A New Curriculum: Spiritual Values

The final and unavoidable conclusion is that education—like all our social institutions—must be concerned with its final values, and this in turn is just about the same as speaking of what have been called ‘spiritual values’ or ‘higher values’.

Abraham Maslow Religion, Values, and Peak Experiences. p.52.

            Children are innately spiritual, but not innately moral.  Paradoxically, to say, as Maslow does, that education must be concerned with “final values” means that they are first and foundational.  But values of any sort are not taught, principles and virtues are taught.  I mean that what are called spiritual values are the gems within the mine of humanity.  They are moral and intellectual powers in a state of potential.  Virtue and principle are what educe them, bring them forth, drawing them out into actuality.  Principle and virtue mine the gems.  They teach the value of the value. 

            Inner moral potentials, such as love, justice, courage and compassion are called human values, because they are of most value to human life.  The expression of these values, such as loving ones parents, aiding the oppressed, standing up for principle, and giving to the poor, I will call virtues, for a virtue is not a disembodied concept, but a consistent pattern of behavior.  Virtue is the proper expression of a value in services performed for others or for the common good.  Virtue is the dynamic force of example.  Concepts of proper behavior and attitude are more properly called spiritual principles.  Principles tell us the full and proper expression of the moral potential: for example, "Love your neighbor as yourself."  Such principles are found in all great spiritual traditions. They are universals of behavior and thought that parents everywhere try to inculcate in their children; that churches teach their flock, which are embodied in great art, and lived by noble people. 

            But they also grow in complexity and range as humanity morally evolves.  For example, Baha’u’llah wrote: “Of old it hath been revealed: "Love of one's country is an element of the Faith of God." The Tongue of Grandeur hath, however, in the day of His manifestation proclaimed: "It is not his to boast who loveth his country, but it is his who loveth the world." Through the power released by these exalted words He hath lent a fresh impulse, and set a new direction, to the birds of men's hearts, and hath obliterated every trace of restriction and limitation from God's holy Book.” (Gleanings:95)

            A spiritual principle, then, is an articulate statement of a value.  A virtue is a practical demonstration of a value.  Both spiritual principles and virtues harmonize with the moral potentials within the human reality, working as a kind of objective correlative to the inner values.  They draw out and train or actualize moral potentials by giving them forms to express themselves through, as mathematics, for example, draws out and trains a certain potential for logical reasoning with measurable quantities by giving it forms—arithmetic, geometry, etc.--to express itself through.  Spiritual principles also create a moral context for solving practical problems, meeting challenges and quickly evaluating novel situations.  The House of Justice wrote: “There are spiritual principles, or what some call human values, by which solutions can be found for every social problem….The essential merit of spiritual principle is that it not only presents a perspective which harmonizes with that which is immanent in human nature, it also induces an attitude, a dynamic, a will, an aspiration, which facilitate the discovery and implementation of practical measures.” (The Universal House of Justice, Messages 1963 to 1986, p. 690)  

            Maslow also stated that: “The teaching of spiritual values, of ethical and moral values, definitely does have a place in education, perhaps ultimately a very basic and essential place.”  (Note that “ultimately” is really “very basic and essential.”)  Goals and foundations are alike, with this difference: goals are transformed foundations.  What does this mean for teaching, curriculum, and education?

            The teaching of values is often called something like moral education or character education.  It is usually thought of as presenting values such as love, justice and tolerance through stories, examples and discussion in "Moral Education" or "Character-building" classes. This is a good method, and is often the best arrangement possible in many schools. The Virtues Project, for example, is a well-conceived and effective curriculum for this kind of Moral Education.

            But teaching values in this way is, for most students, insufficient to achieve the aim of personal transformation or to enable them to break free from the horrific psychic undertow of a corrupt society.  Conceived in this way moral education remains only a special subject of study, often divorced from practical daily realities rather than illuminating them.  It is a situation where the formal study of values is only another and often mis-fitted part of the curriculum. I say mis-fitted because in most schools moral values of peace, harmony and prosperity for all must compete with history classes which unconsciously value conflict because they study war as the main preoccupation of human beings, and with social studies classes which unwittingly value violence, prejudice or vengeance because they study the various means of exploitation and revolt. They must also compete with natural science classes which conceive nature as a dead object and material progress as a legitimate form of greed, with economics instruction which promotes materialism because it only emphasizes increasing material productivity, and with civics classes that inculcate nationalistic attitudes instead of universal ones. Spiritual values can be overwhelmed in this situation and study of them in such an anti-environment usually has only a marginal effect on human behavior.

            The aim of spiritual education is not just to enable students to perceive the value of sharing, caring, and helping, which is easy enough, but also to train them to express the moral capacities, obtain the social skills and gain the material wealth to apply these by articulating their proper expression and demonstrating their transformative power.  For my money, there is no better curriculum in the world than the Ruhi Curriculum to “ultimately” accomplish this most “fundamental” task of education.   

            All education is moral education.  Knowingly or not what subjects are in the curriculum reflects assumptions of what is good to know, classroom arrangements embody somebody's ideas of the good learning space, teacher/student interaction often unconsciously presents relations of authority.  There is no way around it.  Education means to bring forth.  All education will bring forth.  The question is: What will it bring forth?  If the goal is ultimately the spiritualized student, then the curriculum’s foundation must be spiritual values and principles.  The academic curriculum must itself be founded upon and organized upon spiritual principles.  Some of these will be presented in the next post.

           

A New Curriculum

We need to consider the creation of a curriculum of the inner life.

(Education and the Soul: 50)

            Curriculum means to run a course.  Spiritual education will need a new curriculum, perhaps a new kind of curriculum, than what exists in schools today. In addition to a curriculum of academic subjects, it will need, as John Miller suggests above, a curriculum of the inner life that runs the course of spiritual transformation.  But in keeping with ideas of transformation, the new curriculum should not only grow out of the old, and not simply supersede or replace it, but also outgrow the old to meet new circumstances and challenges.  There must be connection and conservation along with discontinuity and breaking with the old.  Spiritual education is not separated from other forms or styles of education by well-defined borders. Neither is spirituality just another fenced in field of study.  Rather the human spirit is a magnetic center of interest and a focus of intellectual relationships.   

            The proper form of organizing this new curriculum is based on organic, not mechanical, metaphors. That is, the logical relationship between the subjects of a curriculum is not solely one of linear, organizational-chart connection, such as A is necessary to know before B, but one of resonant fit with connections in every direction.  In such a fit there exists a harmony of subjects in the curriculum pointing not just outwardly toward a remote horizon, called employment, but also inwardly toward a center which is the heart of the student. Thus it would be both a curriculum of contexts as well as of subjects.  Such interconnected curricula will enable students to not only acquire knowledge, but also to acquire self-knowledge.

            The first and real subject of spiritual education is the student, and not math, science, art and language, which become from this perspective the means for a student to understand himself or herself and the world. This means that whether a student is studying physics, literature, or physical education, study of that “subject” should lead him to understand human nature and the world more deeply. 

            The purpose of any curriculum is not really to efficiently and sequentially package a certain body of information.  The real purpose of any curriculum is to train the powers of perception, cognition, emotion, and volition to see and experience the world in a particular way.  Every learning community, Robert Bellah writes, “has a coherent curricular focus that connects the various courses into some kind of whole and allows students to understand education as a common enterprise.”  The curriculum of public schooling is never an arbitrary construct, but in all cases is meant to both reflect and inculcate the cultural view of reality.  This has always been true.  Walter Ong wrote that the great educational reformer of the European Renaissance, Peter Ramus, believed: “the ‘arts’ or curriculum subjects hold the world together. Nothing is accessible for "use," that is, for active intussusception by the human being, until it has first been put through the curriculum. The schoolroom is by implication the doorway to reality, and indeed the only doorway." 

            It was out of the reorganization of the school curriculum from an oral, communal, disputational model of the Middle Ages to a silent, sequential, individual model based upon Ramus' ideas of the logic of curriculum that schools of the modern West embodied their linear, mechanical understanding of the world.  This was one of the topics of McLuhan's fascinating study The Gutenberg Galaxy.  Even today the close relation between school and society--the classroom as doorway to reality--holds true, for our fragmented curriculum of episodic hours of instruction of disconnected subjects reflects our fragmented social reality of episodic lives of disconnected Subjects.  This fragmentation is one theme of Arthur Schlesinger’s The Disuniting of America,  and it is the result of the breakdown of what is called the organizations of civil society, those mediating organizations, of which education is the central institution, that form a nation’s “social capital.”   

            To counteract this fragmentation, the curriculum for spiritual education must build unities, intellectually and socially, and enable students to construct symbolic structures of understanding in order to achieve the goals of transformation and transcendence both for the individual and for the collectivity.  In spiritual education the curricular focus must be on “educing” the human reality, which is the same everywhere whatever cultural form it may appear in.  The first identity of every person is a human being, cultural, racial, linguistic, and other identities are smaller and secondary to the primary identity of member of the human race.  Spiritually, human beings are unified because every individual is a child of God.  Upon this common foundation other unities may be created as diverse expressions of the common essence.  How to embody this in a curriculum?  That is the topic of the next few posts.

Bringing the Future into the Present

The new education is seen as a spiritual process.  That is to say, it is a complete unfolding and perfect functioning of the human soul.  The traditional education has concerned itself chiefly with the intellect, which is after all merely one of the tools used by the human soul in its functioning upon this planet.  This is a very limited view of education and necessarily has produced faulty and limited results.

(Stanwood Cobb: Thoughts and Education and Life:39)

            A popular Youtube video on education by Sir Ken Robinson (www.ted.com) made in February 2006 is still making the rounds.  Several of my friends have sent it to me, raving about it—and rightly so.  I also see it promoted by friends on Facebook, and I am glad.  He makes an entertaining and moving case for fashioning an education system that nurtures rather than stifles creativity.  But I believe that challenges in education go deeper than this.  Baha’u’llah says that lack of a proper education hath deprived us of that which we inherently possess.  Creativity is certainly one power which we inherently possess and it is true to say that, in general, creativity is educated out of most people.  Valerie Hunt, in her book, Infinite Mind, writes: “Using the best prediction tests of creative manipulation of objects, children age five have 100% of their creative capacity.  By age seven their creativity has decreased 50%.  And by forty years of age, creativity is reduced to 1% of one’s capacity.”  If she is right, that is frightening. 

            But, really, enduring improvement in education requires more than unleashing the power of creativity within an old system of belief and understanding about ourselves, for this will cause havoc.  Creativity is the bringing forth of novelty, and it can be a pretty unprincipled power unless properly guided.  To give but one example: recall that those who came together near the end of the Second World War to create the first atomic bomb were creative individuals.  But what they brought forth has unleashed unimaginable levels of anxiety and imperiled the future of humanity. 

            Thus, more fundamental than creativity is guiding that creativity into productive channels that bring greater peace and prosperity to all.  There are two ways to do this. 

            First, business consultant Peter Drucker drew an important distinction between creativity, merely bringing something new into the world, and innovation, which advances an existing process is some way.  Drucker counseled not to innovate for the future, but innovate for the present.  The innovation may have long term impact, but if you can't get it adopted now there won’t be any future.  To me, innovation supports Baha’u’llah’s admonition to: “Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.”(Gleanings:213)  We must solve immediate challenges or there is no future. For example, we must dismantle civil laws that are prejudicial, or there is no hope for peace. But changing bad laws will not, by itself, remove prejudice from the heart, only make it harder to express.  The shape of the future is just as much a process of envisioning a new context emerging from the inner requirements of human life, and getting outer things in place for new qualities to emerge safely.  This brings us to the second form of guidance.           

            Sir Kenneth remarks that we don’t know what the future will look like even five years from now.  True.  But we are not totally in the dark.  We know that the world is contracting into a neighborhood, that unifying processes are at work on every level, and that humanity must overcome entrenched prejudicial assumptions about its nature.  We know that the principle of the oneness of humanity is taking hold in human consciousness.   It will remove prejudice from the heart.  Here is where education can be a source of both creativity and innovation, for spiritual education involves envisioning, building, and setting in motion new unifying spiritual, intellectual and social processes that will neutralize and eventually overcome forces of disintegration based on reaction to the principle of the oneness of humanity. It is building a new educational context for humanity within which it can continue its evolution: a context of  an ever-advancing global civilization inhabited by “a new race of men.”  This is seeing education, as Stanwood Cobb states in the opening quote “as a spiritual process.”  This is guiding our creative capacities in new directions, not just advancing old ones, however good, by bringing the future into the present where it can act as a template for growth.  Minds bent solely upon fixing up the world cannot recognize that it can’t be fixed.  It must be regenerated.  Baha’is call this divine guidance, and it comes from Revelation.

            If, as the Baha’i Writings say, the purpose of every new revelation is to “effect a transformation in the whole character of mankind, a transformation that shall manifest itself both outwardly and inwardly, that shall affect both its inner life and external conditions”, then the whole character of education must, too, be transformed outwardly and inwardly.

            Near the end of his talk Ken Robinson says that we must “rethink the fundamental principles upon which we educate our children.”  I agree with this thought—and with of the general tenor of his talk.  We must innovate in education, further develop what Cobb calls our intellectual education, and remedy some of our immediate problems and challenges.  But we must also create a new education for a new world.  To create spiritual education means not just enlightening the mind but educing the spirit.  It is not just to rebuild education from the ground up, but also build it from the inside out; not reform education, but transform it; not just arrange the same pieces into new shape, but evoke new powers out of potentiality into actuality and within a social context that blesses not blasts them.

             

           

           

             

A Dialogue of Lights: Some Reflections on Reflection

The source of crafts, sciences and arts is the power of reflection. Make ye every effort that out of this ideal mine there may gleam forth such pearls of wisdom and utterance as will promote the well-being and harmony of all the kindreds of the earth.

Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh Revealed After the Kitáb-i-Aqdas: 269

            The word reflection suggests the movement, the dance, of light.  First, there is the movement of light from a physical object whose image appears in a mirror.  Reflection is also used to denote deep thought, as when we reflect on our actions or on a problem.  This, too, I believe is the movement of a kind of light, mental light.  In both these examples, reflection is both a receptive action, something occurring at the end of a process, a receiving of light, and a generative process, the radiating of light outward from the image appearing in it.  Thus besides reflection in the mirror, there is also reflecting outward from the mirror.  The two stages of reflection are almost a form of breathing, a taking in and a giving out.    

            In the opening quote Baha'u'llah gives a third meaning to reflection.  He calls reflection both a power and an ideal mine.  It is a relation and a "place."  For, the quote does not say that science, art and crafts are the result of reflection, except in the sense of light reflected from an image appearing in the mirror of the mind, but rather the power of reflection, the ideal mine, is their source.  How is this? 

            For reflection to occur there must be a general source of light illuminating everything.  For Nature this general source of light is the sun which, illuminating the world, enables all things to reflect their received light to each other.  For knowledge this Sun is Revelation of the Word, those pulses of spiritual energy moving as waves through the ether of thought that get transformed into intellectual light.  The receptive human talisman receives this light and then reflects it outward into the world.  This is the relation of light through the stages of reflection, but put into a spiritual context.

            The Bahá’í Writings consider man a mine rich in gems of light.  Some of the gems residing in this ideal mine are crafts, arts, and sciences, implying that the mind has some innate ways of understanding waiting to be activated.  We are to make every effort to bring these forth, to educe them.  

            To my mind, the sciences, arts and crafts latent within the human spirit are images and reflections of divine knowledge.  That is, actualities in the human world are reflections of the divine one.  Now, the power to reflect a reality attracts the reality.  They are in direct relationship as described by  Abdu’l-Baha: “a mirror which is clear will certainly attract the rays of the sun.” (Some Answered Questions:200)  By attracting the divine to it, the power of reflection becomes the ideal source of sciences, art and crafts within the mind when the higher vibrations of Revelation shine through it.   

            As Revelation is the spiritual source of knowledge for humanity, so Nature, "the mirror of creation," is the material source.  We can contemplate either or both to discover knowledge, for “the reality of man is his thought.”  In reflection a new knowledge can intuitively be brought forth from this ideal mine.  This joining together into relation of objective reality, whether divine or natural, with subjective, meditative thought gives that charge of energy we associate with discovery and inspiration, and it is no wonder that the poets often lead in this.  The poet, Wordsworth, wrote:

For the discerning intellect of Man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.     

           

            Meditation is dialogue with oneself.  ‘Abdu’l-Baha asserts that: " It is an axiomatic fact that while you meditate you are speaking with your own spirit. In that state of mind you put certain questions to your spirit and the spirit answers: the light breaks forth and the reality is revealed….The spirit of man is itself informed and strengthened during mediation; through it affairs of which man knew nothing are unfolded before his view….Meditation is the key for opening the doors of mysteries.  In that state man abstracts himself; in that state man withdraws himself from all outside objects; in that subjective mood he is immersed in the ocean of spiritual life and can unfold the secrets of things-in-themselves."

            More than two thousand years ago, Confucius laid out the steps of this process of reflection: “The way of the Great Learning consists in the clarification of originally clear perceptions, in the love of mankind, and in resting in the highest excellence.  If one understands this resting, then only does one have fixity of purpose.  If one has fixity of purpose, then only can one succeed in being tranquil.  If one is tranquil, then only can one succeed in finding peace.  If one has peace, then only is one able to reflect.  Only after reflection can one succeed in obtaining what one wishes.”

            To become a science intuitive knowledge must be reflected outward--"gleam forth"--into other minds and investigated commonly.  Science is the systematic investigation of reality.  It has agreed upon procedures, shared rules of evidence, repeatable, experimental verification, and a logical framework.  Science is a community effort.  To translate the idea into a science it must be brought forth out of the mind into the world, so others may know it and together build it into a mansion of thought.

            In its outward moving, the power of reflection is the constructing of an outer image that reflects the inner one, the building of a virtual reality, like a hologram, called human knowledge. When this outer image is constructed, then reflection becomes light reflecting light, a dialogue of lights that increases illumination.  It is the Glorious Structure described by Baha’u’llah as composed of “the active force and that which is its recipient.”  Yet, He goes on, “these two are the same, yet they are different”, as the Sun and its image in the clear mirror are the same yet they are different.  But, when power of reflection is the source of knowledge, the recipient acts to attract the active to it.  

         

           

             

The Sound of Creation

 Creativity does not happen inside people’s heads, but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a socio-cultural context.  It is a systemic rather than an individual phenomenon.

(Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: 23)

           

            The above quote from noted researcher on creativity, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, sets the tone for this post on creativity.  But whereas Csikszentmihalyi says creativity occurs within the silent interaction between an individual’s thought and a socio-cultural environment, I believe creativity is not a silent process, but a kind of auditory one.  I will discuss it through acoustical metaphors.

            For me creativity is the result of an intricate dialogue held among the human reality, the creation, and divinity.  Education is their language and process.  If education is to bring forth, then what is brought forth must already have been present.  But “what is brought forth” from what is already present is done through a reciprocal relation between the mind and creation, each calling to the other for completion.  Creativity is a mutual calling forth of spirit.    

            First, there is the call by creation to bring forth into manifestation the inner powers and abilities of the human spirit.  The other side is the call by the human spirit to creation to bring forth its hidden aspects.  Bringing forth the human spirit and the spirit animating creation via reciprocal relations makes the two invisibles visible: a hidden reality is forged by creative work into a manifest reality.  Mind and creation move toward each other through mutual attraction.  They hear each other’s call and navigate toward each other until they meet in the middle which is this world of actuality, for every aspect of the talismanic essence of the human soul has its equivalent in the creation. In order to be brought forth, the hidden parts of creation must, too, already be present.  Who or what put them there?

            Within the inner dimensions of the creation are the spiritual forms of things which human intelligence can, through a kind of harmonic resonance, activate.  These spiritual forms also activate human intelligence, building it, as a symphonic musical score, into more complex intellectual and social structures.  The highest level of this inner dimension of humanity and creation, the greatest and noblest call, I have called the divine, what religious scripture calls Revelation, the creative Word or force that puts things “there” by calling them into being.  When the divine call enters the world it does not fit into either established categories of human understanding or the natural world but retunes and transforms them.  The divine is creative, but for human knowledge it mostly creates and recreates contexts for human thought and experience, setting the mind and heart vibrating to new frequencies.  The creative Word transforms the spiritual environment which, in turn, generates a variety of effects both in the world and within us.  These effects activate the latent powers and energies of receptive minds to bring forth new manifest creations from the potentialities sown in creation by Revelation. 

            By the work of creativity I mean vision plus work fired by faith to bring forth novelty.  Creative work is the mining of the gems of the human soul and the spiritual forms of creation.  Creative work is the process of the realization of vision.  Work is the third step in a movement that started in faith—which “cometh by hearing”--in the hidden reality, which progressed through vision which sees the new reality, to creativity which manifests it.  As an attitude toward creativity, faith and vision provide what Rollo May calls The Courage to Create.  But creativity is the actual work of bringing forth. 

            Creative work also occurs at different levels.  First, there is the creation, the bringing forth, of a new thing.  But a higher level of creative work is to change the forms of expression of being.  I mean that if, in the evolution of human consciousness, some new power or faculty has through the action of the divine moved to the time of its birth, it will come forth and a new perception of reality results.  If the proper forms for the expression of this new perception are not fully present it will create them.  These are the changes wrought in human consciousness by those we call genius.  They are often not heard while they are alive, because, like all great explorers, no one else sees or hears what they do.  Great changes in forms of human expression are the kind of things that show up as new movements in the arts, in new scientific discoveries of a paradigm-changing nature, or in new philosophical movements.  The highest expression of this kind of change is that of the religious genius: the founders of the great religions.  Upon their creative genius whole civilizations are erected, for they are manifestations of divinity, speakers of the Word after having heard it.

            Every soul has a particular call.  Every thing has a voice.  As I said in a previous post, creativity is linked to engagement with work.  Our best work is more than mere labor, whether remunerated or not.  The best work has an inner spiritual dynamic to it that springs pure from a compelling inner purpose, and which is termed “a calling.”   

            The idea of a calling and devotion to labor in the calling has its roots in the western religious tradition.  Every individual has two callings, one general and the other personal.  The general calling is the primary task of spiritual self-development, the holy work of self-perfecting that everyone must attempt.  The second calling is the seeking after occupation, or what occupies ones time because it occupies ones full attention.  One's calling is literally one's vocation, for "vocation" is a form of "vocal."  If psychologist James Hillman is correct in believing that “what children go through has to do with finding a place in the world for their specific calling”, then educators must pay attention to this idea of vocation, not just in terms of finding gainful employment, but also in the context of  personal inner development. Within a calling personal spiritual development is inseparable from one’s labor, for work becomes a form of worship.  All work done in a spirit of service to the larger good can be a calling.    

            The other form of creativity I have discussed is the construction of human knowledge.  This brings us back to speech and dialogue.  We think of the world as a seamless thing.  But actually it is an infinitely graded series of discrete events and discontinuous spaces that harmonically resonate with waves and vibrations through the spiritual medium of love.  Love is the basic substance of the creation which mind fashions into forms.  The resonant discontinuities of the structure of the world are reflected in the resonant discontinuities of the metaphorical space of human language, for there are auditory intervals of space, time and meaning between our discrete words.  Discontinuity is a creative space that forms into a new integrity in dialogue, for dialogue, especially consultation, creates shared meaning, and thus overcomes dichotomy and separateness.  This overcoming we call insight, knowledge and understanding.  Dialogue is inherent to real comm-unication, and communication creates comm-unity.  Dialogue, whether between souls, or between the soul and the creation, or the soul and divinity, is the mutual revealing of selves in interaction.  In true dialogue the self achieves self-knowledge in what is echoed back to him. 

            Today the acceleration of the pace of change is such as to bring us close to the final limit of our known energy and knowledge, rendering us unable to respond creatively.  Without creative energy we cannot solve our problems, so they proliferate.  Lacking creative energy, we are easily bred to silence and passivity, products of an effective conditioning of our consciousness about reality.  Enclosed within our conditioning we can neither see it nor see anything but it, for it has become self-contained.  But through faith, vision and creative thought and energy we can transform this world.  We revive these powers by achieving new contact with the divine and starting a new social discourse.  To do that systematically requires a fourth power of transformation, reflection.  That is the subject of the next post.  Love to hear from you on this post.

Stimulating the Power of Vision

            We are discussing ways to mine the gems deposited within the human reality, to spiritually magnetize the talisman which is the human soul, so that we can see spiritual things and things spiritually.  I said that we need power to do this and the first power I discussed was the power of faith.  By faith I meant not a blind belief in some rigid doctrine or unsupported idea, but an open attitude toward life that generates purposeful action.  This post will discuss the power of inner vision.  Now faith and vision work hand-in-hand.

            If faith is the sense that the super-rational, supernatural inner world exists and is the drive to transcend existing conditions in order to progress, then vision is the power that sees into that inner world.  The power of vision can perceive inner reality via the intermediary of symbols, that is, through stories and accounts, principles and poetry, myth and mysteries.  But all symbols conceal even as they reveal.  True vision sees by direct perception and understands without need of rational or logical proofs.  Vision is strongest when one is in a meditative state, when the mind is abstracted from the whirl of sense impressions and freed from the internal ego-chatter that many mistake for thought. Because it sees directly, vision is the source of original and intuitive perceptions.  In vision new possibilities, potentials, avenues of advance and development are seen.  But let us be clear: a visionary does not see things that are not there.  That is either insanity or a materialist’s prejudice. The visionary does not see more in something, but more of it. 

            Great artists and scientists down through the ages have this power to perceive, so to speak, behind objective appearances and the mind’s flux of impressions to some “essence” informing the object, some quality of seeing that makes things, even momentarily, clear and important.  In such moments of heightened, intensified perception objects of perception are transfigured and charged with new intensity.  Subjectively, the usual psychological distance between subject and object is shortened or obliterated and a kind of oneness with the object of perception is attained, a sense of union traditionally described as ecstasy and that carries an electric charge to the mind which we call inspiration.  It is an understanding that “This is the way reality is”: that reality has unveiled itself.

           Vision is not just for artists and scientists.  The authors of the book, Reinventing the Corporation, John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene, say that vision is becoming an accepted fact in practical business concerns.  They write: “Belief in vision is a radically new precept in business philosophy.  It comes out of intuitive knowing, it says that logic is not everything, that it is not all in the numbers.  The idea is simply that by envisioning the future, you can more easily achieve your goal.  Vision is the link between dream and action.  Only a company with a real mission or sense of purpose that comes out of an intuitive or spiritual dimension will capture people’s hearts.” 

            All children have this power, but most “education” drains it out of them.  This draining is part of what is meant by an improper education depriving us of what we inherently possess.  So, how can we get it back? 

            Vision is seeing what is there in reality.  This takes two forms: seeing behind actuality to reality, and seeing actuality as it is.  An example of seeing behind actuality can be found in a Zen Buddhist koan.  A koan sets a mental challenge in the form of a logical paradox, such as: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”   Meditation on the paradox is meant to rid the mind of its rational veils so it can achieve enlightenment.   But one need not be a Zen monk to startle students out of the automatic pilot many of us operate on most of the time.  However, you might have to trick their slumbering powers into wakefulness by focusing on what is actually there.    

            When I taught in Japan I used the following exercise to get students to look at their usual world differently.  I would ask the students to look around the room and write “what they saw and felt.”  This did not mean to look at a chair and write “chair”.  “Chair” is the name given to a complex experience combining color, shape, past knowledge and use.  Much as a poet does, I wanted them to get their language as close as possible to the actual sensory experience itself.  So, if they see a chair they do not “see” chair, but would, for example, see and feel brown, hard, grey, cold, something to sit on.

            After a few minutes, I would tell them to stop and to share what they wrote with the class.  Inevitably, one of the first students to share would say “blackboard”--kokuban in Japanese.  I would stop the student and ask: “Is it black?”  “No,” he or she would have to admit, because in Japan all the “blackboards” were actually a pale green color.  So I would say: “But I asked you to write what you saw, not the name for what you saw.”  Here and there a light would go on between the temples.  Others would look at me as if I had just landed from Mars.  I used this exercise—which worked every time—not to embarrass anybody, but to demonstrate that often “schooling” is only learning the names of things. However necessary this is, good schooling must go beyond regurgitating learned names and teach students to see a larger reality, to mine their inner gems, to magnetize the talisman with new vibrations, to get off their cozy couches of conditioning.

            Last post I said that faith had two conditions: so, too, does vision.  What we usually describe as vision, seeing behind what is actually there to what is really there, is one experience of vision.  But to really see what is actually there--the hard, pale green writing surface rather than a “blackboard”--is the other form of vision.  The next post is about another spiritual power to mine the gems within, to magnetize the talisman: creativity.