Mental
Education
Of all lines of education, mental education is the most widely
known and practised, yet except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make
it something very incomplete and in the end quite insufficient.
Generally speaking, schooling
is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary. And when a
child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training
which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever
is necessary for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind.
Even conceding that the training is given with due measure and discrimination
and does not permanently damage the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind
the faculties it needs to become a good and useful instrument. The schooling
that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system of gymnastics to
increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of
human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal
formulations given to these various branches each constitute a special and
well-defined language.
A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life,
has five principal phases. Normally these phases follow one after another, but
in exceptional individuals they may alternate or even proceed simultaneously.
These five phases, in brief, are:
(1) Development of the
power of concentration, the capacity of attention.
(2) Development of the
capacities of expansion, widening, complexity and richness.
(3) Organisation of one's
ideas around a central idea, a higher ideal or a supremely luminous idea that
will serve as a guide in life.
(4) Thought-control,
rejection of undesirable thoughts, to become able to think only what one wants
and when one wants.
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(5) Development of mental silence, perfect calm and a more and
more total receptivity to inspirations coming from the higher regions of the
being.
It is not possible to give here all the details concerning the
methods to be employed in the application of these five phases of education to
different individuals. Still, a few explanations on points of detail can be
given.
Undeniably, what most impedes mental progress in children is the
constant dispersion of their thoughts. Their thoughts flutter hither and
thither like butterflies and they have to make a great effort to fix them. Yet
this capacity is latent in them, for when you succeed in arousing their
interest, they are capable of a good deal of attention. By his ingenuity,
therefore, the educator will gradually help the child to become capable of a
sustained effort of attention and a faculty of more and more complete
absorption in the work in hand. All methods that can develop this faculty of
attention from games to rewards are good and can all be utilised according to
the need and the circumstances. But it is the psychological action that is most
important and the sovereign method is to arouse in the child an interest in
what you want to teach him, a liking for work, a will to progress. To love to
learn is the most precious gift that one can give to a child: to love to learn
always and everywhere, so that all circumstances, all happenings in life may be
constantly renewed opportunities for learning more and always more.
For that, to attention and concentration should be added
observation, precise recording and faithfulness of memory. This faculty of
observation can be developed by varied and spontaneous exercises, making use of
every opportunity that presents itself to keep the child's thought wakeful,
alert and prompt. The growth of the understanding should be stressed much more
than that of memory. One knows well only what one has understood. Things learnt
by heart, mechanically, fade away little by little and finally disappear; what
is understood is never forgotten. Moreover, you must never refuse to explain to
a child the how
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and the why of things. If you cannot do it yourself, you must
direct the child to those who are qualified to answer or point out to him some
books that deal with the question. In this way you will progressively awaken in
the child the taste for true study and the habit of making a persistent effort
to know.
This will bring us quite naturally to the second phase of
development in which the mind should be widened and enriched.
You will gradually show the child that everything can become an
interesting subject for study if it is approached in the right way. The life of
every day, of every moment, is the best school of all, varied, complex, full of
unexpected experiences, problems to be solved, clear and striking examples and
obvious consequences. It is so easy to arouse healthy curiosity in children, if
you answer with intelligence and clarity the numerous questions they ask. An
interesting reply to one readily brings others in its train and so the
attentive child learns without effort much more than he usually does in the
classroom. By a choice made with care and insight, you should also teach him to
enjoy good reading-matter which is both instructive and attractive. Do not be
afraid of anything that awakens and pleases his imagination; imagination
develops the creative mental faculty and through it study becomes living and
the mind develops in joy.
In order to increase the suppleness and comprehensiveness of his
mind, one should see not only that he studies many varied topics, but above all
that a single subject is approached in various ways, so that the child
understands in a practical manner that there are many ways of facing the same intellectual
problem, of considering it and solving it. This will remove all rigidity from
his brain and at the same time it will make his thinking richer and more supple
and prepare it for a more complex and comprehensive synthesis. In this way also
the child will be imbued with the sense of the extreme relativity of mental
learning and, little by little, an aspiration for a truer source of knowledge
will awaken in him.
Indeed, as the child grows older and progresses in his
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studies, his mind too ripens and becomes more and more capable of
forming general ideas, and with them almost always comes a need for certitude,
for a knowledge that is stable enough to form the basis of a mental
construction which will permit all the diverse and scattered and often
contradictory ideas accumulated in his brain to be organised and put in order.
This ordering is indeed very necessary if one is to avoid chaos in one's
thoughts. All contradictions can be transformed into complements, but for that
one must discover the higher idea that will have the power to bring them
harmoniously together. It is always good to consider every problem from all
possible standpoints so as to avoid partiality and exclusiveness; but if the
thought is to be active and creative, it must, in every case, be the natural
and logical synthesis of all the points of view adopted. And if you want to
make the totality of your thoughts into a dynamic and constructive force, you
must also take great care as to the choice of the central idea of your mental
synthesis; for upon that will depend the value of this synthesis. The higher
and larger the central idea and the more universal it is, rising above time and
space, the more numerous and the more complex will be the ideas, notions and
thoughts which it will be able to organise and harmonise.
It goes without saying that this work of organisation cannot be
done once and for all. The mind, if it is to keep its vigour and youth, must
progress constantly, revise its notions in the light of new knowledge, enlarge
its frame-work to include fresh notions and constantly reclassify and
reorganise its thoughts, so that each of them may find its true place in
relation to the others and the whole remain harmonious and orderly.
All that has just been said concerns the speculative mind, the
mind that learns. But learning is only one aspect of mental activity; the
other, which is at least equally important, is the constructive faculty, the
capacity to form and thus prepare action. This very important part of mental
activity has rarely been the subject of any special study or discipline. Only
those who
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want, for some reason, to exercise a strict control over their
mental activities think of observing and disciplining this faculty of
formation; and as soon as they try it, they have to face difficulties so great
that they appear almost insurmountable.
And yet control over this formative activity of the mind is one of
the most important aspects of self-education; one can say that without it no
mental mastery is possible. As far as study is concerned, all ideas are
acceptable and should be included in the synthesis, whose very function is to
become more and more rich and complex; but where action is concerned, it is
just the opposite. The ideas that are accepted for translation into action
should be strictly controlled and only those that agree with the general trend
of the central idea forming the basis of the mental synthesis should be
permitted to express themselves in action. This means that every thought
entering the mental consciousness should be set before the central idea; if it
finds a logical place among the thoughts already grouped, it will be admitted
into the synthesis; if not, it will be rejected so that it can have no
influence on the action. This work of mental purification should be done very
regularly in order to secure a complete control over one's actions.
For this purpose, it is good to set apart some time every day when
one can quietly go over one's thoughts and put one's synthesis in order. Once
the habit is acquired, you can maintain control over your thoughts even during
work and action, allowing only those which are useful for what you are doing to
come to the surface. Particularly, if you have continued to cultivate the power
of concentration and attention, only the thoughts that are needed will be
allowed to enter the active external consciousness and they then become all the
more dynamic and effective. And if, in the intensity of concentration, it
becomes necessary not to think at all, all mental vibration can be stilled and
an almost total silence secured. In this silence one can gradually open to the
higher regions of the mind and learn to record the inspirations that come from
there.
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But even before reaching this point, silence in itself is
supremely useful, because in most people who have a somewhat developed and
active mind, the mind is never at rest. During the day, its activity is kept
under a certain control, but at night, during the sleep of the body, the control
of the waking state is almost completely removed and the mind indulges in
activities which are sometimes excessive and often incoherent. This creates a
great stress which leads to fatigue and the diminution of the intellectual
faculties.
The fact is that like all the other parts of the human being, the
mind too needs rest and it will not have this rest unless we know how to
provide it. The art of resting one's mind is something to be acquired. Changing
one's mental activity is certainly one way of resting; but the greatest
possible rest is silence. And as far as the mental faculties are concerned a
few minutes passed in the calm of silence are a more effective rest than hours
of sleep.
When one has learned to silence the mind at will and to concentrate
it in receptive silence, then there will be no problem that cannot be solved,
no mental difficulty whose solution cannot be found. When it is agitated,
thought becomes confused and impotent; in an attentive tranquillity, the light
can manifest itself and open up new horizons to man's capacity.
Bulletin, November
1951
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