New Age Education

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my dearest friends, blessed be every one of you. We are assembled together in order to create truth and light. This lecture will deal with education in the New Age -- the age that is coming, that is pushing into the resistant matter of the old that does not want to yield easily. And yet it must yield. This New Age will create human beings of the highest caliber in every respect. A certain percentage of the spirits incarnated is ready for a completely new approach to life. It is the approach that you are learning and that you are laboriously working your way through into the depths of your inner being.

As a fundamental prerequisite, the New Age education has to make room, above all, for the understanding that you learn from the principles on this path: the understanding of the human levels of consciousness and the understanding of the interaction of the various levels. This can certainly be taught to children. Not only taught as a theory, but as an experience to go through.

Education must be a two-way street. First of all, it must bring out what exists within the higher self: its uniqueness and its limitless potentials for creativity in all sorts of different ways. Each incarnated individual has its own unique contribution to make to the existing society. These potentialities need to be tapped and a channel for them needs to be created in full consciousness of the process. The other approach is to put in learning from outside, without which such bringing out is hardly possible. This twofold approach must be considered as an always alternating process. You cannot draw out what is within if there is no knowledge, no concept, if no room is made in you for the richness of the world that exists in the inner universe. If the focus is not to make room for this richness, if no tuning-in process is made available, then the channel for bringing out the inner potentials will remain untapped. But if you teach this tuning-in process, if you teach that there is another level of consciousness, of awareness, then little by little, as you learn to do it, the child will learn to discover the language of the divine reality within. The child will learn to listen for it, to perceive it, and to bring it out.

This does not mean, however, not to learn the fundamental knowledge that all children need to learn in the age just going by, as well as in the New Age. But now there is room only for the one, not for the other direction. This alternating approach is what really counts. One must not take the place of the other, they are both important. One must not be cultivated at the expense of the other, as mankind often tends to do in all such matters.

If you approach the child with this double purpose, then a very different process of learning and education is going to unfold. For the inner voice will be discerned when its laws are understood. The learning of the laws and the learning of the pitfalls of the lower self -- so that its voice can be distinguished -- must become a substantial aspect of the child's curriculum. So there will be a large quota of learning that is concerned with the inner being, with the bringing out of the higher self, with the purification of the lower self, with a very exact knowledge of the laws that prevail in the discernment of both, and also in the realization of the existence of the mask self. Education will eliminate masks about to be formed and will start self-purification early. Such is the groundwork for all New Age education, the groundwork for all learning, and the groundwork for all creativity in whatever field.

The fundamental groundwork will not only be taken up by parents, for there is no guarantee that all parents are sufficiently highly developed to possess this knowledge and are thus equipped to handle this aspect of the child's education. Therefore it must also be part of the school curriculum in all ages, starting as early as kindergarten and going into college and university. So a large part of education will deal, as the fundamental road to learning, with the realization of the higher self. Then intellectual knowledge will become secondary. Not that it becomes less important or unimportant, but then it can bring fruit. The intellect needs to be trained and used as one of the important tools. For without the intellect grasping and understanding these laws and processes, the personality cannot even begin to approach the road into the inner self. If the mind does not even know that there exists an inner world to find and to explore, then it cannot even attempt to go in the right direction, to make the proper efforts, to remove the obstructions, and to recognize what is an obstruction and what is an aid. So new age education is not only a question of emotional education or spiritual education, it is truly a perception and an understanding of lawfulness. Just as there are chemical laws, laws of physics, and laws of mathematics for man to understand, so are there laws of the inner world first to be learned and then to be understood.

There are other aspects about the education to come. For instance, the curiosity of the child must be cultivated, so that learning will be both intensely interesting and fascinating. Unfortunately this is not the case now. On the contrary, the child's innate curiosity is discouraged. From their earliest age, children have millions of questions. You all know that. Usually both the parents and the teachers become annoyed, bored, and impatient. At best they give insufficient answers, or answers that are hardly honest, or answers that fail to take seriously both the question and the questioner.

Now it is extremely important to cultivate this curiosity. For once it is squashed, then the learning process becomes a dull must that kills both the spirit and the life of learning. Learning can be intrinsically exciting, enjoyable, and adventurous. And it would be all of these things if a mass image of boredom were not be attached to it.

In the earliest phases of the child's education, parents should start to respect the child and to rejoice in the questions brought forth. They do not have to try so hard to pretend to know more than they do. All they have to do is to be honest and interested. If they really do not know an answer, then they should say so, but they also should tell the child that school will bring him these answers. The child should be encouraged to ask them again and perhaps to make note of them. Or the parents can note them down. The parents can also make a concerted effort of their own to find out meaningful and truthful answers and then come back to the child with these answers. It must be realized that it is the spirit of the child that reaches forth to explore this world in order to master it and to fulfill a task in it. Without this curiosity, then something dies. So this curiosity is very important. Parents can go to nursery teachers, later to school teachers, or to other people equipped to answer such questions. They should really make an effort. All the questions that a young child has asked will be dealt with later in the curriculum. They may be pointers to the spirit's special inclinations and to his direction. They should be answered again and again as the child grows older, and therefore can take in more.

The school should know that the spirit ventures out into the earth realm and that curiosity is the sign of the adventurousness that made the entity want to incarnate and to fulfill a task. Approached in this way, the material makes learning an exciting process -- instead of a dull, compelling, boring difficulty that one would like to have over and done with. Then learning will become something to be looked forward to. It will offer many keys to life, it will furnish deeply desired answers to life.

This is very important both for parents and for teachers, even if you cannot as yet create a new school system, a new educational system, a new curriculum. But just knowing of these approaches and making room for them in your consciousness will give you a new awareness and will create a new climate in your dealings with a growing human being.

The next aspect I wish to talk about in regard to education is what now is still a difficulty for most of you. It is finding the fine balance between freedom -- self-choice -- and self-discipline. Although I have discussed this in other contexts, it is equally applicable to learning and to education. The freedom to want to learn is very important. If at all possible, there should be no whip behind it. This depends greatly on the consciousness of the adult world providing the proper climate. If the adult harbors an image that learning is a hardship, that it is a boring and dull task, then he will affect the child in a similar way, even if he does not say so. So, if there exists in the teacher an attitude that assumes that learning and homework are the price to be paid before pleasure can begin -- in other words, that they are not pleasurable -- then it it is safe to conclude that the child will hate learning. This image that exists in the consciousness of the adult will be conveyed to the child. The child will believe it and eventually will find it to be true -- even if at first there would have existed a readiness to be interested in learning. In other words, the image will be confirmed.

The necessity for self-discipline is great. Without it nothing can be gained and nothing can be accomplished in life, on any level. Most people believe that freedom, spontaneity, and self-discipline are mutually exclusive. This belief is not true. In reality they are interconnected. As a result, they are mutually interactive and they mutually aid one another. Since most adults suffer from this duality -- that freedom and self-discipline cancel each other out -- then this image is inevitably transferred to the child. This may not be done in so many words, but it is expressed in the climate, in the emotional expression, in the inner consciousness that spreads and that inexorably affects the child.

In this false belief, in this image freedom means to give in to the line of least resistance. As a result, one becomes self-destructive. Conversely, self-discipline means the dullness of laborious effort without any reward. Most of you can see how untrue this is. You know how unnecessary such artificial divisions are and what a terrible burden they cause to your soul substance and to your inner consciousness -- and therefore to your entire life.

On your individual Path you have to free yourself from this misconception, just as parents and teachers have to. You have to learn the truth, namely that true freedom -- with all of its joy and with all of its liberating self-expression -- can only exist to the degree that self-discipline also exists. You have to differentiate between discipline that is chosen by the self and discipline that is imposed by the outside. Discipline that is imposed by the outside -- if we discard tyranny -- must exist only where self-discipline is lacking. In other words, when children or adults act destructively either toward their environment or toward themselves. As far as children are concerned, self-destructive acts must be discouraged by their elders. As far as adults are concerned, this is hardly possible or desirable, but we shall not go into this topic now.

The concept of freely-chosen self-discipline -- as opposed to the necessary discipline that has to be imposed when the former is absent -- can be made clear to children with the greatest of ease, without any difficulty whatsoever. A child is capable of understanding that the outer discipline is a structure that is waiting in reserve only, as it were. In other words, if the child does not respond to the freedom of learning, if he or she is not willing to understand the necessity of wanting it even if this means occasionally to have to overcome a resistance -- for example, to overcome the temptation to do what seems most pleasurable at the moment -- then the outwardly imposed discipline is essential for him, as well as for the community. If the child can learn to determine this for himself, then he has learned a major lesson of life. If he learns self-determination and self-responsibility -- in other words, if he is guided to this understanding by his parents, by his elders, and by his teachers -- then he has gained a profound foundation. The child needs to learn to say this to himself: "Yes, I will do my homework now and I will study so many hours a day -- even though emotionally I prefer to go out and play -- because I understand that later this will give me knowledge, strength, security, success, and all the things that I find desirable. And I choose to do so freely." When he can truly learn this attitude, then he has learned the lesson of real freedom early in life. And this is indeed possible. Guidance can be given -- both explicitly and implicitly -- for this inherent aspect in the child to grow, so that self-discipline is chosen freely and the discipline imposed by others is no longer necessary. But it must always exist as a structure in reserve, to be used when needed. For even in the New Age there will be individuals who are not yet developed enough to be capable of understanding what I am saying here. They will willfully act out in a destructive way -- children as well as adults.

But the time will come -- but not during your lifetime -- when the outer laws will no longer exist and when each human being will be governed by the inner law of his divine self. Therefore, he will always know what is right for him. He will not kill others, he will not steal from others, he will not harm others, he will not destroy others. But it will not be the fear of punishment that will hold him back. As far as the laws not dealing with such crass and such obvious infringements are concerned, in the New Age humanity will know that there is no rigid rule that applies to everyone alike. Each one will be sufficiently united with his higher self, and therefore with his real conscience. Therefore, his integrity will be sufficiently strong that he will freely do what is right, he will freely do what is fair, he will freely do what is necessary. But he will not do it out of the fear of disapproval. He will not be obedient out of guilt and out of insecurity, but he will know, "This is right for me," regardless of whether it conforms with the masses or not. He will be able to do so because he will be free from rebellion against authority and, what is more, free from the secret desire to exploit others.

Today very few human beings are anywhere near this point. So the outer structure of the laws is necessary for those who need it. Those who do not need it do not require to be told what to do and what not to do. They want to be in truth with the law of God that often is similar to human law, but not always. Children can learn this in specific ways. For example, topics that have always appeared difficult and dull, such as general learning, arithmetic, spelling, and history will continue to be taught. However, in most instances even those topics will be more interesting when taught with the new approach that I am discussing here. For the child is innately curious, and therefore he wants to know many things. If this curiosity is fostered and those subjects are approached in the new way, then much of the tediousness of learning will become obsolete. Nevertheless, there will always be times when inertia and the temptation to take the line of least resistance must be overcome until something has been really learned. In order to overcome this threshold, a child can be taught the principles I explain here about the necessity and the freedom of self-discipline. This understanding of the fact that self-discipline is a prerequisite for freedom will be part of the basic education.

The time will come when a child will freely choose self-discipline -- and will do so joyfully because it is by his own choice. The whole inner climate of teaching, of educating, will be to foster bringing out the knowledge that the soul of the little one is truly thirsting for. Both the approach and the consciousness of those who teach are instrumental in this respect.

A child can understand what I expressed here and when I answered specific questions dealing with your community. I mean what I said about creativity: that the free-flowing creative process can flourish only when the tedious groundwork has been done. In fact, choosing to do so freely -- in other words, not out of obedience, compelled by authority, thus always with hidden resentment and with rebellion -- is in itself a great satisfaction and a gratification that soon annuls whatever tediousness may have existed initially. These principles are not theories. They will become apparent when they are being taught.

So, with this approach it will become possible to make inroads into the creativity of the higher self of each child. By doing this consciously and deliberately avenues will create themselves from within. As a result, the higher self of the child will express itself, to the immense joy both of the child and of his surroundings.

The process of communication is of major importance. We are talking about communication on two levels: on the conscious level of expressed words, of explanations of the highest calibre input, which is true teaching, and also on the level of the inner consciousness. In other words, of inner awareness and of the inner feelings that may not necessarily be expressed in so many words. On both these levels there exists a great need for improvement in the educational system. Just as a child wants to listen and wants to learn, so does he want to be listened to when he asks questions. He has a great need for that and he desires to express himself. Not enough leeway is being given to this now. As a matter of fact, often his self-expression is being curtailed, even on the simplest of levels. Encouraging the child to communicate his feelings, his thoughts, and his impressions, and then being responded to -- receiving feedback -- is an essential aspect of the personality's unfoldment.

This is equally important on the inner level. For a child often perceives the feelings and the thoughts of others that are not openly expressed and then he reacts to them. But he is not encouraged to take these perceptions seriously. So he cannot learn first that he does not fantasize -- in other words, that he really does perceive something in the other -- and second that sometimes his own projections may interfere with, and therefore distort, the quality of his reception. If the law of communication is being taught early on these different levels, then the child will become aware of their reality. You can imagine what an enormous difference this will make in his life. For example, in his dealings with himself and in his dealings with others. He will neither discard his reactions, nor will he take them blindly at face value. He will learn the process of investigation. That means of first probing and then of holding a final determination in reserve. All of this will come from the free self-expression of his impressions and from a mutual exchange -- not only with teachers and parents, but with other children too.

In regard to the interaction on these various levels I mentioned, I would like to mention a new phase in your development that signifies an interim stage. This is very important for you to understand. As you become aware of your lower self -- of the previously hidden levels of your consciousness and of your previously hidden attitudes, of material that you never wanted to admit to yourself -- you automatically become aware of the lower self of others. As you can accept your own lower self without being devastated and without totally rejecting yourself -- but holding your inner balance and knowing of your fundamentally divine nature -- your awareness of the lower self of others will not devastate you, it will not annihilate you, it will not make you hate them and judge them. When you were still battling against a part of yourself, then whatever awareness you had of the negativities of others filled you with anxiety and with discomfort. In other words, it threatened you, just as your own lower self threatened you. You may have perceived some aspects of it, but in a distorted way that created disharmony in you. In this new kind of perception your awareness is different: there is an inner calm about it and a certainty that it is a distortion, and therefore that it is temporary. Previously, your perception of the evil of others was only partially accurate because it was tinged with your projection and with your need to see others as imperfect in order to relieve your own conscience. Now your perception is clear and clean. This creates an entirely different climate.

To the degree that you accept yourself totally and you see yourself in truth -- namely as both your lower self and your higher self while your mask self begins to dissolve -- to that degree your perception of the other person's lower self exists in a totally different way. You are free. You accept it without turmoil. You perceive it without being upset. You understand it with a clarity that does not create hate and fear in you. In that state you can choose when and how to communicate your perceptions -- if that is appropriate and if you are able to take the risk of being resented for the sake of the possible benefit to the other person and to the relationship. Or you are free not to communicate some of your perceptions -- if that is appropriate. In this free perception the responsibility is given to the other person regarding what to do with his own negative attitudes and with his own destructive behavior, regardless of whether this is verbally expressed or not. This letting the other person take the responsibility happens on a subtle -- but nevertheless strong -- level of reality that somehow is always perceived by the other. This seems to deviate from the topic, but if you bear with me, then you will see that it is related to it.

When this stage is achieved, then it manifests first in a sort of interim stage. You come to the point where you already perceive the other person with more clarity, without a personal stake in what you see, and therefore without any personal involvement. You may already be able to choose to either express or not express your perceptions according to your intuitive inspirations and to truly follow them. At this point tremendous rage, anger, and hostility is created in the other person by your freedom to see his hidden negative material. He senses this even when you do not express your perceptions to him. His lower self is infuriated. The conscious personality may be completely unaware of what is taking place on the subliminal level of interchange. Therefore he may create a case, a reason for this rage. At this point you may not understand why you are met with such virulent hatred. It is as though the other person cannot bear the clarity of your knowledge and he wants to annihilate you. You have to go through this stage, for it represents a learning stage. In other words, it represents a doorway to a new stage. So this is an interim stage. You are not where you were before. Now you see clearly. That means without being personally upset by what you see; without feeling injured by what you see; without a stake in seeing it one way or another; and without distorting what you see. However, your seeing creates intense rage and intense attacks on the part of those who are still defending the aspect that you see, but which they have no intention first of facing, then of admitting, and eventually of changing.

This may apply even to unseen entities not in the body who are deeply involved in their own darkness, and who therefore are struggling for their supremacy. They want to use all the ammunition they can muster against the clarity of the light that streams forth from you. Only when you understand this and you strengthen yourself further will the light emanating from you become so strong that these violent reactions cannot create even a scratch in you. For your light will blind them and will keep them away, even when they reach out with their tentacles of hatred.

This principle is extremely important to understand for those who are in the growing state of penetrating the encrustation of the mask, of dissolving it, and then of dissolving their lower self. For their relationship to the world becomes altered. You no longer function on the level of mutual pretense, nor on the level of the mutual projections and accusations that are needed in order not to face the lower self. If the child grows up with a clear understanding of these principles, then you give it an enormous protection. But without this understanding then there would only be confusion, fear, and a vulnerability that could create a new defense. So the spiritual principle of the interaction of the inner levels is of the utmost importance for all human beings to comprehend, regardless of whether they start on the path as adults or begin it in childhood in a new educational system based on these teachings. The New Age person will learn these basic principles of human interaction. He will know of the existence of the various levels of the human soul. They have to be taught and understood, just as the basics of language, of mathematics, of any topic need to be taught and understood. But these basic laws of life are even more important.

This is what I once referred to as life learning when I spoke to the children at your Center (Lecture No 219). This life learning will encompass at least fifty percent of the curriculum. It will be the most fascinating study and it will at first influence and then alter the teaching approach of all the other topics that every child is learning in school today, and that adolescents learn in higher schooling. For the growing child this all-encompassing knowledge of life, knowledge of the self, and knowledge of the universe will be a new approach to the universe in which he lives, in which he moves, and in which he creates. Then the ordinary learning not only will be easier but it will have a new flavor, so that the discipline necessary for it will truly be chosen by the self. In other words, it will a discipline that is self-chosen.

New age schools will be infiltrated energetically with a new consciousness, with a new awareness. It is the new consciousness, the new awareness that experiences school as the most exciting adventure imaginable. It is where life unfolds and where keys of understanding are handed to the child. Children will experience school as a privilege which they will look forward to. They will realize that at times learning must also include hard work and the momentary relinquishing of an immediate pleasure. The child will rejoice in discovering all the things that he always wanted to know. For the child wants to know how things really work. This will be a thrill for the child, provided those who create schools, educational systems, and curricula participate in the new consciousness.

This vision should be cultivated by you, even if you cannot institute it completely as yet. Nevertheless, you can begin to institute it in your own consciousness. Through their awareness of this new vision that I have been presenting to you, those who teach can then gradually bring out what they have to give in this new way. The time will come when you will create your own school, even though there may not be too many children to begin with. But this will come and it will be an experiment that will reach out into the world and that will create a completely new approach to life. All the questions I answered in our last meeting in regard to the various committees that have formed in your Center -- dealing with all the necessary concerns and aspects of creating a new culture -- will also spread into the world and will find more and more receptivity in those who are spiritually ready and therefore are thirsty for this new approach. The new kind of politics, the new kind of science, the new kind of economics, the new kind of sociology, the new kind of art -- in other words, the new kind of everything that is part and parcel of living in a civilized world -- will be infiltrated with this new approach, just as the healing arts and education will be. Man's knowledge of the inner reality -- which comes as a result of following his own Path -- must give man an entirely different outlook, an entirely different approach, and an entirely different motivation in whatever he is doing. A politician who is grounded in these principles must, perforce, develop a different approach to world government and to political ideas than what the ordinary politician has now. For he comes from an old age school system. Therefore, he is surrounded by the educational approach and filled with the consciousness which still exist. This old approach is based mainly on appearance, on superficial, dualistic, and ego-oriented ways. The same applies to every other area of life. The artist will create differently, the economist will solve his problems from a different vantage point, and so on and so forth.

Some of you who started on this Path as adults already have a different approach to all of life and its areas of activity in the community of mankind. The children who grow up in an educational system such as I describe here will affect the world very differently. You can imagine how much more forcefully the truth will flow from a different area from within the person. The laws of God -- the laws of the divine world -- will pour out into your world in a flowing, flexible, ever-changing way and will then create a new world.

May this lecture be a foundation stone for another new building. At first in a spiritual sense and later in a material sense. May it also help you to take in this new seed into your innermost being once again, even though it is not immediately and directly applicable to you. But it will help you personally in a different sense. When you see that the Path that you are treading -- in other words, the way in which you are going into your innermost self -- is the key to a new approach to life that has much further-reaching consequences in the evolution than you may believe, then you may also perceive that there is a vast plan behind your individual Path that transcends your personal fate and your personal problems, which may have been your initial motivation to come here, as far as your conscious awareness was concerned. Now you can sense that your inner being knew much more and had a vaster plan in mind. This will bring light, encouragement, and strength to you -- wherever you are now on your path. You are all blessed, my very beloved dearest ones. Be in peace. Be in joy. Be in the beauty that unfolds itself in your life forever more.

May 7, 1975