Basic purpose of education in the New Age

“In seeking insights into the directions which education in the New Age might take it will prove useful to establish the basic purpose which education serves and so throw light on the inadequacies of present educational approaches.”

This is obviously true. If we do not know the purpose of education, if we do not know the nature of the being of the people we are being asked to educate, and if the present educational methods and approaches are not changed, then it is obvious we will not make much progress in training the young and adults for the experience of life in the new age.

Life in the new age will be completely different from all previous experiences on this planet. None of us, except the most evolved, will have gone through the stages of enlightenment, and the resulting growing meaningfulness of their lives, under the instruction of the Masters of Wisdom.

In this coming time the Masters will be living openly in the world. There are already 14 Masters plus Maitreya in the world. Eventually there will be about 40, though not all involved in education. However, a large number of the Masters are involved in education of some kind. Their disciples will become the teachers, in the first place, of the people who will most likely perform the main task of training and educating all groups, young and old, in this coming time.

As the nature of the human constitution and the aims of life on planet Earth are realized, as the world becomes more and more united through sharing, justice and peace, so more and more people will find in themselves the need to know: about who they are, their purpose in life, and their stage in evolution. People will talk a great deal about evolution, which will become the most significant factor on planet Earth. The evolution of human consciousness, and the development of all the kingdoms in nature, will dominate the thought and purpose of men and women everywhere.

As people become more aware of their identity as souls in incarnation, they will begin to express more of their soul quality. Therefore, the intuition will begin to work in people in whom it hardly plays a part today. More and more, we will intuit the possibilities and meanings behind the outer appearances of life.

We will want to know who we are in all aspects. Why were we born? Were we really born before? Are we really the result of a succession of lives through the Law of Rebirth?

Many people will take Maitreya’s word for it on the Day of Declaration, but millions already believe in some way in reincarnation, especially Buddhists or Hindus. Millions of people will start asking questions. They will want to know how their age-long religious beliefs relate to the new information, the Ageless Wisdom Teachings given out by Hierarchy, which will be simplified in the beginning and then gradually approach the core of the truth.

People will begin to understand that humanity is travelling together as one huge group, at different stages of the evolutionary journey. We are all travelling together on a path to something tremendous which our minds at present find difficult to truly understand.

It is easy for a Master to say: “You become God-like beings who demonstrate all the qualities of God.” We do not even know all the qualities of God. We think we know the intelligence of God. We have an inkling of what a mighty intelligence might be like, or a capacity to love totally and unconditionally and we imagine God’s love must be like that. Something as mysterious as the Will of God will begin to attract the minds of many people. They will want to understand that extraordinary mystery – how the Will, the Purpose of God, can be known, what it is, how it demonstrates. What further aspects of God must we recognize in order to fully understand the aspects which we think we already know?

Over a period of time, all of this will begin to concern the minds of more people. If they are to make anything of it, they must be educated. It is that kind of education that the Master means when He talks about education for life, education for the new age, in which men and women recognize themselves as potential gods. If we recognize ourselves as a potential god, our aspiration grows accordingly. We want to become like that idea of divinity when the idea of being a soul really grips the imagination and rings true in the heart.

When you see Maitreya and the other Masters Who are coming out into the open with Him, you will see what God-like men look like, how They behave. What kind of inspiration must that be for humanity?

“Firstly, it must be understood for whom education exists and the process by which it carries out its function. This may be less obvious than at first sight may seem to be the case, for man has long been ignorant of his true nature and constitution, taking the part for the whole, and ignoring, to a large extent, his essential being.”

According to the Masters, the human constitution is threefold. At the level with which we are familiar, it consists of the physical, the emotional and the mental bodies. One makes us want to eat, the other makes us feel sad or happy, as the case may be, and one tells us the time, that if we do not hurry we will miss the bus. For most people, this apparently solid physical body, which we see in the mirror, is all we are. You see yourself getting older as you look in the mirror, the jaw slacken, the lines grow under the eyes, the hair recede. Who or what is getting older? Only the body, which is only a vehicle. The true human constitution, according to the Masters, is that we are sparks of the divine. The divine is everywhere. In fact, there is nothing else but the divine. We live in a divine, spiritual universe. That is the nature of life.

We are the divine spark with all the potential of divinity. In this solar system, that potential will be at a certain level. In a higher solar system, like Sirius for example, we cannot yet know the nature of that divinity. It is infinitely creative, from our point of view always manifesting at ever-higher levels. On this planet, when we have brought that which is our highest into every aspect of that which is our lowest, we have completed the journey of evolution on planet Earth.

We are physical, we are the soul, we are the spark of God. That divine spark reflects itself as the individual human soul. The soul is an individualized part of one great Oversoul, which manifests as the human kingdom. The human soul is the intermediary between the divine spark (the Monad in Theosophical terminology) and the human personality on the physical plane. The three aspects – physical, emotional and mental – are the means by which the soul experiences life at the personality level.

If we see life clearly at this level on the physical, emotional and mental planes, the soul likewise experiences clearly. Unfortunately, so unevolved are the vast majority of people on planet Earth, that we do not present a sufficiently clear, pure view of life to allow the soul to see it adequately. The soul sees exactly what we present to it. It is a problem of illusion. Humanity lives in the illusion of its physical, emotional and mental view of life. On any of these three levels, if a person is seeing in an illusionary way that is the view of life they present to the soul.

The aim on the physical, emotional and mental planes is to purify the response to the world around us. We have done it more or less on the physical plane. I doubt if there are very many people today who are ‘polarized’, as it is called, on the physical plane. To be polarized on the physical plane means your thinking, your view of life, your seat of consciousness is the physical plane. Perhaps there are some people who are little more than intelligent animals.

Today 95 per cent of people are polarized on the astral plane, that is it is their seat of consciousness. This is a heavy weight on the evolution of humanity because the astral planes are specifically the planes of illusion. However, in this coming time this will begin to change. Already nearly 5 million people are standing at the threshold of the first of the five great planetary initiations that cover the last few lives of the evolutionary process on Earth and culminate in the resurrected, perfected Master.

The Plan of evolution is in the mind of that unbelievably high, evolved Cosmic Being Who ensouls planet Earth, our Planetary Logos. Our planet – with everything on it including ourselves and all the creatures that ever walked the Earth – is the means of expression of that great Being. He has a plan for the evolution of this planet in relation to the greater Plan of the Solar Logos. The Solar Logos is an even more advanced Cosmic Being, Whose body of expression is the solar system, including this and all the other planets. All planets have a Planetary Logos Whose plans relate to that of the Solar Logos. He has an even greater Plan because He sees a wider meaning and purpose beyond what the Planetary Logoi are seeing and working towards.

As far as planet Earth is concerned, the Custodians of this Plan are the Masters of Wisdom and the Lords of Compassion. Their task is to work out the Plan, through the human, subhuman and devic kingdoms insofar as this is possible. Not all the Masters will know all of the Plan, depending on Their status. The more advanced Masters like Maitreya will obviously know more of the purposes of the Logos than a Master of the fifth initiation, for example.

At each initiation, by token of the placing of the initiatory rod of power, the chakras of the initiate are heightened. The first two initiations are taken before Maitreya, and the third and higher ones before Sanat Kumara, the Lord of the World, on Shamballa. The initiations progressively give a greater and deeper sense of the extraordinary scope of the Plan.

The Plan touches on every aspect of life on planet Earth, and relates these different aspects to each other. Think of the human, animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, the extraordinary variety and scope of the devic, or angelic, evolutions: the subhuman elementals, the lower builders, the great devas whose bodies are so vast they could cover a continent. We cannot imagine the scope and variety of the devic evolutions. All these kingdoms and evolutions are interrelated. Nothing stands separate.

There is no separation in the whole of cosmos. Every atom is related to every other atom. This is behind the reality of the two great Laws that govern the evolutionary process. Some believe in them, some know them to be possible. To others they are facts. To some they are a nonsense, just fairy tales. The Law of Cause and Effect, the Law of Karma, and the associated Law of Rebirth govern the evolutionary process. Humanity as a whole has never been taught this. The information has been there for a long time, for anyone who wanted to avail themselves of it, but it is only the inquiring mind that has seized the opportunity. Only a very small number of humanity, especially in the West, take seriously the Law of Karma. They make jokes about it, but they do not actually believe it.

This Law relates everything to everything else. As you act, you set into motion a cause. As you speak, as you think, you likewise set into motion a cause. It is energetic.

We live in an energetic universe. There is only energy in the whole of cosmos, different energies vibrating at different rates. The rate of that vibration determines the form that the energy takes. It might be a galaxy, a solar system or a planet. It might be a rhinoceros or a human being. All of these are made of energy. There is nothing else but energy. This is the most basic tenet of esotericism. Modern science more and more has thrown light on this fact, but only the most interested and far out scientists have availed themselves of the knowledge. Everything that is matter can also be seen as energy. Everything that is energy likewise can be seen to precipitate downwards into matter. Matter and energy are part of one whole and interrelate as polarities of that one whole.

For centuries humanity has seen the physical body and says: “That is me. That is Mr So-and-So and Mrs So-and-So over there. These are their children,” and so on. That is true in a way but it is only part of the whole. The whole is a threefold Being: the divine spark, the soul and its vehicle, the personality, on the physical plane. The divine spark, unable to manifest at this level, creates its intermediary, the soul. The soul is a reflection of the divine, but vibrating at a slightly lower rate on its own plane in order to act as the intermediary between the highest and the lowest. What we take to be ourselves, this physical body, these emotions and this thinking mind, are only a vehicle, a means of allowing the soul to manifest through the dense physical.

In the process of evolution the physical body inevitably dies, and with it the emotional and mental bodies. They are part of the physical aspect of the threefold constitution. However, three permanent atoms remain, life after life: the dense-physical, the astral-emotional, and the mental permanent atoms. All the other atoms return to earth with the death of the physical body. These three permanent atoms are passed on from life to life, so ensuring the continuation of the genealogy of the person. What we were thousands of years ago is passed on to what we are now in this particular body, and will continue in successive bodies until we are a perfected Master. Around these three permanent atoms the soul creates the new body.

We are souls, absolutely and finally. If we think of ourselves as a soul, we think of ourselves in the right way. Unfortunately most people do not. If they are religious they probably believe in the soul, and think the soul is something they will meet when they die. True enough. You do meet your soul when you die, but you are your soul whether you are ‘alive’ or ‘dead’.

Divinity, the highest aspect of ourselves, manifests through the soul at its level, and the soul manifests through its reflection, the personality, on the physical plane. The body of the child is set down in the womb by the soul, and brought to life by the soul to create another being through which it can demonstrate itself. If everything goes well, if we do not backslide, there is a succession of bodies, each one more perfectly demonstrating the qualities of the soul. The soul is who we are.

The Master Djwhal Khul, Who gave the Alice Bailey Teachings, wrote that one day the fact of the soul would be scientifically demonstrated. He said it could be that France would be given the honour of proving the fact of the soul.

We tend to take the part for the whole. Most scientists think that this physical body is all there is. We have a brain and that is what it is all about. It is a way of not seeing the forest for the trees. This is the result of the 5th Ray of Concrete Knowledge or Science, which is responsible for the tremendous expansion of human consciousness at the concrete level throughout the world. It expresses itself in our modern technology, which has made unbelievable strides in the last 100 years. Compared with the next 50 to 100 years even that will be as nothing, so great will be the transformation of life on Earth. So great will be the levels of understanding above the dense-physical that we will need a very different type of scientist who can get away from the blinkered view of seeing the part as the whole.

The influence of the 5th ray is both a boon and a hindrance. Over the last 150 years, the 5th ray has been in tremendous potency. A special effort has been made by Hierarchy to introduce this ray to humanity. It has opened up the human mind to all these extraordinary, intricate physical plane manifestations of communication. It has altered our view of the nature of technology. I am sure there are some minds that have leapt ahead of what is and see even more extraordinary developments.

The technicians of today tend, nevertheless, to see the part as being the whole, so a great opening for education awaits those who do know. I say “those who know”, because much of what I am saying is not new to many of you. You know on some level that the part is not the whole and that there are other vistas, levels of Being, which must be given expression to fulfil the potential of man as gods.

You cannot present yourself as a god if you are not taught the means. All people are potential gods but they need education to fulfil that potential. All come into incarnation with the potential varying according to their level of evolution, but a potential altogether higher than they demonstrate today.

Whole nations, as the Master put it, are all but illiterate, even today. This is a terrible crime because literacy is easy and cheap. There is no nation in the world that should have a large percentage of its population illiterate. Yet there are millions of people, in many parts of the world, who are completely illiterate, who have to put a mark with their thumb when they sign their name. That is just a matter of education.

“Man, as a soul in incarnation, is an emerging God, and, through the Law of Rebirth, is advancing slowly to the demonstration, in full splendour, of that divinity. Education, in its true sense, is the means by which an individual, through a gradual expansion of conscious awareness, is fitted and fits himself for that goal. All that aids this process is education….”

This is the process by which the God in the heart of all people is given the possibility of manifesting. We need education to allow that to happen.

Education is a question of awareness. Through awareness we open ourselves to life, all things being equal allowing us to do so, as there are many social circumstances that hold back this process. Life is vibrating as energy, and by the growing conscious awareness of the meaning and effect of that energy, we evolve, we become more aware of the meaning and purpose of life.

It is an intuitive process. Our intuition is really conscious awareness. As it develops, as we become more and more like the nature of the soul, our consciousness becomes more like the soul. Through what we call intuition, which is a soul aspect, that consciousness becomes ours to demonstrate. You know because you know. It is not the rational mind working it out. You have a rational mind for other rational purposes. If you want to catch a train, you go to a certain place at a certain time to catch that train. But if you want to understand, it is through the intuition that your awareness teaches you the nature of any particular experience.

As we go through the evolutionary process, through the five initiations which cover the last few lives of that process, the intuition grows because we grow as a soul. The divinity, the awareness and the light of the soul become manifest through the personality of the man or woman on the physical plane.

“All that aids this process is education, however formal or informal the method might be.” When we think of education we usually think of going to school. You sit in lines taking tests. The teacher speaks and everyone sits back and listens. On the other hand, education can be totally informal. As the Master puts it: “In today’s sense, education is a feeble thing indeed, ensuring only the minimum requirements for an understanding and control of man’s environment.”

It does not even do that. Look at what is happening to our global environment. We do not know what to do about it. It is beyond our understanding. It is beyond our ability to tackle. Unfortunately, some governments, like the present US government, do not even admit that it needs tackling, that there is anything wrong with our environment.

“Few there are who learn more than the rudiments of life’s meaning and purpose...” This is true because most people are in the daily struggle for existence. They have no time, energy or capacity to look for and find the necessary books or teacher to acquaint them with what they are looking for. People are looking for light, enlightenment, not simply how to get a better job.

“Whole nations, today, are all but illiterate still. Elsewhere, facts-full minds stand idle for lack of meaningful work.”

Whole nations have filled their people’s minds with facts, and that is considered education. They are not facts about the meaning and purpose of life. They are facts about how to work a computer, for example.

“Education for jobs has replaced education for life while, more and more, the stresses and strains of such imbalance erupt in violence of all kinds.” People wonder why children are often so violent, why people do violent acts that have no seeming purpose. The terrible stress that people are living through in every country, the strain of life, the struggle just for existence, drains the sap out of people and leaves them withered and dry. Their view of life is dictated by the limits of commercialization. They see that if they do not have a university degree, they have no possibility of going beyond a menial job in most work fields today. That is destructive. People who feel like that can only see their own self-disgust and pain for so long without erupting in violence. “I am real!” they say. “I am real! I am as real as anybody else! I do not have money. I do not know how to get money because I have not had the education.” This is the truth. People have not had education. They think the purpose of education is to get money. But the true goal of education is to understand who and what we are, what it is to be human, what is the purpose of life.

The most fundamental concept in life is that we are not separate. Most people feel separate. They feel alienated from society and from themselves as part of that society. So the violence escalates. They build themselves into little gangs. They do this as youngsters and then go into more sophisticated gangsterism. They get into drugs and wreck their lives and those around them. This causes a huge problem in their country.

It is a major problem in the United States. Drugs are involved in 90 per cent of all the crime in the USA. In England, it is about 85 per cent. It is much the same in France and Germany and every other so-called modern, educated country. We are not really educated because we are not educated for life. We are only educated for work. Some countries are better educated for work than others, so they do better in the competition that is the nature of commercialization and market forces. People compete in order to get the most, to be in front, to do better, to get the market. But that has nothing to do with real life.

“Education should be understood as the means by which the indwelling God is contacted, known and given expression.”

How many carry out this purpose? Religion used to be thought to be the way: the priests knew better than everyone else and told everyone that God liked them or did not like them, depending on what they did. Humanity has to understand that all of us are gods. God is not to be found simply in the beliefs, dogmas and doctrines of any religion. There is no religion on Earth in which God exists. A religion can help you to understand and come into contact with what we call God; as Maitreya points out, religion is like a ladder, which can help you to get onto the roof. Once you are on the roof, you do not need the ladder.

“… religion is but one of many paths to God …”

People have to know that God exists not only in religion, that you do not have to be religious to know God. God should demonstrate in every single human being, in every aspect of their life, every moment of every day. If all of us were in moment-to-moment contact with who and what we inwardly are, then that would happen. Every moment that divinity would shine through us, would decide what we do, would define what we are, how we behave, and how we understand and demonstrate that light which is divine. That is what we need education for.

“… ways must be found which will allow all men to know and to express their experience of divinity. To this end the new education should address itself. The fact of the soul, the Divine Intermediary, must gain general acceptance, and techniques of contact with this higher principle attain common usage.”

Meditation of whatever kind will help you to come in contact with your soul; from Hierarchy’s point of view Transmission Meditation is the most scientific.

Many people will take Maitreya’s word for it after the Day of Declaration that we are souls, that we are divine. But how long will it last if the evidence of it is not forthcoming? It will take years of a colossal educational effort for the bulk of humanity to even have an intellectual understanding of the nature of the soul and of being a soul.

Once the principle of sharing is accepted and therefore the trust is created necessary for the ending of war, people will begin to find it easier to understand and accept inwardly, not just intellectually, the fact of the soul and “techniques of contact with this higher principle” will “attain common usage”.

“All of this awaits the earnest endeavours of those working in the educational field.” How many people in this room believe that they are equipped to work in the present-day educational field? There are a number of teachers here – this is your opportunity. “ Fitment for such tasks should be the aim of all aspiring to teach the young.” That is different from today. Fit yourselves for such tasks and you will fit yourselves for the new Age of Aquarius.

“Never has a better opportunity for service presented itself to those ready for the challenges of education for life in the New Age which now opens before us all. A new vista of possibilities will soon appear as men grapple with the problems of separation and division. This will release the forces and inspire the techniques of training and teaching which will bring men in due course to the feet of God.”

As soon as we accept the principles of sharing, justice, right relationship, an end to war, freedom for all, these problems of separation and division will disappear. “This will release the forces and inspire the techniques of training and teaching” for life. That is the way forward for all.

 

The Age of Light

“In each century, a few men emerge who tower over their contemporaries. Their gifts are manifest, their genius shines forth for all to see and acclaim. We know them as the great discoverers, the painters, writers, musicians and scientists whose work has led humanity forward in a growing awareness of itself and its potential. In recent times, their emphasis has been on science and the expansion of human knowledge. This has prepared the way for an extraordinary awakening of men’s minds on a scale until now beyond hope of achievement.”

There are many kinds of light. There is the light of knowledge. Knowledge itself is light. There is the light of the soul. There is the light of understanding, wisdom. There is physical plane light, the light from the sun, the light of electricity, which comes from the sun.

A new science, the Science of Light, will be instituted bit by bit as humanity becomes more aware of its oneness, and through sharing, justice and freedom for all, puts war far into the past as a means of action of any kind. When war is totally and utterly renounced, and the weapons of war destroyed, the Science of Light will be given to humanity. This is a tremendous science and already, as the Master says, steps are being taken that are making it practical.

We have created the worst possible weapon, the nuclear bomb. It is the most deadly weapon ever created by man and the most deadly weapon ever used by man. If used again it would lead to the destruction of all life on Earth, human and subhuman alike. So it must never be used. How can we get the nations to renounce war for ever, renounce the nuclear bomb, and also renounce their nuclear power stations, all that pertains to nuclear fission?

Humanity is well advanced on the wrong use of the energy of the atom. Nuclear fission is the most destructive use of energy that has ever been devised. Even today scientists and technicians are planning a vast increase of nuclear power stations all over the world to cope with global warming. The US is planning to build more than 50, France and Britain likewise, and generally around the world. If that were to happen, it would place an unbelievable extra burden on the health of humanity and the lower kingdoms.

Nuclear radiation above the level of gas is expelled into the atmosphere from every nuclear power station on Earth. This is also true of every stage of experiment with nuclear power involving bombs and various other weapons. This has increased tenfold the nuclear radiation extant in our atmosphere. But for the constant work of our Space Brothers – mainly from Mars and Venus, in their vehicles, the so-called UFOs – neutralizing the effect of this nuclear radiation, the health of humanity would be even more sorely stressed than it is today.

The Masters see pollution as the number one killer in the world. That includes nuclear radiation, which is the worst of all. The incidence of Alzheimer’s disease has grown throughout the world, occurring at a younger and younger age. This is the direct result of nuclear radiation on the higher levels, which is pouring into our atmosphere every day and which we do not have the technology to measure.

Scientists must close the nuclear power stations as soon as possible and cease working on all manner of nuclear radiation now and into the future. This is a deadly mistake on the part of humanity, and is increasingly a threat to humanity’s survival. Maitreya and the Masters in Their wisdom will communicate this information and recommend that the nuclear power plants be swiftly closed down.

Nuclear radiation and the other forms of pollution break down the human (and animal) immune system and leave us open to poisoning from the other toxic waste poured into our atmosphere. This problem must be swiftly dealt with before it becomes too great a burden even for the Space Brothers to overcome. They are allowed by karmic limits to deal only with a certain amount of our nuclear radiation and other pollution. Otherwise, it would be an infringement of our free will. They had to have special permission to do what they do. They spend long hours daily in every part of the world neutralizing and reducing the effect of nuclear radiation as well as the other noxious gases that we pour into our atmosphere. We owe the beings of those planets a huge karmic debt, which one day we will have to repay.

The Space Brothers are carrying out another tremendous operation. It is to do with the new Science of Light that is being brought into the world, ready for the day when we have renounced war and thus created peace and justice in the world. Without the renunciation of war there would never be the needed trust. No nation would trust the other nations not to have nuclear weapons hidden away.