What's missing in education? Can Transcendental Meditation help?
by Mario Orsatti

Transcendental Meditation Blog    Translate This Article
19 October 2013

The Excellence in Action page of Global Good News is featuring this article with photos.

Please click on the following link to read more about 'What is missing in education? Can Transcendental Meditation help?'.

The article is an excerpt from Transcendental Meditation: The Essential Teachings of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a new book by Jack Forem. It begins with several quotes and a discussion about the purpose of education:

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'The key to what education can be is embedded in the word itself, which comes from the Latin root educere, ''to bring or lead out.'' It implies a bringing out and developing of an individual's full capacity for living.

' ''Instruction is the process of pumping information into the person; it literally means 'to build into'; whereas education means the process of nurturing or rearing,'' wrote anthropologist and author Ashley Montagu in The Direction of Human Development. ''We must recognize that today, in the western world, we have far too much instruction and all too little education. We are far too busy filling up the young with what we think they ought to know, to have much time left over for helping them become what they ought to be.'' Or, in the words of the distinguished American educator Robert M. Hutchins, ''The aim of education in an age of rapid change should be to do what it can to help everybody gain complete possession of all their powers. . . . this is what we ought to have been doing all along.''

'In Science of Being and Art of Living, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi offered this definition:

' ''The purpose of education is to culture the mind of a man so that he can accomplish all his aims in life. Education, to justify itself, should enable a man to use the full potential of his body, mind and spirit. It should also develop in him the ability to make the best use of his personality, surroundings, and circumstances so that he may accomplish the maximum in life for himself and for others.''

'Considering how far we are from accomplishing these basic and sensible aims, and that ''there are tremendous latent possibilities that are never unfolded by young people during their student life,'' we can see why there is such widespread dissatisfaction with education. . . .

' ''An educated person,'' I once heard Maharishi say, ''is expected to be proficient in every phase of his life. Yet time doesn't allow all disciplines and aspects of life to be mastered.'' The pace and style of living today necessitate specialization: no one can learn everything and be an expert in all fields of knowledge. Thus, people complete their basic education with only partial knowledge and partial competency. What is needed, he said, is ''the knowledge to develop a fully integrated individual, whose mind, body, intellect, and behavior are in perfect accord with all the laws of nature.'' '

Further on, Mr Forem writes:

'The solution to the problems confronting people in every nation on Earth lies in the same place as the source of the problems: those individuals who make up the society. If we do not experience a significant deepening and expansion of consciousness, the nature of the problems may change, but we will continue to create many more. From this perspective, finding a way to unfold the inherent potential of every person is the greatest need of our age, and it is the legitimate province and fundamental function of education.'

The way to unfold the full potential of the individual—the knower—Mr Forem concludes, is through developing the full range of consciousness:

'. . . . from the most active surface level of thought to the deepest inner silence of transcendental consciousness, the field of the total potential of the mind . . . . through the simple procedure of transcending, during which one consciously traverses the entire depth of the mind, fully awake and alert, like a diver fathoming the depths of a lake. Honing and refining these mental faculties strengthens both the knower, and the process of knowing or gaining knowledge, and results in a more clear and complete knowledge of the objects of knowledge.

'Developing the full powers of the knower, is the only sensible basis for education.'

Enjoy the full article on the Excellence in Action page.

Copyright © 2013 Maharishi Foundation USA



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