot and hold as long as you can. When you feel exhausted, stop. Practice this daily for 5 minutes. Within a month, you will find in all your studies, your concentration has gone up. Your comprehension therefore has improved. Your insight has become clearer. Isn't it so simple?
And you can tell children to do it. Tell them how powerful it is. Sometimes they don't listen at the younger ages until they have a serious problem. I'll give you an example of a child who could not hold attention at all, who was very slow, who even spoke with slurred speech. Normally, they would have been diagnosed as dyslexic, attention deficit disorder, blah–blah–blah, names of diseases, these are not diseases, they are just untrained faculties. So he came to me and said, ‘I have a problem, what do I do?’.
And I told him, ‘Here, you have to develop power of concentration and clarity of mind. So I gave him two exercises for that. One breathing exercise for clarity of mind. And the second, for training power of concentration, where I gave him an exercise, ‘Take a large children's book with large letters and observe with your eyes the curve of each letter and let your mind run on the curve slowly’. Now it's easier to do that than to stare at a point because you are doing something. But ‘Observe the edge, observe the ink, and let your eyes slide over each letter one by one’.
I said: “First day you do one word, second day you do one line, after a few days you can do two lines. I can guarantee you by the time you get to two lines, you'll find a difference in your studies. And if you can do one page, you can overcome all your problems in studies.” So he started. Two years later I met him again. This time I found he was explaining a maths problem to his class children. And he was speaking normally, the slurring had gone, there was attention, his eyes were clear, bright. Distinct difference. It was not completely gone, but there was this distinct difference. He was happy with it. And over time I think the rest also will pass.
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But this was an extreme case already. But in a normal case, you will find results within a few weeks. So this being training of concentration, what about willpower? We also as adults, when we make our New Year resolutions, what happens? How long do they last? One week, generally? Then we say, ‘Oh, too much, forget it’. Next year we re-attempt for a week and drop it. We are making the same mistake.
How shall we develop our willpower? You won't lift a hundred kilo. The New Year resolution is a hundred kilos. Obviously you can't lift it and hold it, it falls. Make a resolution which is tiny, 1-kilo resolution. ‘Every morning, immediately after completing breakfast, I will take my cup of milk and wash it myself, not leave it for others to wash.’ It's a very small thing. ‘Every day before I enter my classroom, I'll open my compass box and check that my pencils are sharpened, if they are not, I'll sharpen before I enter.’ Very small thing. You can easily do it. ‘Every day before I leave home, I will check that my hair is neatly combed or comb it carefully.’ No big deal. Each of these things involves a few seconds of effort.
But the catch is this: Something so easy, I tend to lapse because my willpower is weak, but I can easily sustain with a little effort, so I keep doing it, again and again. First week it's fine, and that's when the problem comes, a provocation, ‘Today I'm late to school, how can I wash my cup of milk?’. And I have to actually rationalise and say, ‘No, it takes 10 seconds, I will do it and go’. And I force myself to do it. And by sustaining this effort for a few weeks, automatically in other decisions I want to make, I find, ‘It happens by itself, I don't have to struggle against myself, because I have done this exercise’. And gradually increase the difficulty level. Again make sure there is less time. The excuse of time should never come in the way. Some activity that involves less time but greater effort, bit by bit. And I can assure you, you can overcome all the problems of willpower.
Willpower, concentration, together, you can achieve anything. These are central, fundamental faculties centered in the mind but operating on all levels, even in the body.
And then finally, one more faculty which is the memory, I want to dwell on it separately, that's why I have brought it away from the mind. We all, most of us, at least 99% of us, will claim ‘We don't have a good memory’. Isn't it? Would you like to improve your memory? You've done exercises, association and all those formulas, yes, they work to a point. The day you stop trying to make the association, the memory lapses back. And yet, ‘I have a perfect memory of that particular dress I saw in the shop just once when I was passing by it’. You have that experience? Or something interesting, someone's birthday which is mentioned because the person is very close to me, I never forget it. Any interesting information remains.
So my memory actually is not bad, just I can't remember things which I don't have interest in. The keyword here is ‘attention’, ‘observation’. Remember what I said earlier, the faculties are layered, if you miss out the first, all the others weaken. With memory it is the same. Most of us who claim we have a bad memory actually have a reasonably good memory, more than what we need even, but our observation is poor. And we observe because we were interested, and those things we remember. What we were not interested, we didn't observe because we are used to not observing, and so we don't remember. It's not a problem of memory.
So here what we will do to correct it: observe. What is your main problem with memory? Some of us remember well what we see but not what we hear. Some remember what we have heard but not what we see. Again there are three tracks: visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Just check out which one is yours. I'll ask, give you a simple exercise. Just think of, remember the most interesting vacation you had. When you recall the vacation, what did you remember first? Scenes? Sounds? Or, the feel of the place?
Audience (1:24:48):
[inaudible]
Sraddhalu (1:24:49):
Yes!
Audience (1:24:50):
[inaudible]
Sraddhalu (1:24:51):
Scenes! Feel of the place! Someone with sounds? Scenes, yes! Someone with sounds? Anybody?
Audience (1:24:58):
[inaudible]
Sraddhalu (1:24:59):
Pardon?
Audience (1:25:00):
Company of people.
Sraddhalu (1:25:01):
Company of people? But how did you remember the company? As the feel of the, the experience? Or the sounds?
Audience (1:25:06):
Experience.
Sraddhalu (1:25:08):
Experience. Okay, so, the feel. Okay. It's not the hearing, it's not as common, but particularly, there is a particular type of people for whom that is extremely important. But through the feel which you get, when you say ‘company’, what is the first impulse that rises from the feel? The sounds of their voices? Or the images of their appearance?
Audience (1:25:29):
[inaudible]
Sraddhalu (1:25:32):
Actions? Okay. Images, or the feel of energies perhaps, in your case. Yes. So you find even in memory there are three tracks. Which is your strength? Which is your weakness? Now consciously overcome the weakness. If I find I don't remember what I see, start observing visually. You're coming, you're leaving your house, a car passes by, consciously observe the numbers on the number plate. When you see a name in writing, look at the name, dwell on it letter by letter, and at that point try to create an association, what does it sound like, what does it remind me of, and then move on. Just dwell for a while, pay attention by observation. And you'll find automatically that faculty will begin to fill in. Within weeks the difference will be felt. How much you overcome therefore depends on how well you sustain the effort.
I had this substantial difficulty at one point. I could have spent half-an-hour conversation with the person. Coming back I could tell you everything which was in the conversation, but I couldn't remember the name of the person or what he looked like. It was that bad. Simply because I had started ignoring what I was seeing and focusing on the content rather. So there has to be an effort to overcome and correct.
The psychic dimension as we said is that part which I know as truly me. What is there in it? Sweetness! Love! A freshness! Curiosity! Joy! Something always aspiring to exceed, to grow! Now those are the qualities we want to evoke from the heart of the child. So how will we do that? In your class-content, consciously think of: Where can I bring in these elements, beauty, joy, love, peace, a deeper feel, sensitivity of another?
And with children it's quite easy because they have it already, they are very awake at the level of the psychic. It's as the personality forms and hardens that it tends to cover it. That's why you can always sit in front of a baby and keep staring at the baby. You feel nourished watching his sweetness and innocence. But with an older person you say, ‘Yuck, his vibes’. But that very person as a baby was so beautiful and sweet. There's this hardening of personality.
If you allow the personality to harden and cover up the psychic, you have become a yucky person. But if as the personality hardens, you link every layer to the psychic constantly, you end up with a beautiful person, beautiful on all levels of personality. So our effort as teachers will be at every step, at every age, in every activity, in every faculty, try to consciously bring in this deeper dimension of the psychic touch. But keep this in mind because without this, the purpose of education, which is organising the personality to reflect the soul, is missed out, you've got a shell of a robot but the soul is gone.
The point of this life was, the soul came in to enjoy the life, to grow through experience and to manifest its beauty. So you have to link the personality and make it an extension of the soul integrating all these different dimensions of faculties, of the student, the teacher, the knowledge, the means of communication, the three principles of education, the two special gifts, the ambience and environment of education, all these together will give you the big picture of integral education. That's why we call it ‘integral’, because it takes up all the different aspects of your personality, takes up all circumstances and facets of education and draws them together around the central, single, idea of: every child is a soul in evolution.
Now you can see: what a difference this mindset is from the industrial mindset; and how different education that flows from it will be; and how much more beautiful our classrooms can become. This is the ideal which we know deep in our core. All that I have told you today, isn't it something which seems, ‘Oh, it's obvious’ deep inside you? Isn't it? Because it's that with which we started, with which we chose to become teachers. And today the whole effort of this workshop is: to consciously bring out that which we knew unconsciously then; and to link it to our teaching life; and to make it a part of our daily work.
Shall we end with an OM for assimilation, all together? Three, three times.
OM OM OM
The following text was present at the end of the video. I (proofreader) thought this could be of some use to the users of EWS-series and I tried to type the text as it is.
Integral Education Workshop
for Teachers & Parents
This DVD is made from the recording
of a three-day teacher-training workshop
on Integral Education.
The aim of this workshop was not so much to
discuss different techniques of education, but rather
to lead participants into a radically different way of
experiencing education and our role in it as teachers
and parents—and gradually even to grow into a
new attitude to the whole of life itself, for the two
are inseparably bound.
This is the first part of a series
of DVDs on Integral Education and
a companion to the book of the same name.
For more information email:
IntegralEducation[at]gmail.com
or visit
Filmed in 2004, Apeejay School,
Sheikh Sarai, New Delhi, India.
Made in Auroville, India.
August 2006.
Edited and produced by
Fabrice Dini and Sergey Stanovykh
Drawings by Emanucle Scanziani
Developed by Wisdom-Splendour
In collaboration with
Mother India Foundation
Copyright: © Sraddhalu Ranade 2006
Warning: All rights reserved. Any unauthorized
copying, duplication, selling, hiring, renting,
lending, distributing, radio and television
broadcasting is strictly prohibited.
Wisdom-Splendour