FIRST GLIMMERINGS OF MIND
We can now see what is the true goal of education for a child. It is
the full and harmonious development of the four primary modes of
consciousness, always with regard to the individual nature of the
child.
The goal is _not_ ideal. The aim is _not_ mental consciousness. We
want _effectual_ human beings, not conscious ones. The final aim is
not _to know_, but _to be_. There never was a more risky motto than
that: _Know thyself_. You've got to know yourself as far as possible.
But not just for the sake of knowing. You've got to know yourself so
that you can at last _be_ yourself. "Be yourself" is the last motto.
The whole field of dynamic and effectual consciousness is _always_
pre-mental, non-mental. Not even the most knowing man that ever lived
would know how he would be feeling next week; whether some new and
utterly shattering impulse would have arisen in him and laid his
nicely-conceived self in ruins. It is the impulse we have to live by,
not the ideals or the idea. But we have to know ourselves pretty
thoroughly before we can break the automatism of ideals and
conventions. The savage in a state of nature is one of the most
conventional of creatures. So is a child. Only through fine delicate
knowledge can we recognize and release our impulses. Now our whole aim
has been to force each individual to a maximum of mental control, and
mental consciousness. Our poor little plans of children are put into
horrible forcing-beds, called schools, and the young idea is there
forced to shoot. It shoots, poor thing, like a potato in a warm
cellar. One mass of pallid sickly ideas and ideals. And no root, no
life. The ideas shoot, hard enough, in our sad offspring, but they
shoot at the expense of life itself. Never was such a mistake. Mental
consciousness is a purely individual affair. Some men are born to be
highly and delicately conscious. But for the vast majority, much
mental consciousness is simply a catastrophe, a blight. It just stops
their living.
Our business, at the present, is to prevent at all cost the young idea
from shooting. The ideal mind, the brain, has become the vampire of
modern life, sucking up the blood and the life. There is hardly an
original thought or original utterance possible to us. All is sickly
repetition of stale, stale ideas.
Let all schools be closed at once. Keep only a few technical training
establishments, nothing more. Let humanity lie fallow, for two
generations at least. Let no child learn to read, unless it learns by
itself, out of its own individual persistent desire.
That is my serious admonition, gentle reader. But I am not so flighty
as to imagine you will pay any heed. But if I thought you would, I
should feel my hope surge up. And if you _don't_ pay any heed,
calamity will at length shut your schools for you, sure enough.
The process of transfer from the primary consciousness to recognized
mental consciousness is a mystery like every other transfer. Yet it
follows its own laws. And here we begin to approach the confines of
orthodox psychology, upon which we have no desire to trespass. But
this we _can_ say. The degree of transfer from primary to mental
consciousness varies with every individual. But in most individuals
the natural degree is very low.
The process of transfer from primary consciousness is called
sublimation, the sublimating of the potential body of knowledge with
the definite reality of the idea. And with this process we have
identified all education. The very derivation of the Latin word
_education_ shows us. Of course it should mean the leading forth of
each nature to its fullness. But with us, fools that we are, it is the
leading forth of the primary consciousness, the potential or dynamic
consciousness, into mental consciousness, which is finite and static.
Now before we set out so gayly to lead our children _en bloc_ out of
the dynamic into the static way of consciousness, let us consider a
moment what we are doing.
A child in the womb can have no _idea_ of the mother. I think orthodox
psychology will allow us so much. And yet the child in the womb must
be dynamically conscious of the mother. Otherwise how could it
maintain a definite and progressively developing relation to her?
This consciousness, however, is utterly non-ideal, non-mental, purely
dynamic, a matter of dynamic polarized intercourse of vital
vibrations, as an exchange of wireless messages which are never
translated from the pulse-rhythm into speech, because they have no
need to be. It is a dynamic polarized intercourse between the great
primary nuclei in the foetus and the corresponding nuclei in the
dynamic maternal psyche.
This form of consciousness is established at conception, and continues
long after birth. Nay, it continues all life long. But the particular
interchange of dynamic consciousness between mother and child suffers
no interruption at birth. It continues almost the same. The child has
no conception whatsoever of the mother. It cannot see her, for its eye
has no focus. It can hear her, because hearing needs no transmission
into concept, but it has no oral notion of sounds. It knows her. But
only by a form of vital dynamic correspondence, a sort of magnetic
interchange. The idea does not intervene at all.
Gradually, however, the dark shadow of our object begins to loom in
the formless mind of the infant. The idea of the mother is, as it
were, gradually photographed on the cerebral plasm. It begins with the
faintest shadow--but the figure is gradually developed through years
of experience. It is never quite completed.
How does the figure of the mother gradually develop as a _conception_
in the child mind? It develops as the result of the positive and
negative reaction from the primary centers of consciousness. From the
first great center of sympathy the child is drawn to a lovely oneing
with the mother. From the first great center of will comes the
independent self-assertion which locates the mother as something
outside, something objective. And as a result of this twofold notion,
a twofold increase in the child. First, the dynamic establishment of
the individual consciousness in the infant: and then the first shadow
of a mental conception of the mother, in the infant brain. The
development of the _original_ mind in every child and every man always
and only follows from the dual fulfillment in the dynamic
consciousness.
But mark further. Each time, after the fourfold interchange between
two dynamic polarized lives, there results a development in the
individuality and a sublimation into consciousness, both
simultaneously in each party: _and this dual development causes at
once a diminution in the dynamic polarity between the two parties_.
That is, as its individuality and its mental concept of the mother
develop in the child, there is a corresponding _waning_ of the dynamic
relation between the child and the mother. And this is the natural
progression of all love. As we have said before, the accomplishment of
individuality never finally exhausts the dynamic flow between parents
and child. In the same way, a child can never have a finite conception
of either of its parents. It can have a very much more finite,
finished conception of its aunts or its friends. The portrait of the
parent can never be quite completed in the mind of the son or
daughter. As long as time lasts it must be left unfinished.
Nevertheless, the inevitable photography of time upon the mental plasm
does print at last a very substantial portrait of the parent, a very
well-filled concept in the child mind. And the nearer a conception
comes towards finality, the nearer does the dynamic relation, out of
which this concept has arisen, draw to a close. To know, is to lose.
When I have a finished mental concept of a beloved, or a friend, then
the love and the friendship is dead. It falls to the level of an
acquaintance. As soon as I have a finished mental conception, a full
idea even of myself, then dynamically I am dead. To know is to die.
But knowledge and death are part of our natural development. Only, of
course, most things can never be known by us in full. Which means we
do never absolutely die, even to our parents. So that Jesus' question
to His mother, "Woman, what have I to do with thee!"--while
expressing a major truth, still has an exaggerated sound, which comes
from its denial of the minor truth.
This progression from dynamic relationship towards a finished
individuality and a finished mental concept is carried on from the
four great primary centers through the correspondence medium of all
the senses and sensibilities. First of all, the child knows the mother
only through touch--perfect and immediate contact. And yet, from the
moment of conception, the egg-cell repudiated complete adhesion and
even communication, and asserted its individual integrity. The child
in the womb, perfect a contact though it may have with the mother, is
all the time also dynamically polarized against this contact. From the
first moment, this relation in touch has a dual polarity, and, no
doubt, a dual mode. It is a fourfold interchange of consciousness, the
moment the egg-cell has made its two spontaneous divisions.
As soon as the child is born, there is a real severance. The contact
of touch is interrupted, it now becomes occasional only. True, the
dynamic flow between mother and child is not severed when simple
physical contact is missing. Though mother and child may not touch,
still the dynamic flow continues between them. The mother knows her
child, feels her bowels and her breast drawn to it, even if it be a
hundred miles away. But if the severance continue long, the dynamic
flow begins to die, both in mother and child. It wanes fairly
quickly--and perhaps can never be fully revived. The dynamic relation
between parent and child may fairly easily fall into quiescence, a
static condition.
For a full dynamic relationship it is necessary that there be actual
contact. The nerves run from the four primary dynamos, and end with
live ends all over the body. And it is necessary to bring the live
ends of the nerves of the child into contact with the live ends of
corresponding nerves in the mother, so that a pure circuit is
established. Wherever a pure circuit is established, there occurs a
pure development in the individual creation, and this is inevitably
accompanied by sensation; and sensation is the first term of mental
knowledge.
So, from the field of the breast and arms, the upper circuit, and from
the field of the knees and feet and belly, the lower circuit.
And then, the moment a child is born, the face is alive. And the face
communicates direct with both planes of primary consciousness. The
moment a child is born, it begins to grope for the breast. And
suddenly a new great circuit is established, the four poles all
working at once, as the child sucks. There is the profound
desirousness of the lower center of sympathy, and the superior avidity
of the center of will, and at the same time, the cleaving yearning to
the nipple, and the tiny curiosity of lips and gums. The nipple of the
mother's breast is one of the great gates of the body, hence of the
living psyche. In the nipple terminate vivid nerves which flash their
very powerful vibrations through the mouth of the child and deep into
its four great poles of being and knowing. Even the nipples of the man
are gateways to the great dynamic flow: still gateways.
Touch, taste, and smell are now active in the baby. And these senses,
so-called, are strictly sensations. They are the first term of the
child's mental knowledge. And on these three _cerebral_ reactions the
foundation of the future mind is laid.
The moment there is a perfect polarized circuit between the first four
poles of dynamic consciousness, at that moment does the mind, the
terminal station, flash into cognition. The first cognition is merely
sensation: sensation and the remembrance of sensation being the first
element in all knowing and in all conception.
The circuit of touch, taste, and smell must be well established,
before the eyes begin actually to see. All mental knowledge is built
up of sensation and of memory. It is the continually recurring
sensation of the touch of the mother which forms the basis of the
first conception of the mother. After that, the gradually
discriminated taste of the mother, and scent of the mother. Till
gradually sight and hearing develop and largely usurp the first three
senses, as medium of correspondence and of knowledge.
And while, of course, the sensational _knowledge_ is being secreted in
the brain, in some much more mysterious way the living individuality
of the child is being developed in the four first nuclei, the four
great nerve-centers of the primary field of consciousness and being.
As time goes on, the child learns to see the mother. At first he sees
her face as a blur, and though he knows her, knows her by a direct
glow of communication, as if her face were a warm glowing life-lamp
which rejoiced him. But gradually, as the circuit of touch, taste, and
smell become powerfully established; gradually, as the individual
develops in the child, and so retreats towards isolation; gradually,
as the child stands more immune from the mother, the circuit of
correspondence extends, and the eyes now communicate across space, the
ears begin to discriminate sounds. Last of all develops discriminate
hearing.
Now gradually the picture of the mother is transferred to the child's
mind, and the sound of the first baby-words is imprinted. And as the
child learns to discriminate visually, objectively, between the mother
and the nurse, he learns to choose, and becomes individually free. And
still, the dynamic correspondence is not finished. It only changes its
circuit.
While the brain is registering sensations, the four dynamic centers
are coming into perfect relation. Or rather, as we see, the reverse is
the case. As the dynamic centers come into perfect relation, the mind
registers and remembers sensations, and begins consciously to know.
But the great field of activity is still and always the dynamic field.
When a child learns to walk, it learns almost entirely from the solar
plexus and the lumbar ganglion, the cardiac plexus and the thoracic
ganglion balancing the upper body.
There is a perfected circuit of polarity. The two lower centers are
the positive, the two upper the negative poles. And so the child
strikes out with his feet for the earth, presses, and strikes away
again from the earth, the two upper centers meanwhile corresponding
implicitly in the balance of the upper body. It is a chain of
spontaneous activity in the four primary centers, establishing a
circuit through the whole body. But the positive poles are the lower
centers. And the brain has probably nothing at all to do with it. Even
the _desire_ to walk is not born in the brain, but in the primary
nuclei.
The same with the use of the hands and arms. It means the
establishment of a pure circuit between the four centers, the two
upper poles now being the positive, the lower the negative poles, and
the hands the live end of the wire. Again the brain is not concerned.
Probably, even in the first deliberate grasping of an object, the
brain is not concerned. Not until there is an element of recognition
and sensation-memory.
All our primal activity originates and circulates purely in the four
great nerve centers. All our active desire, our genuine impulse, our
love, our hope, our yearning, everything originates mysteriously at
these four great centers or well-heads of our existence: everything
vital and dynamic. The mind can only register that which results from
the emanation of the dynamic impulse and the collision or communion of
this impulse with its object.
So now we see that we can never know ourselves. Knowledge is to
consciousness what the signpost is to the traveler: just an indication
of the way which has been traveled before. Knowledge is not even in
direct proportion to being. There may be great knowledge of chemistry
in a man who is a rather poor _being_: and those who _know_, even in
wisdom like Solomon, are often at the end of the matter of living, not
at the beginning. As a matter of fact, David did the living, the
dynamic achievement. To Solomon was left the consummation and the
finish, and the dying down.
Yet we _must_ know, if only in order to learn not to know. The supreme
lesson of human consciousness is to learn how _not to know_. That is,
how not to _interfere_. That is, how to live dynamically, from the
great Source, and not statically, like machines driven by ideas and
principles from the head, or automatically, from one fixed desire. At
last, knowledge must be put into its true place in the living
activity of man. And we must know deeply, in order even to do that.
So a new conception of the meaning of education.
Education means leading out the individual nature in each man and
woman to its true fullness. You can't do that by stimulating the mind.
To pump education into the mind is fatal. That which sublimates from
the dynamic consciousness into the mental consciousness has alone any
value. This, in most individuals, is very little indeed. So that most
individuals, under a wise government, would be most carefully
protected from all vicious attempts to inject extraneous ideas into
them. Every extraneous idea, which has no inherent root in the dynamic
consciousness, is as dangerous as a nail driven into a young tree. For
the mass of people, knowledge _must_ be symbolical, mythical, dynamic.
This means, you must have a higher, responsible, conscious class: and
then in varying degrees the lower classes, varying in their degree of
consciousness. Symbols must be true from top to bottom. But the
interpretation of the symbols must rest, degree after degree, in the
higher, responsible, conscious classes. To _those who cannot divest_
themselves again of mental consciousness and definite ideas, mentality
and ideas are death, nails through their hands and feet.