George Catlin: Our topic is education
in the New Age, so perhaps the best place to begin is with some
clarification of exactly what you mean by education. What does that term
mean to you?
Benjamin Creme: To me, education is every activity that fits a
man, woman, or child for the fullest expression of their potential.
Coming into incarnation at a certain stage in development, carrying on
from a previous life, we have a given potential in terms of soul
expression, intelligence, and physical equipment - whatever that brings
into this life.
Education is the preparation of a man, woman, or child,
on physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual planes, to bring out their
potential in any given life.
GC: So you're taking education quite broadly then. Would you say
that parents are educators?
BC: In the sense that every child imitates its parents from the word go,
then indeed every parent is an educator, for good or ill. If the
behavior of the parent is restrictive, authoritarian, then it is bad
education. If the parent surrounds the child with love and patience, and
seeks to enhance its expression in any given area, then it is taking an
essential part in the education of the child.
But most of us pass on to
our children what we received from our own parents. If that is full of
holes, then that is what we pass on. Most of us receive, and endow our
children with, much harmful garbage. I do not call that education but
conditioning.
GC: Outside the home and formal schools, would you see places like the
workplace as having a potential for education?
BC: Very much so. In fact, I would see in the education of the future a
closer relationship between formal schoolroom situations and the outer
workplace and community in general.
And I would see, as part of
education, a growing need to involve children at a young age in
full-blown community activities so that they see themselves from the
very beginning as part of a community, wider than the family and
different from the school - not to replace the school, but to enhance
what the school can bring to life.
GC: Given your mention of the future, and the potential for communities
emerging in the child's awareness, maybe this is a good time to get into
the question of what the New Age is. Could you explain that?
BC: The New Age is the result of the cyclic activity of certain
great
cosmic energies that impose themselves on the life of our solar system.
As it moves around the heavens, our system comes into direct energetic
relationship with each constellation of the zodiac in turn.
These
constellations embody powerful cosmic energies with particular qualities
which dominate the life of the cycle for as long as it lasts - roughly
2,150 years per cycle. We are emerging out of the Piscean experience and
entering the new age in which the Aquarian energies, which are very
different from those of Pisces, will create a new culture and
civilization as we respond to them.
These energies embody certain great
ideas which become our ideals; as we put the ideals into effect, so our
culture and civilization grows.
GC: Does one age end at a particular moment and a new age begin?
BC: One ends and one begins, but not at a particular moment. There is a
transitional phase of roughly 200-300 years. For example, the energies
of Pisces began to recede, as our sun moved away from their sphere of
influence, around 1625.
The energies of Aquarius began to come in 50
years later, around 1675. Every day since 1675 has seen the energies of
Aquarius mounting in potency. This they will do until they reach a
zenith and then there will be a gradual declining as the sun moves away
from their influence and enters that of Capricorn.
That will take
roughly 2,350 years.
GC: To get some perspective on the challenges of education as we move
into the Aquarian Age, I wonder if you would say something about the
state of human consciousness at the dawn of the Piscean Age 2,000 years
ago.
BC: It was dark. We have a very clear example of this. A great man, one
of the greatest beings who has ever graced this Earth, namely Jesus,
lived, worked and carried out a three-year mission in a little country
called Palestine. It is extraordinary that a man who exemplified in
himself the quality of love, and to a degree that had never been shown
in a man before, could be sent to his death -
crucified.
This happened because there was no education. People were benighted.
There were a few individuals - in this case the priests - who could read
and probably write. They were the teachers, the rabbis, who controlled
the others. You can multiply that across the world. A few people read
and the rest were totally uneducated.
They were peasants, shepherds,
fishermen, tool makers, and so on, with no education at all. They simply
did as they were told. This relationship had gone on from the earliest
times.
In the Atlantean civilizations, which are said to have ended about
95,000 years ago, there were a few people, priests and kings, who could
read, were educated. The rest of the people simply obeyed, did what they
were told. The Master
Djwhal Khul, writing through
Alice A. Bailey, says
that a scholar of the Middle Ages had a consciousness equal to that of a
14-year-old child of the present.
In every age, in every century, there have been those individuals who
stood out; for instance, among the Greeks, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Plato,
Socrates, Euclid and all the other extraordinary minds who have given us
the embryonic beginnings of the science and philosophy of today. But
they were the exception.
We have to remember, too, that the "glory that
was Greece" was built on slave labor.
GC: The exceptions certainly dominate our sense of history, but at the
time of Jesus, what was the average person, the man or woman in the
street, able to do and think? Can you describe their consciousness in
any way?
BC: They could not think. They could certainly be stimulated and made to
act in a certain direction. But it was purely an emotional reaction to
excitement. It was in no sense thinking for themselves. Otherwise, for
example, Jesus would not have been killed.
The populace was whipped up
by the priests to get rid of
Jesus.
GC: Would you say that we can think now?
BC: We are beginning to think.
GC: Is that the result of the energies of Pisces?
BC: The energies of Pisces have brought out humanity's individuality.
This is a great step forward in the evolution of the human race. We have
come out of the herd; we were really intelligent animals in the human
herd. Broadly speaking, people today are individual in a very real
sense, quite distinct from what pertained 2,000 years ago.
This is the
result of the energy of Pisces. Also, the quality of idealism, the
aspiration and vision so prevalent today, has been responsible for the
growth of the ideologies and religions. People are now ready to die for
their beliefs. This would have seemed unthinkable 2,000 years ago.
This
is an extraordinary, self-sacrificing view of life, visionary, and
fundamentally spiritual.
GC: Is it inevitable that we progress in a certain way as a result of
the energies of a particular age?
BC: If we handle them correctly then we do progress. Each energy gives
to humanity the ability to unfold a further aspect of our potential,
divine nature. Individually, we can slip back, of course, but each age
confers on humanity, in an upward spiral, the enhancement of the quality
of its consciousness.
There is not an equal response by all people
because we are not all at the same level of evolution. In relation to
our point in evolution, so will we respond to these energies, and they
will enhance our ability to develop our fuller potential with each age.
GC: Is there choice involved in that? Have we maximized the opportunity
of Pisces? Could things have developed differently? Have we done all
that we could have achieved through Pisces?
BC: I doubt it. Separativeness, which has also been a result of the
energies of Pisces, has hindered the development of humanity and created
great negative karma, both personal and racial. We have hindered
ourselves tremendously. Separation, of course, is the great hindrance to
evolution. There is no separation; this is the heresy of heresies. We
are souls in incarnation; there is no such thing as a separate soul.
The fundamental need of any new approach to education will be the
understanding, the realization as a fact in life, of the soul.
GC: Given that soul realization would be the overall aim of evolution,
what particular aspect will Aquarius draw forth? What energies does
Aquarius bring?
BC: Above all, the energy of synthesis. You can already see the effect
of the energy of synthesis if you look at almost anything in life,
certainly education.
Synthesis has to do with relationships - for instance, the relationship
of ideas. Through philosophical investigation you can broaden the
consciousness until what seemed the most distant can be seen as standing
side by side. Not only complementing and completing each other, but
throwing light on each other. It is this ability to synthesize that
inevitably broadens the consciousness of humanity and makes correct
human relationships possible.
These energies of Aquarius, with their synthesizing quality, will
broaden the individualistic consciousness until it can embrace the one
humanity. So that we can stand fully individual, unique, and at the same
time as one part of this great group which we call humanity.
GC: Even in the abstract that sounds like a huge step forward for human
consciousness. How do you imagine that playing out in more concrete
terms, in terms of institutions and forms of daily living?
BC: This is a difficult one because the forms are not yet there.
Experimentation is going on throughout the world, in some countries more
than others. It will make for a growing group consciousness. People will
see themselves more and more as part of a group.
In educational establishments, in business, in every aspect of life, you
will find groups forming. People who want to make their voices heard in
the political field, for instance, form, or join, parties. A party is
simply a big group. That group can make known its general ideology,
beliefs, intentions, hopes and aspirations in a more powerful way than
can the individual.
In this way the world gradually becomes more unified because we find
that, although people are individual, they all need the same things.
Everybody needs enough food, shelter, housing, clothes, health care and
education. These requirements, which are common to every man, woman and
child on the planet, will more and more become the accepted norm. When
they are seen to be the basic requirements for all, we will see global
consciousness become a fact.
Unfortunately, up until now, education in most countries has been very
nationalistic. People have been taught the history of their nation,
usually in a very biased form: everything that nation did was good, and
everything other nations did was bad. This has given a very jaundiced,
and quite incorrect, vision of the world to the developing child.
I would say that education, in the first place, has to show the child
that it is a member of a world family. The synthesizing energy of
Aquarius must be used to create this global consciousness.
Children need
to be shown that we are not living alone in one large or small country,
but in a world shared by 5.7 billion people. The child, above all,
should be taught that this is the fundamental position of his/her life
on Earth: that they are one of a group, a family.
Just as a family
shares the resources that come into the household, so the human family
should share the resources that are given by Divine Providence for that
purpose.
GC: It is hard for me to see consciousness, individuals, and education
moving in that direction. In the face of world need, people seem to be
getting ever more individualistic.
BC: We have the expression, today, probably, of the greatest greed that
we can imagine, although compared with what one knows about Atlantis, we
do not know what greed is. They had the greatest greed that has ever
been: rich people who bathed in milk; kings who stored gold by the ton,
and some castles which were actually made of gold.
Everyone else lived
little better than animals: they thought like animals (if you could call
it thinking) they emoted like animals, they obeyed like animals. Those
above them, the kings and chiefs who could think, completely dominated
all life. For most people, life was very brutish.
Today, we have growing wealth and growing greed around the world, as the
mechanism for making money becomes more and more refined. The techniques
of making money are now so exquisite that people can make a life out of
doing just that. At the same time, more and more people are realizing
the needs of the one humanity. They realize that millions of people are
starving to death, and countless millions more are living in utter
poverty, degradation, misery and want. That gap, the discrepancy between
the rich and poor, is the real problem.
This cannot go on for ever. There is a growing awareness that things
have to change. The very speed of the advance of greed through market
forces and competition is forcing us to the edge of a precipice. This
will suddenly bring us face to face with reality. There are various
portents of breakdown in our economic structure, collapse of the stock
exchanges of the world.
When such events occur, they will transform the
present economic system, probably for ever.
GC: You have spent most of your recent life emphasizing that, soon, and
potentially shortly after this kind of economic readjustment, the
externalization of the Spiritual Hierarchy will complete itself and that
the Masters will emerge into public view led by the Christ. How is that
going to affect education?
BC: The fundamental purpose of education, as I see it, is to equip
people to demonstrate their divine potential as souls in incarnation.
The externalization of the work of the Masters will have an enormous
physical, emotional, mental, and psychological impact on humanity. We
will come to realize that the soul really does exist.
They, the Masters,
are the Kingdom of souls. People like Jesus will be talking to the
people daily. He is alive and well and, if you can believe me, has been
living in Rome for the last seven years. The Master of all the Masters,
the Lord Maitreya, has been living in London (although moving around the
world at will) since 1977. If these are facts, then the fact of the
Hierarchy will also demonstrate the fact of the soul.
People will say:
"That was Saint John", or "That was Saint Peter."
But today he is the
Master Koot Humi or the Master Morya.
It will become clear that reincarnation is a fact of life. This will
transform human thinking about the reason for our being on the Earth. We
will come to know the answers to the age-old questions:
"Why are we
here? Who are we? What is the purpose of life? Where are we going to?"
It will become clear that we are here for a certain purpose: the
evolution of the soul in incarnation, carrying out the evolutionary
process.
Every soul comes into incarnation with a given set of purposes. Each
person's education should be geared to facilitate that process, the
working out of the soul's purpose in life. This means that teachers, the
educators, whether in school or out of school, must know the point in
evolution of any given child.
They must know the focus of their
consciousness, what really commands their greatest attention - the
polarization, as it is called, of their consciousness. Is it on the
physical plane? (I do not think any human being is polarized on the
physical plane today.) Is it on
the astral, the mental, or the spiritual
plane?
With the vast majority of people, it will be found that their
polarization, the seat of their consciousness, is the astral/emotional
plane. That being so, the point of education for these people will be to
lift their consciousness onto the mental plane.
If they are mentally
polarized, then the educational aim will be the raising of consciousness
from the mental to the spiritual level, so that they become spiritually
polarized.
GC: How will teachers be able to assess that? Is that something that one
can be trained to perceive?
BC: With the Masters working openly in the world, They will train Their
disciples. Today we have school teachers.
A school teacher is trained to
teach children to read, write, do arithmetic, and so on. It is a very
limited range of ideas which a teacher is called upon to evoke from the
pupil. In most cases it is not even that; it is a limited set of ideas
which the teacher is instructed to teach the child by rote to adhere to
and accept. That, to my mind, is not education at all.
Education should be the evocation of the potential - whether emotional,
mental, or spiritual, of each individual child. Teachers need to be
equipped with the new psychology, which is soul psychology. They have to
know the point in evolution of the child. They have to know the seat of
consciousness, where the child is polarized. And they have to know the
governing energies, or rays, of each individual child.
Every individual is governed on all levels - soul, personality, mental,
emotional, and physical - by certain rays, streams of energy, seven in
number. You can have one of each of these rays or just a few.
The
personality, mental, astral/emotional and physical rays can change from
life to life while the soul ray remains the same for a world cycle,
which is an immeasurably long period of time. When these rays are known,
the propensities, the lines of greater or lesser resistance for any
individual child will be known.
This will help the educator to teach the
child the best way to proceed to bring out its talents - to go along the
line of least resistance when that is the right thing to do, or to
tackle a line of greater resistance when that might evoke a trait which
is trying hard to express itself and finding it difficult.
GC: It is one thing to understand the rays in the abstract, but it is
quite another to be able to assess that in an individual. Will that be
the result of specific training that teachers will receive?
BC: Yes. People will have specific training. It is not so very difficult
to recognize the rays. If you really study them and make it a daily
habit of mind - looking at people and visualizing them in terms of their
rays - it is relatively easy for intelligent people who are interested
in the subject to become pretty accurate in the delineation of a
person's ray structure.
This will move education out of the classroom. When we think of
teachers, we usually think of one teacher in the class. I do not see any
reason why a much richer kind of education could not be given. Instead
of one teacher, they could have a series of teachers from outside who
are educators. They might be artists, scientists, esotericists,
policemen, doctors, who will give them the benefit of their life
experience, which is what students need.
They do not need simply specific teaching, as it is given today, along a
subject line only. They need that too, of course. But you can broaden
the consciousness of a child. Most children find that what they later
think of as their best education came from inspiring parents, uncles,
teachers, friends - people who have caught their imagination in life.
If the community really took education seriously, which I am sure it
will eventually do, days could be set aside for meetings with
philosophers, scientists, and so on, who will donate a day, a week, or
whatever, to come into colleges and schools and give the benefit of
their experience along their own line of work.
In this way the gifts of
unusual, and unusually gifted, people can be better put at the service
of the growing population.
GC: Earlier you mentioned "lines of least and greater resistance." Could
you expand on that a little bit? What is a line of least resistance and
why shouldn't one just follow it wherever it leads?
BC: It is sometimes better to do what is hardest for us. That brings out
qualities of self-discipline that are very necessary.
I am not talking
about discipline imposed, but self-discipline, which is probably the
most important thing we can do, as long as it is correctly managed. Just
to discipline oneself for no reason, as many ascetics do, especially
religious ascetics who beat themselves, does nothing but harden the
nature and turn one against the world and life.
If your line of least resistance is to be rather lazy, take life easy,
not try very hard, it could well be an impediment to progress from the
soul's point of view in that life. You may well need to tackle the
things you do not like doing, the things that are difficult. If you can
do that, discipline yourself in these ways, you can become more
disciplined in the bigger ways, the ways that really matter.
I think this is what education is also about: the disciplining of the
individual in the management of his or her life, and his or her
potential, given by the rays. Anybody with a 3rd-ray mind has a very
active mind, creative, lively, full of ideas. They could, however, be
overactive and manipulative, never learning to sit still, to look
inwards and find the meaning of life.
Then there are other rays, like
the 6th, which is very idealistic and yearning for the higher vision and
the higher inner life. People dominated by the 6th ray can be often very
unpractical on the outer physical plane. The same is true of the 2nd
ray, which is very inturned. It finds that the way into the soul is very
easy - a line of no resistance.
But the way outward, in relation to the
outer physical world and all its demands, is something which is often
very difficult for the 2nd-ray personality.
If you can discipline yourself and use your qualities intelligently
(which is not easy to do) you can strengthen your weak points and modify
your strong points so that - although they will still dominate - they
need not obliterate the other aspects of yourself. You strengthen the
weak points in the beginning in small ways by little disciplines, until
they add up to a strong disciplining will.
That is education -
self-education - in terms of handling your ray structure, which is
really handling life.
GC: Inherent in what you just said is the idea that the problems come in
two directions, essentially. One is handling life on the outer plane and
knowing how to cope with the external world, and the other is this inner
movement toward the soul.
BC: This is the crux of the matter. Up until a certain point in
evolution, you are either one or the other: either introverted or
extroverted in any given life. That is the path of discipleship, in
which you are learning to handle these energies which are driving you
inward to soul life and also outward to personality life, sequentially.
A whole life can be introverted to the soul, or extroverted to the outer
world. The individual in each case has an inner unhappiness because he
realizes this, but he really cannot do much about it. When a certain
balance has been reached, and when the person has integrated the
physical, emotional, and mental vehicles, he or she becomes initiate.
The sign of the initiate is that he/she can go inward, be introverted at
will, but also go out and relate perfectly easily to the outer world, at
will.
GC: It would seem that our present education is mostly geared toward
relating to the outer world. We are primarily taught skills designed to
help one fit into society. What about the developments that might come
in the future toward the inner side?
BC: Today, most education, for what it is worth, is education for jobs.
People are simply fitted to make their living in the outer commercial
world under the whip of competition. This will change. Competition has
to give way to cooperation. Above all, it is competition, which is based
on greed and fear, that holds humanity back in its most important
expression of its oneness, its sense of being part of one group.
This
has to change. When it does, people will realize, and the Masters will
exemplify, the fact of the soul. People will realize that they are souls
and will turn to the soul. Then the education for the life of the soul,
and the psychology of the soul, will become more and more the norm in
our educational system.
I do not mean that we will have only religious education. I am not
talking about religion at all. The religious path, as seen by the
Masters, is only one of many paths to the demonstration of our innate
divinity. God does not reside in the religion, although the religion
might help you to realize that divinity. Every aspect of life - politics, economics, religion, art, culture, science, education
- can
be lived in such a way that what we call God can be known and expressed.
The divine becomes a moment-to-moment experience. That is in fact what
it is. It is not a man with a beard sitting up in the sky watching that
you are not stealing, lying, or cheating. It is inside you; it is your
sense of the divine inside that gradually changes you from lying,
cheating, and stealing to not doing these things. Not because somebody
is telling you that it is bad, but because you instinctively know that
that is not the right way to live with your fellow human beings.
Whatever injures or harms another person is intuitively, instinctively,
wrong. A change in behavior comes about by self-observation and
self-determination. These things fall away as you become more aware of,
and imbued with, the quality of the soul.
That will happen on a wider
and wider scale as humanity ceases to compete and learns to cooperate - in the family, in the community, nationally and internationally.
GC: In regard to getting to the state of being able to cooperate and
beginning to sense the soul and its values and mission, the World
Teacher, the Lord Maitreya, has been quoted as saying that without
self-esteem nothing can be done. Is this a first step in that direction?
Is that something parents, teachers and schools should be thinking
about?
BC: Very much so. One of the saddening things about present education is
the way children are put down, told that they are wrong, told not to do
that, that is naughty. This inhibition of the child that goes on all the
time has nothing to do with naughtiness. The child has no concept of
naughtiness.
The child has only desires, instincts, and a looking for
adventure. If they were allowed to do that without always being told
that they are naughty and wrong, they would grow up without these
inhibitions, this lack of self-esteem. They would feel loved, feel that
their parents really cared about them, had patience for them, were ready
to listen to them, speak with them, and so on. That would give an inner
confidence which reflects itself in an ability to make the best of any
opportunity presented by life.
What holds most people back is a lack of confidence. That is mainly the
result of continual nagging by parents, putting the child down.
"You're
only a child", or, "How could you know?"
Everything a child says is
sneered at and belittled. I do not mean in every family, but in many.
Even among otherwise intelligent and educated people you will find the
same kind of down-putting, derision of their children.
Children should never, ever, be derided. It is only a convenience for
parents to inhibit the child so that they can keep them under moderate
control. People are so overworked and tired, their nervous systems so
taut, that they cannot bear the presence and demands of their own
children. That is a tragedy for them, for the children and for society
as a whole.
Self-esteem is a fundamental need in every human being. The lack of it
is what drives people to crime, drug-taking, all the abuses, even
suicide.
All of that is a direct result of the inability of many parents
to inculcate a sense of love and understanding, to treat them with a
warm, patient, readiness to help, to listen and relate to the child, and
give them that essential confidence.
GC: It seems at present that most teachers spend about 50 per cent of
their time and energy in school trying just to cope with the problem of
discipline, trying to keep children within bounds, in some sense. Are
you saying that if the child is well-parented, given this love, that
won't be such a problem?
BC: Absolutely. My Master has written for our magazine Share
International that it really is not a problem of discipline at all. It
is a question of freedom. It is a matter of seeing the validity of the
child, the need of the child for self-expression.
Each child, at whatever level it comes into incarnation, comes into the
world with its own set of purposes. A main purpose is to learn to live
in peace and harmony with the rest of us, all the people with whom he or
she comes into relationship. The actual possibility to do this is rare
today. You are a very exceptional individual if you come into life in a
family, a school situation, a national community, where everything you
need to work out your life purposes as a soul is available to you.
We need to recognize that all young people are unique. They are sons of
God evolving towards the manifestation of that divinity and sonship. How
many people see an individual child in that way?
Many parents love their child, but you can love a child and not respect
it. To say that you really respect its uniqueness and validity at every
turn, I think is a huge claim. Not many people meet that need of the
child.
We have the Year of the Child, but that is playing at the game, this
giving respect to the child. The very fact that we have the Year of the
Child, however, even if it is only a non-active slogan, means that we
are beginning to see the validity of the child and the need to respect
it.
A child at any point of evolution comes into incarnation with all its
past achievements. There is a wonderful child today, aged 11, who paints
pictures that are said to be like Picasso, Matisse, or Chagall - obviously a tremendously gifted child. She is Romanian, living in
America, and already fantastically successful. This child is allowed to
paint. She is a genius, and is allowed to be a genius. And she does it.
Instead of going out to play, she paints these great big canvases and
covers them with the most interesting and beautiful ideas.
Children should be introduced to all that they need to further their
talents. This is to do with respecting the child as a soul.
If you
respect each child as a soul, and see that they have all of that behind
them, give them the scope in which that can come out, marvels of
creativity will come forth.
GC: Do you imagine special kinds of schools for special kinds of
development?
BC: I see special kinds of education for specially gifted children
- not
necessarily special schools. It can be in the same school. But there
have to be different departments that will accommodate, enhance and
develop the gifts of specially gifted children. Otherwise, the race will
suffer.
Today, if you are a specially gifted child, usually sooner or later
these gifts show themselves, whatever the circumstances. But a
tremendous amount of time may be lost in the process. Some demonstrate
only a fragment of their potential because it was not noted when the
person most needed it. That will mean training teachers at higher and
higher levels. As far as education is concerned, it will only be as good
as the quality of the teachers.
Training of teachers, I would say, is
the fundamental first step in all new educational needs.
GC: There's some writing, particularly by the Master DK, about the
possibility of schools starting to become focused more on the problem of
reaching beyond the mind to the soul. Do you envision that happening?
BC: Yes, absolutely. Obviously, you need to discipline the instincts.
You need to enhance and develop the intellect, the mind and the brain.
And you need to evoke the intuition. These are higher and higher steps.
The more advanced the individual, the more the intuition will play a
role. The bridge to it,
the antahkarana which is created by meditation
and service, will become known as a definite part of the educational
curriculum. You have to build the bridge.
Meditation, therefore, at a
certain point in the educational system, will have to come in as the
way, par excellence, to create the bridge to the soul.
GC: It is interesting you mention meditation and service. Many schools
are already instituting service components of their education. Many
colleges have that as part of their requirements for a degree. It is
nice to think that is already happening.
BC: Yes. The more the child is related to the community at an early age,
the more service will become normal and natural.
GC: In that same vein, are you suggesting that meditation will be taught
in our schools or colleges?
BC: Yes. It should never be imposed at an early stage. I do not believe
in making young children meditate, but the beginnings of meditation are
beneficial. We discussed the problems of discipline.
If the children
were to start the day by just sitting quietly for five minutes and
taking a few deep breaths, just quietly thinking about themselves and
maybe what they are going to do for the rest of the day, just letting
these breaths quiet them down, you could have a completely different
atmosphere in the school.
GC: And then for older children the more technical training in
meditation?
BC: Indeed, the beginnings of meditation, or light meditation, in which
the concentration is focused. You have to learn to concentrate, to use
the mind, and to meditate and build the bridge to the soul. There are
times for doing this. I am not going to set down ages because children
vary enormously depending on their point in evolution.
Those who are
more evolved can start at an earlier age than those less evolved.
GC: I have one last topic that you might address: television and its
effect on children.
BC: I would say that television has one of the greatest negative effects
on children. It is not the fault of the children but of the type of
television. I have found that meditators in America, for example, have
very little concentration. Their attention span is very limited. I think
it is largely due to the breakup of attention from a very early age,
through watching commercial television. It is convenient to let you go
and get a cup of coffee, or whatever, but it breaks up the attention in
the middle of any program.
Your interest is held for a certain point and
then suddenly you have a break, which goes on for almost longer than the
preceding episode of the program you were watching. That is terrible for
the concentration.
If it is bad for adults, it is also very bad for children. Children's
television is no better in that respect. They have their own set of
nasty advertisements telling them to get their parents to buy this, that
and the other. This is a social thing. It is to do with competition,
greed, the wrong economic systems in the world, which will change when
cooperation and sharing replace the present competitive system.
Children have to be taught to concentrate. It does not always come
naturally. With some it does: the more evolved, of course, can usually
concentrate.
Yet there are many gifted children who cannot concentrate
at all.
GC: Do you imagine television eventually playing a more positive role?
BC: Yes, indeed.
Television will become the great teacher in
the world,
but it will have to change dramatically in its content, its substance.
You can imagine television screens in every home, where the children can
be taught about history in the real sense - global history, not
nationalistic, chauvinistic history, but the history of humankind
throughout the ages - and relate themselves to it.
The Masters can
project onto the television screens a view of life in the far, far
distant past, in Atlantean days, and forward into the future, showing
visions of what can be. There will be wonderful programs for children
projected onto the screens by the Masters.
Television will be the key
tool by which Maitreya and the Masters teach humanity.
