Living
Wisdom Home
What
is Education for Life?
by
J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda), founder of the Education
for Life philosophy of Living Wisdom Schools
(Originally
appeared in Clarity Magazine, Summer 1999.)
What
do I mean when I say “Education for Life?”
I can present the problem and the solution. The problem
is that people in traditional forms of education usually
approach it from the standpoint of just preparing a person
for a job. But one’s job isn’t the definition
of one’s life—it’s only that which enables
you to have enough money to meet your needs. Our lives
encompass a much broader arena than one’s capacity
to earn money. Any educational system that teaches only
job skills or offers only intellectual information is
neglecting the essential needs of human beings. The solution
is a form of education that trains us in that which is
most relevant to us—how to find lasting happiness
in life.
We
deeply need proper training in “how-to-live”
skills such as how to find the right mate, how to raise
our children, how to be a good employee, how to get along
with our neighbors, and how to concentrate our minds so
that we can draw success into all of our endeavors. There
are many such skills that are essential to prepare a child
for adulthood, and in traditional education many of them
are completely ignored. Education for Life is a system
that prepares the child to face the challenges of living
as a human being, and helps him to achieve balance and
harmony in all he does.
What
we’re really talking about is preparing everyone,
not just children, for true maturity. This is a much bigger
concept than just coming of age. As I’ve defined
it in my book, Education for Life, maturity is
the ability to relate appropriately to other realities
than one’s own. You’ll find that even people
of advanced years are often childish and immature with
regard to this definition, yet this ability to relate
to others’ realities is what education should accomplish.
In
a broader context, any great discovery in science is recognized
as important not just for itself, but for what windows
it opens to a greater understanding of the world as a
whole. Einstein’s discoveries, for example, were
fascinating, but what made them truly great was the fact
that they provided fertile concepts for exploration in
every avenue in life. We find his concepts sited in the
arts, in education, in music, in medicine, in every walk
of life, because in some way they touch on a basic understanding
of reality. The more a person can relate one reality to
a host of other realities, the more we see his consciousness
is expanding.
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You
can see this ability to relate to other realities reflected
in people’s conversation. Many times someone will
try to discuss a topic from different points of view,
but all they’re really doing is hammering on their
own position. It’s like people living on two distant
islands shouting at each other. No matter how long they
shout, the islands remain separated, and they can’t
hear each other. When a person has achieved the kind of
maturity we’re talking about, he is able to listen
to others, to absorb what they’re saying, and to
relate it to what he already understands in order to come
up with new insights. In this way, a discussion can build
new understandings for everyone involved.
The
Education for Life system tries to point the way to maturity.
It doesn’t presume to give maturity, but it creates
a mind-set that will endure for the whole of life. It
provides a direction of growth that people can take all
the way into old age and still keep growing so that they
find things to marvel at in the world around them.
We
find that basically we have four tools that enable us
to relate to life. First, we have to recognize that since
we live in physical bodies, we can see our bodies as tools
for helping us grow. If we don’t properly take care
of our bodies, we may find them becoming our foes instead
of our friends. Second, we find that we respond to the
world with our emotions. If our emotions are always agitated
because of intense likes and dislikes, we will respond
emotionally to what others say and not really hear them.
We may hear our own idea of what they are saying, but
if we have an emotional prejudice, we won’t hear
them objectively.
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Third,
if we don’t know how to use our will power to overcome
faults in ourselves, or to set goals and accomplish them,
then we will never know fulfillment in life. Finally,
if we don’t develop our intellect, then we cannot
understand things clearly, and our life’s experiences
will come through our minds in a dull way. You need to
have a clear intellect to really understand what’s
going on around you.
So
we have these four basic tools that enable us to grow
toward ever-greater maturity: the body, the emotions or
feelings, the will power, and the intellect. I’ve
observed that the first six years of a child’s life
tend to be the period when they have to learn how to get
their bodies under control. You’ll see a child of
four running down an aisle and knocking over a chair,
or falling over something because he didn’t look
down. It takes a lot of energy to somehow learn how to
get this body working well for us.
During
this period from one to six years, it’s important
to teach children how to use their bodies to grow in other
ways of understanding. For example, drama and dance movements,
especially in the first six years, can be extremely important
because children learn with their bodies at this stage.
If through drama they can act out positive attitudes,
or through dance they can be taught movements that help
them express expansiveness, then they’re learning
in a way that’s appropriate to that level of development.
They can be shown those kinds of physical gestures that
come with selfishness, for example, and those that come
with being generous and kind. This can be done in an amusing
way so that it’s a game, and they can learn by imitation.
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Often
we can observe that if a person is unhappy, he’ll
tend to look down, to slump forward, or to lean on a table.
But conversely, our physical bearing can also influence
our thoughts and feelings. If you’re feeling happy
but slump forward with your head in your hands, then you’re
much more likely to become open to the thoughts and feelings
of depression. If on the other hand, you can sit up straight
and look up, then you find that this posture helps your
emotions and your will power. It’s hard to feel
that you’ve got a strong will if you are sitting
slumped over. But if you sit straight with your chest
up, it’s much easier to affirm that you are strong
and able to combat this difficulty or overcome that obstacle.
As
the child matures and the intellect is brought into play,
it’s also very important to understand the effect
of physical posture on our mental functions. The seat
of the intellect is located at the point between the eyebrows,
or in the frontal lobe of the brain. Physiologists say
that anatomically this is the most advanced part of the
brain, and it’s from here that we reason. If we
can learn to bring our energy upward to this part of the
brain, we find that we can think more clearly. If, however,
we allow our energy to sink downward, it’s much
more difficult to think deeply.
The
next tool of maturity is the feelings, and these come
into play during the next six year period from six to
twelve. At this time, it’s easiest to instruct children
through their feelings, and to inspire them through stories
of heroism and courage. It’s essential to give them
fitting role models to follow—to talk about people
throughout history who have done inspiring, great, and
beautiful deeds. There are many such stories, but in our
day and age it seems to be a practice to show that these
heroes weren’t all that great after all. It seems
to be the cynical philosophy of our time to bring people
down to the lowest common denominator. I think that there
are great things that man is capable of accomplishing,
and we should explore that potential during these “feeling
years.”
Then
we have years from twelve to eighteen—the terrible
teens! This is the time when children want to express
their own individuality. In theory, at least, it could
be a beautiful time, but in our culture particularly here
in America, it’s a period of rejecting the family,
tradition, and authority on most levels. Yet it also has
a positive side—affirming strength of will and independence.
If we can encourage the development of will in wholesome
ways through offering challenges and encouraging service
to others, then we can help those children develop self-control
and discipline. This will help them from falling into
the habits of drugs and drinking that many acquire during
their teens that weaken their will. If you affirm your
ego and your own desires with the attitude of “What
I want is all that’s important,” you become
contractive and in the long run weaken your will. This
self-focus and defiance may strengthen self will, but
that’s not the kind of will we’re wanting
to develop. Rather we want to help teens acquire the kind
of will power that helps them to overcome the real challenges
they’ll face in life.
Finally,
we reach the ages from eighteen to twenty-four years when
many children go on to college, and you find them sitting
around coffee tables talking about Life, with a capital
“L,” and discussing the great thinkers and
philosophers throughout history. At this time, we consciously
need to try to develop their intellects and help make
their thinking clear.
It
takes 24 years to get all these tools of maturity—the
body, feelings, will, and intellect— developed and
harmonized so that we can continue to grow throughout
life. It shortchanges us to think that we’ve been
completely educated when we leave school, because education
essentially begins then, you might say. These four tools
of maturity help us to grow all the way through life and
not become a spent force by the time we’re forty.
This
approach to education ties into the very age in which
we’re living. In the past people considered matter
to be the ultimate reality, and a material view of reality
found its way into every department of life. We tended
to create dogmas and fixed definitions to express truth,
like the Aristotelian way of thinking which says a thing
is either this or that. You need fixed definitions to
bring you to a certain level of clarity, but after that
a definition becomes a liability because it limits your
ability to expand beyond it.
We
are now living in an age of energy where we understand
that the universe around us is essentially formed of energy,
not matter. This vision of a more fluid reality demands
that we get away from dogmatic thinking where we see things
as absolutely this or that. They can be BOTH! Instead
of “either/or,” why not think “both/and”?
So we have come to the point of accepting a more sophisticated
approach to education, to logic, and to moral values which
is directional, not absolute. This Education for Life
system reflects an ever-expanding view of reality in which
the child, the adult, and, on the deepest level, the eternal
soul can grow to embrace broader and broader realities,
until at last we can glimpse the infinite consciousness
of God.
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