राष्ट्रीय शिक्षा प्रणाली एवं भारतीय मानस (श्री अरविन्द - एकात्म शिक्षा दर्शन)

SUCCESSIVE TEACHING. 29
Education we need not bind ourselves
either by the ancient or the modern
system, but select only the most per-
fect and rapid means of mastering
knowledge.
In defence of modern system it is
alleged that the attention of children
is easily tired and cannot be subjected
to the strain of long application to a
single subject. The frequent changes
of subject gives rest to the mind. The
question naturally arises: are the child-
ren of modern times then so different
from the ancients, and, if so, have we
not made them so by discouraging
prolonged concentration ? A very
young child cannot, indeed apply him-
self; but a very young child is unfit for
School teaching of any kind. A child
of seven or eight, and that is the
earliest permissible age for the com-
mencement of any regular kind of

30 NATIONAL EDUCATION
study, is capable of a good deal of
concentration if he is interested.
Interest is after all, the basis of con-
centration. We make his lessons
supremely uninteresting and repellent
to the child, a harsh compulsion the
basis of teaching and then complain of
his restless inattention ! The substitu-
tion of a natural self-Education by the
child for the present unnatural system
will remove this objection of inability.
A child, like a man, if he is interest-
ed, much prefers to get to the end of
his subject rather than leave it unfi-
nished. To lead him on step by step,
interesting and absorbing him in each
as it comes, until he has mastered his
subject is the true art of teaching.
The first attention of the teacher
must be given to the medium and the
instruments, and, until these are per-
fected, to multiply subjects of regular

SUCCESSIVE TEACHING 31
instruction is to waste time and energy.
When the mental instruments are
sufficiently developed to acquire a
language easily and swiftly, that is the
time to introduce him to many langu-
ages, not when he can only partially
understand what he is taught and
masters it laboriously and imperfectly.
Moreover, one who has mastered his
own language, has one very necessary
facility for mastering another. With
the linguistic faculty unsatisfactorily
developed in one's own tongue, to
master others is impossible. To study
Science with the faculties of observa-
tion, judgment, reasoning, and compari-
son only slightly developed, is to
undertake a useless and thankless
labour. So it is with all other subjects.
The mother-tongue is the proper
medium of Education and therefore
the first energies of the child should

32 NATIONAL EDUCATION
be directed to the thorough mastering
of the medium. Almost every child
has an imagination, an instinct for
words, a dramatic faculty, a wealth of
idea and fancy. These should be
interested in the literature and history
of the Nation. Instead of stupid and
dry spelling and reading books, looked
on as a dreary and ungrateful task, he
should be introduced by rapidly pro-
gressive stages to the most interesting
parts of his own literature and the
life around him and behind him, and
they should be put before him, in such
a way as to attract and appeal to the
qualities of which I have spoken. All
other study at this period should be
devoted to the perfection of the
mental functions and the moral chara-
cter. A foundation should be laid at
this time for the study of history,
science, philosophy, art, but not in an

SUCCESSIVE TEACHING 33
obtrusive and formal manner. Every
child is a lover of interesting narra-
tive, a hero-worshipper and a patriot.
Appeal to these qualities in him and
through him, let him master without
knowing it the living and human parts
of his Nation's history. Every child
is an inquirer, an investigator, analy-
ser, a merciless anatomist. Appeal to
those qualities in him and let him
acquire without knowing it the right
temper and the necessary fundamental
knowledge of the Scientist. Every
child has an insatiable intellectual
curiosity and turn for metaphysical
enquiry. Use it to draw him on slow-
ly to an understanding of the world and
himself. Every child has the gift of
imitation and a touch of imaginative
power. Use it to give him the ground
work of the faculty of the artist.
It is by allowing Nature to work
3

34 NATIONAL EDUCATION
that we get the benefit of the gifts she
has bestowed on us. Humanity in its
education of children has chosen to
thwart and hamper the rapidity of
its onward march. Happily, saner
ideas are now beginning to prevail.
But the way has not yet been found.
The past hangs about our necks with
all its prejudices and errors and will
not leave us ; it enters into our most
radical attempts to return to the gui-
dance of the all-wise Mother. We
must have the courage to take up
clearer knowledge and apply it fear-
lessly in the interests of posterity.
Teaching by snippets must be relegat-
ed to the lumber-room of dead sorrows.
The first work is to interest the child
in life, work and knowledge, to develop
his instruments of knowledge with the
utmost thoroughness, to give him
mastery of the medium he must use.

SUCCESSIVE TEACHING 35
Afterwards, the rapidity with which
he will learn, will be found that,
where now he learns a few things
badly, then he will learn many things
thoroughly well.

CHAPTER V
THE TRAINING OF THE MIND
There are six senses which minister
to knowledge, sight, hearing, smell,
touch and taste, mind, and all of these
except the last, look outward and
gather the material of thought from
outside through the physical nerves
and their end-organs, eye, ear, nose,
skin, palate. The perfection of the
senses as ministers to thought must be
one of the first cares of the teachers.
The two things that are needed of
the senses are accuracy and sensi-
tiveness. We must first understand
what are the obstacles to the accuracy
and sensitiveness of the senses, in
order that we may take the best steps
to remove them. The cause of imper-
fection must be understood by those
who desire to bring about perfection.

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 37
The senses depend for their accu-
racy and sensitiveness on the un-
obstructed activity of the nerves which
are the channels of their information
and the passive acceptance of the
mind which is the recipient. In
themselves the organs do their work
perfectly. The eye gives the right
form, the ear the correct sound, the
palate the right taste, the skin the
right touch, the nose the right smell.
This can easily be understood if we
study the action of the eye as a
crucial example. A correct image is
reproduced automatically on the retina,
if there is any error in appreciating
it, it is not the fault of the organ, but
of something else.
The fault may be with the nerve
currents. The nerves are nothing but
channels, they have no power in
themselves to alter the information

38 NATIONAL EDUCATION
given by the organs. But a channel
may be obstructed and the obstruc-
tion may interfere either with the
fullness or the accuracy of the informa-
tion, not as it reaches the organ where
it is necessarily and automatically
perfect, but as it reaches the mind.
The only exception is in case of a
physical defect in the organ as an
instrument. That is not a matter for
the educationist, but for the physician.
If the obstruction is such as to stop
the information reaching the mind at
all, the result is an insufficient
sensitiveness of the senses. The
defects of sight, hearing, smell, touch,
taste, anœthesia in its various
degrees, are curable when not the
effect of physical injury or defect in
the organ itself. The obstructions
can be removed and the sensitiveness
remedied by the purification of the

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 39
nerve system. The remedy is a simple
one which is now becoming more and
more popular in Europe for different
reasons and objects, the regulation of
the breathing. This process inevit-
ably restores the perfect and unob-
structed activity of the channels and,
if well and thoroughly done, leads to
a high activity of the senses. The
process is called in Yogic discipline,
nadi-suddhi, or nerve-purification.
The obstruction in the channel
may be such as not absolutely to stop
in however small a degree, but to
distort the information. A familiar
instance of this is the effect of fear
or alarm on the sense action. The
startled horse takes the sack on the
road for a dangerous living thing, the
startled man takes a rope for a snake,
a waving curtain for a ghostly form.
All distortions due to actions in the

40 NATIONAL EDUCATION
nervous system can be traced to some
kind of emotional disturbance acting
in the nerve channels. The only
remedy for them is the habit of calm,
the habitual steadiness of the nerves.
This also can be brought about by
nadi-suddhi or nerve-purficiation,
which quiets the system, gives a
deliberate calmness to all the internal
processes and prepares the purification
of the mind.
If the nerve channels are quiet and
clear, the only possible disturbance of
the information is from or through
the mind. Now the manas or sixth
sense is in itself a channel like the
nerves, a channel for communication:
with the buddhi or brainforce distur-
bance may happen either from above
or from below. The information
outside is first photographed on the
end organ, then reproduced at the

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 41
other end of the nerve system in the
chitta or passive memory. All the
images of sight, sound, smell, touch and
taste are deposited there and the
manas reports them to the buddhi.
The manas is both a sense organ and
a channel. As a sense organ it is as
automatically perfect as the others, as
a channel it is subject to disturbance
resulting either in obstruction or dis-
tortion.
As a sense organ the mind recei-
ves direct thought impressions from
outside and from within. These
impressions are in themselves perfect-
ly correct, but in their report to the
intellect at all or may reach it so
distorted as to make a false or parti-
ally false impression. The disturbance
may effect the impression which
attains the information of eye, ear,
nose, skin or palate, but it is very

42 NATIONAL EDUCATION
slightly powerful here, in its effect on
the direct impressions of the mind, it
is extremely powerful and the chief
source of error. The mind takes direct
impressions primarily of thought, but
also of form, sound, indeed of all the
things for which it usually prefers to
depend on the sense organs. The full
development of this sensitiveness of the
mind is called in our Yogic discipline
Sushmadrishti or subtle reception
of images. Telepathy, clairvoyance,
claraudience, presentment, thought-
reading, character-reading and many
other modern discoveries are very
ancient powers of the mind which
have been left undeveloped, and they
all belong to the manas. The develop-
ment of the sixth sense has never
formed part of human training. In a
future age it will undoubtedly take a
place in the necessary preliminary

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 43
training of the human instrument.
Meanwhile there is no reason why the
mind should not be trained to give a
correct report to the intellect so that
our thought may start with absolutely
correct if not with full impressions.
The first obstacle, the nervous
emotional, we may suppose to be
removed by the purification of the
nervous system. The second obstacle
is that of the emotions themselves
warping the impressions as it comes.
Love may do this, hatred may do this,
any emotion or desire according to its
power and intensity may distort
the impression as it travels. This
difficulty can only be removed by
the discipline of the emotions,
the purifying of the moral train-
ing and its consideration may be
postponed for the moment. The
next difficulty is the interference of

44 NATIONAL EDUCATION
previous associations formed or in-
grained in the chitta or passive
memory. We have a habitual way
of looking at things and the conserva-
tive inertia in our nature disposes us
to give every new experience the
shape and semblance of those to
which we are accustomed. It is only
more developed minds which can
receive first impressions without an
unconscious bias against the novelty
of novel experience. For instance, if
we get a true impression of what is
happening and we habitually act on
such impressions true or false if it
differs from what we are accustomed
to expect, the old association meets it
in the chitta and sends a changed
report to the intellect in which either
the new impression is overlaid and
concealed by the old or mingled with
it. To go farther into this subject

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 45
would be to involve ourselves too
deeply into the details of psychology.
This typical instance will suffice. To
get rid of this obstacle is impossible
without chittasuddhi or purification of
the mental moral habits formed
in the chitta. This is a preliminary
process of Yoga and was effected in
our ancient system by various means,
but would be considered out of place
in a modern system of education.
It is clear, therefore, that unless
we revert to our old system in some of
its principles, we must be content to
allow this source of disturbance to
remain. A really national system of
education would not allow itself to be
controlled by European ideas in this
all important matter. And there is a
process so simple and momentous that
it can easily be made a part of our
system.

46 NATIONAL EDUCATION
It consists in bringing about passivity
of the restless flood of thought sensa-
tions rising of its own momentum from
the passive memory independent of
our will and control. This passivity
liberatest he intellect from the siege of
old associations and false impressions.
It gives it power to select only what
is wanted from the storehouse of the
passive memory, automatically brings
about the habit of getting right impres-
sions and enables the intellect to dictate
so the chitta what samskara or asso-
ciations shall be formed or rejected.
This is the real office of the intellect
to discriminate, choose, select, arrange.
But so long as there is not chitta-
suddhi, instead of doing this office
perfectly, it itself remains imperfect
and corrupt and adds to the confusion
in the mind channel by false judgment,
false imagination, false memory, false

THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 47
observation, false comparison, contrast
and analogy, false education, induction
and inference. The purification of the
chitta is essential for the liberation,
purification and perfect action of the
intellect.

CHAPTER VI
SENSE-IMPROVEMENT BY
PRACTICE
Another cause of the ineffici-
ency of the senses as gatherers of
Knowledge, is insufficient use. We do
not observe sufficiently or with suffici-
ent attention and closeness and a sight,
sound, smell, even touch or taste
knocks in vain at the door for ad-
mission. This tamasic inertia of the
receiving instruments is no doubt due
to the inattention of the buddhi and
therefore its consideration may seem
to come properly under the training
of the functions of the intellect, but
it is more convenient, though less
psychologically correct, to notice it
here. The student ought to be
accustomed to catch the sights, sounds
etc, around him, distinguish them,
mark their nature, properties and