To know, to possess and to be – this is the central demand of life, and, rightly, this ought to be the central demand of education, particularly when, as in the Report, there is a clear and categorical recognition of the need for a monumental Identification of life and education. As the Report states In the very first principle of 21- point programmer for a global strategy in education: “Every Individual must be in a position to keep learning throughout his life. The idea of lifelong education is the keynote of the learning society. 1 2. But, as we begin to seek for the meaning of life-long education and its central theme “to be”, we are confronted with a number of implications which In their turn centre round the idea of personality and personality development. As M. Edgar Fare, the Chairman of the Commission, states, en of the underlying assumptions of the Report Is “that the alma of development Is the complete fulfillment of man, in all the richness of his personality, the complexity of his forms of expression and his various commitments. 23. But there are controversies regarding what constitutes personality and the real meaning of the full richness of personality. There are also controversies regarding the conflicts of the demands of personality development with those of professional efficiency. There are also pressures of society to demand men of professions rather than men of developed personalities. Contrarily. Here are assertions in favor of personality development against the pragmatic necessities of their professional excellence.
And then there is a deeper issue as to whether the fullness of personality can be achieved in the present state of society and civilization. Indeed, education for personality development seems to necessitate not only a revolutionary change in the aim, content and structure of educational Institutions, but also a revolution in the inure object, mode and Interrelations of social existence. 4. For us, what Is most significant Is the logic of the new educational methodology which reinforces at every urn the need to place the child and its personality at the centre of entire edifice of education.
The modern educationist has come to realism that the child is not a plastic material to be molded and pressed into a shape as desired and decided upon by the parents and educators. There is an insistence on free choice for the student to choose his own subjects of study, his pace of progress, and even (wealth limits) his teachers. There Is a recognition of Individual differences, necessitating variation In psychological treatment, presentation of materials of study, and criteria for judgment of performance.
There is a demand for new syllabi and for flexible syllabi which would correspond to the psychological needs of the growth of the personality abolition of the examination system, and need, therefore, to discover a more rational and psychological system that can replace the system of tests, checks and counter- checks. All these demands and needs point to the Idea of education for the all-round for the education for personality development? Personality is sometimes identified with character, but very often a distinction is made between the two.
According to his distinction, character means the fixed structure of certain recognizable qualities while personality means the flux of self-expressive or sensitive and responsive being. But when we examine the distinction between the fixed structure and the flux, we find that the fixity and the flux are only relative terms, and in the movement of Nature, nothing is fixed. Personality may then be regarded as a plastic expression of certain forces and ends of Nature combined for the time being.
Deeper psychological research affirms, as in the system of Yoga, that this combination of forces can be stubbed, it can be modified, it can be totally changed. Personalities can be multiplied within the same individual; the conflicting personalities in the individual can be harmonious; one can become capable of putting forth the needed personality according to the circumstances or the demands of the work or situation, even while the other personalities would remain behind, contributing to the efficacy of the personality put in the front.
One can even go beyond all personality and know the real person that assumes so many personalities. 6. One can make a distinction between the real Person and the instruments of the person, biz. He body, life and mind. And between the person and the instruments there is what one might call the force of the person that expresses itself and gives a special turn, a special power of configuration, a certain stamp to the instruments.
It is this special stamp or power of configuration that gives rise to the specific formation of a pattern of qualities and drives to our body, life and mind. It is that which we should call properly ‘personality. In the language of the Sympathy psychology, we might say that body, life and mind are the expressions of Portrait marked by the three saunas: states, rajas and tams. The aroma human being is simply an instrument of Portrait, dominated largely bathmats or rajas, expressing indeed some pattern of these qualities, but as yet unable to become aware of the inner person, Pursues.
In the Sympathy, the Pursues is a mere Witness which is inactive, and it is not proper to speak of the Force of the Pursues. But in the Pedant, especially in the original Pedant of the Pinheads, and in some of its best developed forms, the inner person has its own force, often called the soul-force, which when awakened, pours itself into the instruments of Portrait, and it is this meeting of the Soul-Force and Portrait of Nature hat causes the real formation of Personality.
The greater the opening of Nature to receive the flow of the Soul-Force, the greater is the resultant personality, and the fullness of Personality would be achieved initially by full development of mind, life and body under the sovereign guidance, rule and will of the Soul-Force, and a complete coursing of the energies of the Soul-Force, into the stuff, vibrations, activities, modes of mind, life and body, into the movements of states, rajas and tams, with the power of their complete refinement, change and transformation. . The Soul-Force vibrates with the power and presence of the inner person, the true individual, which is quite different from the ego, a product of Nature or Portrait. The true individual is called, in Sanskrit, the Chatty Pursues, the one which is described in the Pinheads as ‘no bigger than the thumb’. It is, indeed, no bigger than the thumb when there is as yet no awakening in us of its presence and external growth, and the secret of all development of personality lies in that presence and in its force.
It has, therefore, been affirmed that if one wants to develop the deed personality or wants to have mastery over one’s own personal development, and even of the circumstances of our development, then the right method is to discover and seek a living contract with that inner person. In the absence of this contract, one will always remain subject to the formations of qualities in oneself, and will have no power to control, guide and perfect these formations.
It is, therefore, concluded that the fullness of personality can come about only by the complete emergence of the inner person and the full expression of its force. 8. This force has, if we study closely, four basic expressions. It expresses itself through four Powers: a Power for knowledge, a Power for strength, a Power for mutuality and active and productive relation and interchange, a Power for works and labor and service.
Accordingly, we have four basic personalities: the personality of knowledge, the personality of strength, the personality of harmony and the personality of skill. “The psychological fact is”, says Sir Robbing, “that there are these four active powers and tendencies of the Spirit and its executive Shasta within us and the predominance of one or the other in the more well-formed part of our personality gives us our main indecencies, dominant qualities and capacities, effective turn in action and life.
But they are more or less present in all men, here manifest, there latent, here developed, there subdued and depressed or subordinate, and in the perfect man will be raised up to a fullness and harmony which in the spiritual freedom will burst out into the free play of the infinite quality of the spirit in the inner and the outer life and in the self-enjoying creative play of the Pursues with his and the world’s Nature-power. ” 3 The full richness of personality is the splendid, opulent and marvelous integration of he four-fold personality.
The full heart of Love is tranquilizer by knowledge into a calm ecstasy and vibrates with strength; the strong hands of Power labor for the world in a radiant fullness of Joy and light; the luminous brain of Knowledge accepts and transforms the heart’s obscure inspirations and lends itself to the workings of the high-seated Will. All these powers are founded together on a soul of sacrifice that lives in unity with all the world and accepts all things to transmute them. This, we may say, is the condition of man’s integrally. 9. Such then is the basic idea of the integral personality and the process of its formation.
In this idea we find the completion of several other ideas of personality of the remedy of dangers presented in several processes of exaggerated formations of egoism and individuality. According to one conception, personality is identified with egoistic individuality having a certain sense of ends or values. And fullness of personality in this sense would mean an enlarged development of egoistic individuality by means of an increased power of mind, an increased power of vital force, by a refined or dense and massive exaggerations of the forces of what Yoga calls ‘Ignorance’.
This would manifest even a violent and turbulent, exaggerated, vital ego, satisfying itself with a supreme tyrannous or anarchic strength of self-fulfillment. Or, it would manifest a mighty exhibition of an overpowering force, self-possessed, self-held, even an ascetically self-restrained mind-capacity and life-power, strong, calm or cold or formidable in collected vehemence, subtle, dominating, a sublimation at once of the lower key, these manifestations are appalling, and one shudders at the idea of personality development if such is to be the result of education for personality development.
There is, of course, an idea of a harmonious development of personality in which body, life and mind are developed integrally and with a kind of balance that would avoid exaggerations of the vital or mental ego. Something of this kind was attempted as an ideal in the early Greek culture, and this is often proposed all over the world as a salutary aim for education. At its highest, it attempts a harmony of the triangular disposition of the individual, a harmony of the aesthetic, ethical and rational tendencies.
The highest ideal that is formulated is that of the pursuit of the Truth, Goodness and Beauty. But modern psychological studies have valued the tendencies of intrinsic conflict of these three ideals as understood and practiced by the human mind. There have also been revealed the tendencies of the unconscious which constantly bombard the shifting harmonies of personality, and the researches made in the fields of parapsychology reveal deeper complexes and compactions whose harmony is extremely difficult to achieve.
What we call harmony is most often a compromise of tendencies, an apparently working order concealing under a brittle cover a mass of uncontrolled and unregenerate or unregulated impulses, tendencies, dreams, imaginations, systems of ideas and motives. There is, in fact, a sort of controlled disequilibrium, but not a happy mastery of a rich harmony. The inner soul, the inner person of the Indian psychology, has an inherent power of purification and harmonistic.
It detects the error and falsehood spontaneously; it turns effortlessly to all that is noble and mysterious and wonderful. The development of personality that is accompanied with or initiated by an awakening to this inmost soul, this psychic entity, prevents egoism and exaggerated formation of egoism; it harmonies effectively the aesthetic, the ethical and the sectional. It has even a power to transmute the passions and impulses; it can even set right the subconscious and open it to the supreme light by which it can finally be transformed. It is”, in the words of Sir Robbing, “this secret psychic entity which is the original Conscience in us deeper than the constructed and conventional conscience of the moralist, for it is this which points always towards Truth and Right and Beauty, towards Love and Harmony and all that is a divine possibility in us, and persists till these things become the major need of our nature.
It is the psychic resonantly in us that flowers as the saint, the sage, the seer; when it reaches its full strength, it turns the being towards the Knowledge of Self and the Divine, towards the supreme Truth, the supreme Good, the supreme Beauty, Love and Bliss, the divine heights and largeness’s, and opens us to the touch of spiritual sympathy, universality, oneness. ” 4 The coming forward of the psychic person marks a momentous stage in the development of personality.
It then begins to govern overtly and entirely our outer nature of mind, life and body, and then this can be cast into OLL-image of what is true, right and beautiful, and in the end, the whole nature can be turned towards the real aim of life, the supreme victory. A transformation of the mind, life and body by the presence and the power of the psychic being is effected. This process may be rapid or tardy accordingly to the resistance in our developed nature.
But ultimately, by the greater and greater infusion of the psychic light, every being, every nook and corner of it, every movement, formation, direction, inclination of thought, will, emotion, sensation, action, reaction, motive, disposition, propensity, sire, habit of the conscious or subconscious physical, even the most concealed, camouflaged, mute recondite, is lighted up with the unerring psychic light, their confusions dissipated, their tangles disentangled, their obscurities, deceptions, self- deceptions precisely indicated and removed; all is purified set right, the whole nature harmonious, modulated in the psychic key, put in spiritual order. ” 5 10. There are, still, according to Sir Robbing, higher levels of consciousness, ranges of the powers of the fourfold personality in the supercilious. These ranges are those of what Sir Robbing has termed the Higher Mind, the Illumined Mind, Intuitive Mind, Overridden and Superfine. An account of all this would form a subject by itself, and in an introductory paper as this we cannot dare enter into this field. 11.
What we need to stress now is that the secret of personality development is an awakening to the psychic person and the development of body, life and mind in such a manner that they might aid in this awakening and might become well-trained instruments of the fourfold personality of knowledge, strength, harmony and skill. 12. It should be evident that the personality development as conceived here is a life-long education. And yet, it is a process that must begin right from the earliest stage, and must determine the drift, the content, and method of all our stages of education. And it seems inevitable that an education motivated by the development of personality demands a radical change in our approach, attitudes, methods, structure, system of evaluation, of syllabus and of contact with the students. 13.
And, first, we may ask if we could find some principles which would guide us in our work of organizing some practical organization of education for personality development. In a series of articles that Sir Robbing wrote in 1909-10, as a leader of Indian nationalism, in order to expound what he conceived to be the lines on which a system of National Education could be evolved, he enunciated three fundamental principles to which reference is made earlier. 14. There are several other guidelines that we find in Sir Robbing. While explaining the instruments of the work of the teacher, he writes in his Synthesis of Yoga, “Teaching, example, influence, – these are the three instruments of the Guru.
But the wise Teacher will not seek to impose himself or his opinions on the sieve acceptance of the receptive mind; he will throw in only what is productive and sure as a seed which will grow under the divine fostering within. He will seek to awaken much more than to instruct; he will aim at the growth of the faculties and the experiences by a natural process and free expansion. He will give a method as an aid, as a tillable device, not as an imperative formula or a fixed routine. And he will be on his guard against any turning of the means into a limitation, against the mechanizing of process. ” 6 15. “What is his method and his system? ” asks Sir Robbing and answers, “He has no method and every method. His system is a natural organization of the highest processes and movements of which the nature is capable.
Applying themselves even to the pettiest details and to the actions the most insignificant in their appearance with as much care and thoroughness as to the greatest, they in the end lift all into the Light and transform all. ” 7 16. “This imperfect nature of ours”, explains Sir Robbing, “contains the materials of our perfection, but All this material has to be patiently perfected, purified, reorganized, new-molded and transformed, not hacked and hewn and slain or mutilated, not obliterated by impel coercion and denial. ” 8 17. These principles, it will be observed, are subtle and complex, and no rigid formula of practice can be derived from them. They impose a great responsibility on the teacher and demand from him extraordinary qualities of a profound psychologist.
It would also seem that the education governed by these principles stands in need of a very flexible structure or organization, in which the paramount place is automatically assigned to the varied needs of student’s growth. In such a system, it is not merely the ‘subjects’ of study that should count. A much greater importance will have to be assigned to the inner aspiration, experience of freedom, possibility of educating oneself, self-experimentation, discovery of the inner needs and their relation with the programmer of studies, and the discovery of the aim of life and the art of life. A great stress will fall upon each student’s individual work, and there has to be subtlety in forming flexible groupings of the students.
Our present structure of education is imprisoned within the walls of a triple system, and if we wish to make education for personality development a racial proposition, we must examine this triple system in some depth and suggest some practicable solutions. This imprisoning system is the lecture system, syllabus system, and the examination system. 18. We may begin with a few remarks regarding the Lecture System. A lecture or a speech as a creative expression of the inner spirit is a living vibration and it has an indispensable place in any ideal system of education. Again, a lecture which is an informal talk has also an important place in education.
Also, lectures have a great utility in (a) introducing a subject, (b) dominating an interest for a subject, (c) presenting a panoramic view of a subject, (d) explaining general difficulties or hurdles which are commonly met by a large number of students in their studies, (e) creating a collective atmosphere with regard to certain pervasive ideas, and (f) initiating rapid and massive programmed of training. Finally, lectures as reports of research work have their undeniable place and value. But where the above aims or conditions are absent, lectures become dry, boring, ineffective, irrelevant to the interests of the students, and therefore useless.
Also, instead of being given a legitimate and rightful place, lectures in the present system are given almost a central place. It has been regarded as the central task of teachers to lecture and to cover the syllabus through their lectures. As a result, teachers are most often uncreative in their lectures; they are in a hurry to pour out their knowledge without much regard for the interest and attention of the students. Students tend to remain mostly passive, often inattentive and become in due course restless, and even violent. The present lecture system is thus quite unapologetic and devoid of much educational value. This must be changed radically. 19. Next, we may examine the syllabus system with which our lecture system is so closely connected.
A syllabus as an over-all view of an idea of a subject has necessary place in any ideal system of education. A curriculum as an instrument of certain goals to be achieved has also an important place. Also, a syllabus has a great utility in presenting to the student the various elements involved in what he is going to learn, in stimulating his interest in those elements, and in creating in him a ‘prospective’ learning has its value and usefulness (at least in some areas of studies). But a wallaby cut out rigidly and fixed uniformly for all the students alike is a heavy chain that smothers the innate tendencies of curiosity, variation, digression, play and spontaneity.
It also cuts across a genuine development towards the synthesis and globosity of a wide sweep of integral comprehension. A wrong notion also grows that only what is given in the syllabus is that which is to be learnt; what falls outside the syllabus is often ignored and remains ignored indefinitely. Instead of giving a legitimate place to the syllabus, it has come to be regarded as a backbone of the entire structure of the educational system. This situation must radically change. A syllabus as a general panoramic view in the vision of the teacher and as a guideline for the student has a legitimate function, and this function has to be preserved. But in the actual operation of the educational process, there have to be what may be called ‘evolutionary syllabi.
A syllabus should grow according to the needs of the inner growth of the student, and the student should be free to develop and weave the various elements of his studies into a complex harmonious whole on the lines of his deeper quest and according to the rhythm of the inner flowering of his resonantly. We should aid at progress, but at free progress. We should aid at perfection, but a perfection that is a spontaneous and happy flowering. The progress of the student has to be related to the motivation of the student. Curiosity as a motive has to be fostered and nourished. It has to be deepened and enlarged. But a time must come when mere curiosity is transformed into a serious search after the Truth. It is this transformation that marks a real progress.
A time comes in the process of learning when the student is awakened to the necessity of mastery or perfection. When this motivation begins to operate, more and more thorough programmed of training can be proposed, for it is with this motivation that training becomes a rigorous but Joyous exercise. Many of the difficulties of the teachers in dealing with the students arise because most programmed of study are programmed of training, and these are presented to the students whether they are psychologically ready or not. There has to be a long period of general culture during which attention is to be paid to the cultivation of deep interest and love for studies and a large and wide grasp of the world and its mysteries.
Stress on specialization and mastery and perfection has also to be there, but a serious attention to this aspect should be given, it seems, only when the motivation for it begins to arise in the consciousness of the student. All this implies a new handling of the students and their interests. It also implies the paramount importance of the observation of students and a deep psychological understanding of their motivation and their needs of growth. A sound principle of teaching is, as we have noted elsewhere, that the child should be consulted in his own growth, and so, instead of imposing a programmer of studies, the coacher has to work with the student pointing out to him the various paths of progress and asking him to choose what he would like to pursue. The teacher can certainly guide, counsel, help in choosing, but he should not impose.
It is true that finding a vocation and the necessary training for the chosen vocation are indeed important motivation of study, and they have to be given an important part in our total scheme. But we have at first to note that the chief vocation of man is to be Man to develop the faculties of original, subtle, and complex thinking capable of seizing he heart of things and men and events, and the will-power to control and harmonies the various impulses, instincts and desires by means of the perception of a noble ideal and an unfailing resolution to realism that ideal. There has also to be a full growth of the body and its powers of strength, agility, plasticity, health and grace.
And all this development of the body, life and mind is to be under the guidance of a secret knowledge and was the privilege of India to have once possessed in a great measure, and she can now recover and develop it even in a greater measure. This is he knowledge of the psychic and the spiritual. Whatever else may be the vocation of the individual, to possess this knowledge of the inner spiritual being and to guide his mind, life and body in the light of this knowledge – this has to be chief programmer of the vocation of every student. A wide, special and flexible syllabus for the discovery of and training for this vocation has to be the major concern of New Education. But this chief programmer has also to be related to each student for the specific role that he has to play in the world- activities.
A psychological handling of the student reveals he fact that every child has in him the materials for his perfection but these materials are in an undeveloped state or they are ill- organized. The specific role and vocation of each is intrinsically related to the harmonistic and perfection of these materials and to the natural and right rhythm of this process of perfection. It will also be found that each man’s natural vocation is intrinsically related to a natural tendency towards the mastery of a specific Technology, if we use that term in its widest sense in which not only scientific technologies but also language and law are included in its connotation. It is this natural tendency towards technology that should be encouraged right from the early stages of education.
And for this purpose, there should always be available ample facilities for the cultivation of interests in various technologies and for their mastery in due course. But care has to be taken to see that the study of technology does not become mechanical. And to prevent this we must realize that technology is a tool of expression. This would mean that the over-all emphasis should fall upon the inner springs of self-development which would necessitate expression, and which ; in turn, would necessitate the use of tools of expression. It is also to be noted that while technology is oriented towards utility, and therefore all technological training has to be for serving certain utilities of life, the ultimate aim of technological training should not be ‘utilitarian’ in its vulgar sense.
The aim of technology is and must be to be the vehicle of the expression of an ideal, an aspiration, an inspiration and a perfection. A new organization and syllabus for Technology would result from the above considerations. 20. And now we come to the Examination System. Tests as means of Judging achievement are necessary and often indispensable. As such, they have an important place in any ideal system of education. Tests are also useful for stimulation, for providing opportunities to the students to think clearly and formulate ideas adequately, for achieving precision, exactness, for arriving at a global view of the subjects of study, for self-evaluation, and for gaining self-confidence. Tests can also be a matter of fun and play.
But tests as a threat and as a means of securing the students’ motivation for studies year in a decisive way, the uniformity of tests in disregard of the individual differentiation, an almost exclusive reliance on written tests which encourage ramming or unreflective reproduction of the material read or studied – these are among the elements that hurt the sensitivity of psychologists and educationists whose hearts yearn to foster the minds and hearts of the students with deep understanding, tenderness and affection in relation to the psychological needs of their growth of personality. The fact that even a silly, mechanical mind can pass the tests, and that too with honors, is sufficient to pass a verdict against the present system of tests.
The fact that the most important aspects of culture that we wish our hillier to cultivate lie entirely beyond the scope of our tests is sufficient to show what a marginal place tests should occupy in our total system of education. The great values of truthfulness; sincerity, cheerfulness, benevolence, right Judgment, sacrifice, friendship – these are some of the things which we wish our children to possess. As these do not come under the sweep of the examination system, they tend to be neglected or ignored or given a very inferior place in the educational process. But it is these rather than many other superficial things that should have a sovereign place. Means must be found by which sovereign things achieve their sovereignty.
The examination system must be radically changed. The motivation for studies has to come from a natural curiosity, a sense of inner need of a profound quest, and an inevitable necessity for the search after the Truth and Perfection. The teacher’s genius will be Judged by the way in which he can give the right and timely contact to his students and provide the necessary nourishment to their curiosity and need for a quest or stimulate them by striking ideas, projects, stories, and daily conversations, and much more by example and influence. Let not tests be a substitute for these profound and deep things which constitute the very heart of education.
There are what may be called ‘romantic’ periods of study and they come to different students at different stages of development, These are the periods of general expansion or a passion for a given preoccupation or falling in love with education. These are the periods entirely unsuitable for tests. There are others when students need to clarify their vague ideas and sentiments ; they need precision and system. These are the periods when oral or written tests appropriate to these needs an be given. There are again periods of assimilation at the end of which there is need to review in a connected manner the different elements of study. Here tests for comprehension or an extensive exposition would be relevant.
There are also periods when there is a will to undergo a rigorous programmer of training. During such periods, even a series of difficult and strenuous tests would be perfectly Justified. Tests would be particularly needed where the courses of Technology (understood in its largest sense) are concerned. Tests have thus to be a varied nature, and for each dents, tests must come to such a way that they are helpful to his growth. Tests must not be the means of passing or failing, of promotion or detention, but means of a self-evaluation, stimulation, and for correction and perfection. Moreover, tests may be oral or written or practical, according to the need and circumstance.
It is also to be realized that impromptu tests can be more effective both in their power of stimulation and in arriving at a right Judgment of the actual capacity of performance any time-table for tests; they should be given to the students as and when necessary. In any case, it has to be realized that the right way of Judging a student and his progress is by an inner contact, an inner feeling for the student, an inner tact and discrimination. These qualities have to be developed by the teachers. And it is when these qualities are developed that they will vibrate in the atmosphere a power that encourages and nourishes the great virtues of the inner soul of the student. II 21 . These considerations suggest some lines on which a new organization for New Education suitable for personality development could be evolved.
But before we mom to further precisions, it may seem necessary to state some over-all propositions regarding the spirit in which the new organization should function, and the general role of the teachers in this New Education. 22. There will be, it may be said, four features of New Education : a. A sincere pursuit of the Truth, persistent seeking of an organization of progressive Harmony, and a spontaneous Freedom fulfilling itself through growing order and perfection. B. Informality in instruction, Joy in learning, utter dedication, strictness in training, and the widest comprehension in the student- coacher relationship – these will govern the new methods of education. C.
An ever- fresh youthfulness, a constant prospective thrust towards New Future, and a happy thirst for continuous progress – these will govern the atmosphere on New Education. D. A search for the highest aim of life, a stress on the integral development of personality, and a living expression of the unity of mankind – these will be the universal preoccupations of the teachers and students. 23. In New Education, students will not go to schools and colleges in order to listen to lectures, but for a quest, for finding out the answers to their questions, for consulting the teachers, when needed. The very disposition of the classes will be radically changed, so that students have facilities to consult the teachers for a short or long time according to the needs.
Instead of their being at the head of the class, the teachers will be found at convenient places so that they are readily available to those who need them for help, guidance, consultation. The teacher’s main occupation will be to observe his students, their inclinations and capacities, so as to be able to help them with deep humpty and understanding. One of his important activities will be to write out something special for each of his students which will be useful for his general and specific growth. This involves a great deal of research work, but that is the privilege of his station in life. The teacher will not be a mere lecturer; rather he will be an animator. He will inspire much more than instruct; he will guide by example and by the influence of his inner soul and its noble aspirations.
To aid the student in awakening the inner will to grow and to progress – that will be the constant endeavourer of the teacher. To evolve a programmer of education for each student in accordance with the felt needs of the student’s growth, to watch the students with deep sympathy, understanding and patience, ready to intervene and guide when necessary, to stimulate the students with striking words, ideas, questions, stories, projects and programmed – this will be the main work of the teachers. But to radiate an inner calm and a cheerful dynamism so as to create an atmosphere conducive to the development of the higher faculties of inner knowledge and intuition – that will be regarded as the very heart of the work of the teacher. 24. As hinted earlier, there
