THE TRUE MEANING OF EDUCATION

The old motto attributed to Victor Hugo, French poet, writer and humanist: “He who opens a school door, closes a prison”, despite all his idealism, is very naive, for the experience of reality proves that the great evildoers of humanity were not illiterate individuals, but men who have not educated their consciences.

The true meaning of a school is to intensify consciousness. Neither the state, governments, nor churches are interested in this process. The vast majority of governments - for society to survive - are more interested in instruction, in conferring diplomas, even if the candidate has learning difficulties. And the churches are limited only to moralization; however, they themselves suffer from moral decrepitude.

However, neither instruction nor moralization makes a man a better individual.

For many centuries, education has been transformed into instruction only. Every country in the world has a Ministry of Education, but these bodies deal only with the instruction of the peripheral, intellectual ego, giving to this method of teaching the fictitious name of “human education”.

No one can educate anyone, for it is not possible. Governments understand education as something transitive, from teacher to student. This is only possible at the level of science, physics, biology, etc. But it is not possible at the level of consciousness, of metaphysics. True education is intransitive; that is, it cannot be passed on to others. Not even the great teachers of mankind have managed to educate, and two significant examples are Mahatma Gandhi and Jesus. While still alive shortly after receiving the fatal shots, Gandhi asked that his tormentor not be executed; however, his request was not heard, and the murderer was executed. Jesus could not educate his disciples with words; otherwise, Judas would not have betrayed him; the rest of them disbanded for fear of being persecuted and executed, and they only educated themselves on the morning of Pentecost, when the spirit of truth, which awakened in them, completely transformed their mental level.

As a rule, the levels of consciousness in humans are expected to change over time, for they are not static, rather dynamic. The truth may be absolute, but the knowledge of it is elastic, progressive. If we were mummies with the ability to petrify and fossilize in museums, we could assert our beliefs from the past.

The education of the integral man is the experience of self-education. It is man educating himself, and this experience can indirectly benefit others, as long as the educator is self-educated and self-realized. Therefore, I educate myself!

Where there is a plenitude of self-realization, there is an overflow in the form of beneficial vibrations. It is like a very intense light that, besides the environment where it is located, illuminates the entire neighbourhood as well.

Mahatma Gandhi said: “When a single man reaches the plenitude of love, he neutralizes the hatred of many millions.” The opposite is equally true: when a man reaches the fullness of hatred, his wickedness spreads everywhere, and the examples are from wars and all kinds of violence that have horribly degraded humanity. They are wars of hate, especially the last one when Nazism killed millions of people just because they were Jews or minorities not accepted by the regime, plus many other millions of civilians and army personnel slaughtered.

Humanity has not yet recovered from the moral and spiritual damage of the last war and continues to actively lurk among men, a worldwide atmosphere of hatred, for the vast majority of men, are still crawling along the barren plains of mediocrity. All wars, all acts of violence that continue to exist harms humanity, as they hinder human relationships and consequently, self-realization, as the triumph of violence always culminates in a festival of mourning.