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An East-West synthetic model of Education

 Today we shall ponder on few thoughts of Alice Bailey regarding the contrasting ways of East, West mass education and development. The result is summarized and synthesised in a table (image attached).


Let us ponder on these eight phrases taken from the book "From Intellect to Intuition".


"1. In the East we have the careful culture of the individual, with the masses left practically without any education. In the West we have mass education, but the individual is left, speaking generally, without any specific culturing. These two great and divergent systems have each produced a civilization, expressing its peculiar genius and manifestations, but also its marked defects.


2. The premises upon which the systems are based are widely divergent, and it would be worth our while to consider them, for in understanding them and in the eventual union of the two it is possible that the way out may be found for the new race in the New Age.


3. In the eastern system, it is assumed that within every human form dwells an entity, a being, called the self or soul. This self utilizes the form of the human being as its instrument or means of expression, and through the sum total of the mental and emotional states will eventually manifest itself, utilizing the physical body as its functioning mechanism on the physical plane. The control of these means of expression is brought about under the Law of Rebirth. Through the evolutionary process (carried forward through many lives in a physical body) the self gradually builds a fit instrument through which to manifest, and learns to master it. Thus the self or soul becomes truly creative and self-conscious in the highest sense and active in its environment, manifesting its true nature perfectly. Eventually it gains complete liberation from form, from the thralldom of the desire nature, and the domination of the intellect. This final emancipation, and consequent transfer of the centre of consciousness from the human to the spiritual kingdom, is hastened and nurtured by a specialized education, called the meditation process, which is superimposed upon a mind widely and wisely cultured.


4. The result of this intensive and individual training has been spectacular in the extreme. The eastern method is the only one which has produced the Founders of all the world religions, for all are Asiatic in origin. It is responsible for the appearance of those inspired Scriptures of the world which have moulded the thoughts of men, and for the coming forth of all the world Saviours — the Buddha, Zoroaster, Shri Krishna, the Christ (Maitreya), and others. Thus the East has manifested forth, as the result of its particular technique, all the Great Individuals, who have sounded the note for their particular age, given the needed teaching for the unfoldment in the minds of men of the God-Idea, and so led humanity forward along the path of spiritual perception. The exoteric result of their lives is to be seen in the great organized religions.


5. In the training of the highly developed individuals, however, the masses throughout Asia have been neglected, and the system, consequently, (from the angle of racial development), leaves much to be desired. The defects of the system are the development of visionary and impractical tendencies. The mystic is frequently unable to cope with his environment, and where the emphasis is laid entirely upon the subjective side of life, the physical welfare of the individual and the race is neglected and overlooked. The masses are left to struggle in the mire of ignorance, disease and dirt, and, hence, we have the deplorable conditions found throughout the Orient, alongside the highest spiritual illumination of the favored few.


6. In the West the emphasis is entirely reversed. The subjective is ignored and regarded as hypothetical, and the premises upon which our culture is based are as follows: First, there is an entity, called the human being, who possesses a mind, a set of emotions and a response apparatus through which he is brought into contact with his environment. Second, according to the calibre of his apparatus and the condition of his mind, plus the nature of his environing circumstances, so will be his character and disposition. The goal of the educational process, applied wholesale and indiscriminately, is to make him physically fit, mentally alert, to provide a trained memory, controlled reactions, and a character which makes him a social asset and a contributing factor in the body economic. His mind is regarded as a storehouse for imparted facts and the training given every child is intended to make him a useful member of society, self-supporting and decent. The product of these premises is the reverse of the Oriental. We have no specific culture of a kind to produce such world figures as Asia has produced, but we have evolved a mass system of education, and we have developed groups of thinkers. Hence, our universities, colleges and public and private schools. These set their mark upon tens of thousands of men, standardizing them and training them so that we turn out a human product, possessing a certain uniform knowledge, a certain stereotyped store of facts and a smattering of information. This means that there is no such deplorable ignorance as we find in the East, but a fairly high level of general knowledge. It has produced what we call civilization, with its wealth of books, and its many sciences. It has produced the scientific investigation of man, and (on the crest of the wave of human evolution) the great Groups in contradistinction to the great Individuals.


7. Yet the cause is basically one — a method of education. Both are also fundamentally right, yet both are needed to supplement and complement each other. The education of the masses of the Orient will lead to the rectifying of their physical plane problems which call aloud for solution. A wide general system of education reaching down among the illiterate masses of the people in Asia is the outstanding need. The culturing of the individual in the West, and the grafting upon his body of imposed knowledge, of a technique of Soul Culture, as it has come to us from the Orient, will lift and salvage our civilization which is so fast breaking down. The East needs knowledge and the imparting of information. The West needs wisdom and the technique of meditation.


8. This scientific and cultural system, when applied to our highly educated human beings, will produce that bridging body of men, who will unify the achievements of the two hemispheres and link the subjective and objective realms. They will act as the pioneers of the New Age, when men will be practical men of affairs with their feet firmly planted on earth and yet, at the same time, be mystics and seers, living also in the world of spirit and carrying inspiration and illumination with them into the life of every day."


Attached: A synthetic model of Mass Education and Development.



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