EDUCATION

A lecture given by Maitreya on, "Education, as it is Envisioned by Maitreya, in the Communities Of Light."

07/20/1990 Satsang (Discourse) With

Maitreya

Guest: Could you speak about how you envision the educational system working and operating in the Communities of Light? Although THOTH has an overview, could we hear how you envision it in a little more detail?

Maitreya: It is very hard to go into too much detail on this topic because environmentally, culturally, etc, people are different. With different people there are different situations, so we cannot go into too much detail. However, we can talk generally about what education should be and what the goal of education is.

What is the goal of life? The Goal Of Life Is To Be(come) Divine, isn't it? So the goal of education should also be to bring that Divinity to the student.

The teacher should act like a real spiritual teacher, at the same time teach mathematics, philosophy, or whatever they teach to the students. The teacher is really the person who works on his or her own Divinity, so he or she should be a Divine teacher.

When he is a Divine teacher, again he can teach the children about God, and he can even realize how physics, mathematics, chemistry, or anything that he teaches are all related to the Universal Mind and God. He can at the same time not only teach about the physical relationships between the child and the outside world, but how these things also are created by God.

So children can see not only something as a dry formula, but as a Mind, a Logic behind it. They can develop this relationship to see the Logical Mind behind the universe. As they create a logical mind themselves, they realize there is also a Logical Mind behind the universe.

Also they realize The Grace behind it. All those things create a more flowing mind, a more creative mind, a happier mind than seeing everything cut and dry. So they can develop this ability to expand on what the teacher says.

The teacher should become a kind of springboard for their minds to jump from here to wherever they can go, not a binding process that, "This is it, this is the formula you are going to learn. If you can put this formula on paper after four months of class, you can get a degree." A week later they forget everything they learned in that class. That is not education.

Actually if you are looking at the word "education," education comes from the Latin word "educere," "to draw out, to bring out." It means education is already there in the individual, in the children. They already have it in themselves, in their spirits. What a teacher really does is draw that to their attention, draws that out of them so they can see, "Yes, this knowledge is already in me. I can relate to this knowledge." How can a teacher draw out this knowledge that is already in the child? By knowing it him or herself.

So again it goes back to, you can help no one else but yourself. As you progress yourself, then you can affect your environment also, and others can progress with you because you are going somewhere. You are realizing your potential, you are understanding your Spirit, your God (whatever you want to call Him).

As you draw out this ability, this understanding, from yourself, then you can draw it out from other people. You don't even have to try. You just have to be around and that will affect other people easily because you are working on yourself at the same time.

As you progress, other people progress. You can't help anyone but yourself. As you help yourself, other people are helped.

If we sit here and we think that we can change other people, or we can make them something that they can't be, or they don't want to be, at the same time we are full of impurities ourselves, we never can do it. We might think we are helping them but in the end no help is going to come out of it.

So a teacher is a person who works on himself or herself. Then as they progress themselves, they can also affect the children and everyone they teach. An educator is probably different than a teacher. An educator is a person who draws out that ability, that knowledge, that is already there in the spirit. The teacher, you can say, teaches. He makes the child learn some curriculum.

Learning is something external. Education is something internal. You learn by knowing that if you flip the switch, the light comes on. It's something external. It's not internal. You have to know a process. That is for living the external life. If you don't know how to turn on the light you might live in a dark room for the rest of your life, and you would never turn on the light. But after you learn externally how it's done, that process becomes part of your knowledge.

So in that sense an educator can also become a teacher. A teacher is not necessarily an educator. But the best way is for an educator to also become a teacher, so he can work with both sides of a person(s). He brings out the ability to learn, to progress, to think, to have a logical mind, see the spirit and everything that is already there within him or her, and at the same time teaches how to dwell in the external world.

For instance, how can you open an account in a bank? If you don't know the process (and probably opening an account is different in every bank or in every culture), and it's not internal, those things are also necessary for us to learn to be able to live well in our environment. If we don't learn those things, we become handicapped.

So a teacher and an educator in one personality can bring out a whole being of the person whom he or she teaches. With that you can bring out well-balanced people who are not only spiritual, but they understand the logical mind and God behind it. Not only do they live in an environment, the Communities of Light, that supports them in all levels of their being, they also are very learned people about their environment so they are not handicapped in that level either.

It seems like some people think that if you are a spiritual person, you have nothing to do with this external world. You have to just forget about it. Christ never said forget about it. He said be in it but not of it.

So we also have to learn about the external world very well. We have to know how to handle ourselves, how to behave, how to understand the environment that we live in. That is learning, that is not something innate.

But our curiosity, our ability to find information and expand ourselves and realize, that is innate. That is something that is already within us. And that is what an educator does. He guides us to realize our thirst to know the limitless, the ability to educate ourselves.

An educator is really a spiritual teacher because, what is the goal of the life? The Goal Of The Life Is To Be(come) Divine. If you cannot guide your student to Divinity, then you are not really an educator. You are making them learn things. You are not affecting them for the rest of their lives.

So, of course, you can create a system for education. There again it is going to be very difficult to go into the details of how that system is going to be. Education shouldn't just be a classroom, you go to the classroom, sit there fifty minutes and then the teacher goes his or her way and the student goes his or her way.

Actually the best way is if there is a process of acceptance between teacher and student. Not only do the students have to have the ability to choose the topics they want to study, but also they have to have the ability to choose with which teacher they want to study.

It's almost like finding and accepting your spiritual teacher. Not only do you have to go to God and find a way to Him spiritually, but which spiritual teacher, or Guru, do you want to go to and accept?

Not only do you go to such a person, but such a person has to accept you. Not only does the student have to go and find a teacher that he or she wants to be with, but also the teacher should feel comfortable that he or she can work with that student.

So it becomes a much deeper bond between teacher and student. Not only, "I get $700 a month and I can just teach this number of students. I'm just going to teach math, philosophy and such. I will go in at 8:00 AM, and leave at 8:50 AM. For fifty minutes we're going to talk about this, and that's it. Our connection ends there. After that we don't have any connection." The teaching should not only relate to the formal class but it should also extend itself to the community.

It is even better if the teacher is a part of the community, so teacher and community can evolve together. The teacher teaches the community, the community teaches the teacher, and they become closer and closer. So the process goes on all the time. They can just relate to one another and grow together at the same time.

Also the parents know who the teacher is, what kind of background she or he has. Is she a good person, or she just went to school, passed some exams and got good grades, and now she became a teacher? What is the spirit behind it all?

Who are these people who are teaching our children? What kind of characters do they have? We hear that there are lawsuits, that many children have been abused by their teachers. They are supposed to be an example, a teacher for them. Who are they? Do they really have the ability to teach our children?

The mother and father go to work in the morning, work eight hours, come home at night and are so tired (burned out) that they have no energy for their children. Also, where have the children been the whole day? The little children have been in the day care center. Who are the day care workers? Do they have the ability? Do they understand? Are they Divine? Are they teaching our children how to develop the higher abilities for themselves?

When the parents come home, they want to go out and eat, go to the movie, or the concert, or something, so they hire a babysitter to do their work for them at night. Who is this babysitter who stays with them? Now the children are six or seven years old, and who are these people who teach our children?

Of course, if the father doesn't care, if the mother doesn't care, if they don't care about the community, that base will be weak. They just want to have a little house, make as much money as they can make, and have their own fun. Even if they didn't feel compelled to be together anymore because, "You don't understand me, or I no longer feel good about our relationship" (those little selfish things), "I will go my way and you go your way, because I can make enough money for myself, I don't need you." And the other person can make enough money. So they go separate ways without deeper commitment in their marriage, in the family environment, community, etc. If that commitment is not there, what happens?

We said the base of the community is what? It is the couples, the people who are committed to each other, who not only love one another on a physical, mental and spiritual level, but also understand the significance of their marriage on a social level.

So again we go back to the base, to the family, to the strength of the family. If the strength of the family is great, then the couple will create a good environment for the child. They are concerned for the well-being of the child, for their home, etc. Then, not only are they committed to their families, they also will be concerned for the community, for the environment, for their city, county, world and the universe.

The Neighborhood Watch is not just for getting together once a month, having a party, having fun and afterwards, "You go your way and I go my way." This is a community that has to have concern for one another, that has to be an extension of each other. Then, in such an environment, a teacher is known very well.

We will know our teachers very well. What do they do? What kind of characters do they have? We can scrutinize them, so they have to create good characters. If they don't, they can't stay long in that position in the Community of Light.

Then such a teacher, of course, teaches our children. We teach our children. They teach our children. They grow in such a wonderful environment. The community supports the teacher. The community supports the child. The community is together. The community supports one another. Then everyone feels secure, everyone feels one with others.

Of course, if the community is also based on the Eternal Divine Path, then we are going to have the Communities of Light. In such an environment children are taught all the time.

Now we can incorporate all the teaching and all the knowledge we have gained over the last fifty years or so, with this new teaching of the Communities of Light, and also bring even greater scientific understanding of the universe as, the Spiritual Science, science based on God, on Spirit.

Then this all becomes a point of starting, really a springboard. The whole package becomes a springboard for our children to grow in even a greater degree. Then they are going to be the guiding lights for the whole of humanity. They are going to have a beautiful environment, beautiful children, who are well-learned, very well-rounded, physically, mentally and spiritually.

The teachers then are going to have a great place in the community. They are going to be very respected, very highly respected.

They really are the Gurus. They are the teachers, they are the people who others will look to for guidance. The child is raised with them. When he or she is older, still they will have a relationship with such a person, "He or she taught me all these wonderful things."

So the teachers have a wonderful place in human evolution but, as I said, they have to deserve the title. They have to really know, to be chosen from the people, that they have the ability to teach, they have the ability to make the child want to learn. It is not to pound into the child's head to learn, but that the child is so attracted to the teacher that he or she wants to learn. And the teacher is so attractive spiritually that they want also to learn from him or her.

Therefore, the very base for answering your question is, we need Divine teachers. We need Communities of Light. We need strong families. We need to teach our children in this environment, and teach them to expand themselves to cover the whole earth, the whole universe.

What are the children? The children are the future. If we can bring them up in such a way that they are expanded in their minds, the future is going to be expanded. If we can create them in such a way that they can understand different cultures, different races, different religions, they will be open to everything on earth. They will not be closed like a lot of us are.

We're afraid. We don't know about other religions, "Oh I don't want to have anything to do with it. If it's not my religion, it's no good. If it's not my religion, I can kill the other person."

No, you are as human as the other person is human. The other person is human too. There's no difference.

If we can teach this way more and more, expand our Communities of Light and teach this to more people all throughout the earth, then there is going to be less and less prejudicity, less and less separation among them.

Who is going to do this? Teachers! Of course, teaching can be mentally, physically, or spiritually. The best way is the all-around teacher, the teacher who is developed in all levels.