Reality

First, it is incumbent upon all mankind to investigate truth. If such investigation be made, all should agree and be united, for truth or reality is not multiple; it is not divisible.

(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 105)

            The next few posts will present some of the fundamental or first principles of a spiritual education, as I perceive them.  These principles are really concepts of process and interaction, and thus hard to confine within a static definition.  I apologize for their abstractness, which is a product of their being presented in isolation.  But any theory must present its fundamental assumptions up front, must get the structural blueprint out to guide the building and allow others to see what it might look like.  So here goes. 

            Reality is what “really” is and what we all want to know.  Fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon one's ambition I suppose, we can’t know Reality, at least not totally.  Reality, capital “R,” is like the physical universe, which is infinitely large and has been around for an inconceivably long time with no evidence of either one, space or time, becoming less difficult to really comprehend.  Humans are in sort of a: “The more we know the more we know we don’t know” relation with it.  Thus even as we “get” more of it, the horizon of complete understanding recedes from us: one level of complexity opens into another level, and so on, ad infinitum.

            When we investigate the mental and spiritual dimensions we say the same kind of things: Reality is unknowable in its essence, but is manifest in the permanence of an eternally unfolding process.  This "level" of Reality is ‘Reality-in-transformation.”  I mean that anything of Reality that we can know is like a river, because it is in constant movement, flow, change, transformation, and unfoldment.  Like air, we perceive it because it moves; otherwise it is too big and still to notice.  But it is an eternal river so it is also permanent, for what exists in eternity persists in temporality, "though not in the form thou seest today." (Tablets of Baha'u'llah:140)  As an example of this idea, ‘Abdu’l-Baha states: “Each of the divine religions embodies two kinds of ordinances. The first is those which concern spiritual susceptibilities, the development of moral principles and the quickening of the conscience of man. These are essential or fundamental, one and the same in all religions, changeless and eternal -- reality not subject to transformation.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace:106)  The essence of Reality is not subject to transformation, but its qualities are. 

            Now I believe that what is subject to transformation, the progressive unfolding of aspects or qualities of Reality, has, metaphorically, three levels or, better, three expanding contexts: material, intellectual, and spiritual.  This highest level of spiritual is also named the divine or sacred, and for me spiritual, divine and sacred are interchangeable terms.  The spiritual is also called holy, because it is whole.  Thus the spiritual holds the material and mental contexts or levels “within” it.  We can never know the whole of Reality, only Reality as a whole.  A complete education must address these three contexts of “Reality-in-transformation” because each is essential to human knowledge and experience.  Within knowledge, too, the same relation holds between contexts.  That is, great spiritual principles will unite many smaller principles which are unrelated at their own levels, and will, too, unite many seemingly unrelated branches of knowledge, for spiritual principles are the archetype and essence of knowledge. A unified understanding of the universe will unify knowledge about it, for truth does not admit of a multiplicity of beliefs, but reveals the complementarity of them.

            But, in a practical and educational rather than philosophical sense, reality is not what is given, what is “out there” in everlasting transformation  Neither is it solely what is “in here”, our inner world also in continual transformation.  Reality is what is meaningfully constructed by people in the process of engagement with “another” (oneself, others, knowledge, the universe) in order to understand, reconstruct, change and transform their understanding of reality in some way, and to "educe" more Reality.  Each one of us takes, chooses or attracts certain aspects of Reality which we fashion into our reality.  Reality, small “r”, is the resonant harmony achieved when the outer constructed reality of perception and knowledge is an “objective correlative” of an inner perceived reality in the world, so they achieve communication and “dialogue” and mutual influence and enable transformation.  Our human Reality, our divinity or sacredness, is our true and highest consciousness, but all consciousness is by the working of dialogue one holds with oneself, with others, and with the universe, and the steps and stages of any advance in consciousness are captured in words like unveiling, revealing, educing.  The whole purpose of schooling is to manifest the human reality through meaningful experience, i.e. transformative learning and action, the “educing” or bringing forth of self so one may pour forth that self into the world and, in turn, bring forth the world.  Clear as mud?     

            Education is what is brought forth from the human reality into manifestation in the world. This changes the world and allows the world to act upon the human reality.  To educe (i.e. to bring forth oneself and the world) is to manifest what is inside, to transform an inner reality into an objective reality, a potentiality into an actuality, innate knowledge into constructed knowledge, the inmost self into the outer selfhood.  Education is what we manifest of ourselves.  “You are the reality and expression of your deeds and actions.”  (The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 9)

            The next “first” principle concerns the human reality and its transformations.

The Quest for a New Kind of Education

When a divine spiritual illumination becomes manifest in the world of humanity, when divine instruction and guidance appear, then enlightenment follows, a new spirit is realized within, a new power descends, and a new life is given. It is like the birth from the animal kingdom into the kingdom of man.

(The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 305)

            In the quote above ‘Abdu’l-Baha presents the stages of the process by which human consciousness advances via divine direction, the drive propelling what he named “the evolution of spiritual man.”  I suggested in my last two posts that the leap of consciousness from the animal to the human world that ‘Abdu’l-Baha mentions above took place in a mythical “garden” called Eden with Adam naming all things—at least that is the Judeo-Christian telling of the event.  Today, we are back in Eden with another leap of consciousness to accomplish.  This time the leap is from the human to the divine, or, what Thomas Moore in his foreword to John Miller’s Education and the Soul calls, the “shift from mind to soul.” 

            That is, humanity has entered a spiritual Eden, or Eden transformed and spiritualized.  The new Adam, Baha’u’llah, provides the “spiritual illumination” or revelation, which starts our enlightenment, and generates a new spirit and power and life.  We have to make a similar move in education from human to divine.  But the human (i.e. intellectual) education model and its practitioners do not give way easily or happily, because the new reality cannot be seen clearly.  At best, it can be sensed and groped toward.  The mind receives intimations and shadowy outlines of new kinds of thoughts, without knowing their Source.  The new spirit is felt within; new powers are awakened, but lack certain direction.  But forms, which provide that direction, change only slowly.
            I am seeking in these posts to do three things.  First, to understand something of what the Jesuit priest and scientist Teilhard de Chardin called the “science of spiritual energy.” (Building the Earth: 58)  Secondly, I am seeking a spiritual perception of the universe: that is, to see spiritual things and things spiritually.  Thirdly, I want to contribute to the construction of a model of divine education.  I am not alone, of course.  Many are now and have been doing the same thing.  Educator Stanwood Cobb wrote that: “In addition to the material sciences, we shall need to teach the Sciences of Spirit.  What is this Science of Spirit?  That is for future man to ascertain and fervently apply to all life upon this planet.” (Thoughts:55)  The founder of Humanistic Psychology, Maslow, believed that educators: “will finally be forced to try to teach spirituality and transcendence.” (Religion, Values and Peak Experiences:35)

            We need to get beyond material or intellectual reality to the spirituality of things, to explicate the spiritual form of knowledge not its cultural or intellectual forms, to contribute to laying the foundations of a spiritual education, which is to educe and train powers of the spirit, not powers of the body or mind which we largely know how to do.  I have directly discussed some of this in previous posts, such as The Wonderful Heart and The Spiritual Intelligence, and the posts on faith, vision, creativity, and reflection. 

            Spirituality is the great new frontier of knowledge for modern man, the most anxious pursuit of the human spirit right now.  We have come to the end of the intellectualistic/materialistic paradigm of mind, but new horizons of knowledge open up when we discover our limitations.  There is no doubt that to accomplish these lofty goals students will need the benefit of exposure to humanity’s two great knowledge systems of science and religion working together to inform them of the spiritual.  Also, there is no doubt, in my mind, that art must move to center stage as the pedagogy of learning.  It may seem odd to say science is a way to study the spiritual, but as the materialist paradigm of reality falls into increasing disfavor it will be seen as such. In truth, science and religion are not really incompatible, but are, rather, complementary and mutually reinforcing structures of metaphor within a more inclusive perspective.  But a more inclusive perspective means introducing the mind to realities that our education, both scientific and religious, and society do not prepare us to perceive. 

            With evolutionary leaps of consciousness nothing essential is lost of previous contexts.  Gaining spiritual knowledge does not also mean that sensory and intellectual knowledges are lost or forgotten.  Indeed, we can expect their expansion and reinvigoration.  But neither the senses nor intellect can any longer be the leading characteristic of human knowledge and its relation with the creation.  Neither do we throw out material and human education; rather they are incorporated within divine education, for each has contributed to the evolution of spiritual man.  But there must also be a new kind of revolution.  I mean not only a revolution in the etymological sense of revolving back to the origin, which is spirit, to start again, but that this revolution is also a revolving forward by pivoting on a higher turn of the spiral. 

            Writing in revolutionary eighteenth-century America, Thomas Paine stated in his brilliant work, Six Crisis, regarding why American colonists had to find a new model of political governance: “When precedents fail we must return to first principles.”  The same is now true for education.  First principles are not abstract statements heavily draped in complex academic jargon.  Rather, they are simple statements, and it is their very simplicity that makes them profound.  Thus inventor and philosopher Buckminster Fuller remarked that any first principle that could not be understood by a six-year old wasn’t really much of a first principle. 

            Fuller's statement revolves us back to the center and origin of education, to those beatific little six-year old cherubs that show up for their first day of school, eager to learn everything they can about their world and themselves.  And what shall be given them?   If it is divine education built upon the principles of religion, then even before we begin, I suggest we recall the promise and the threat in two of Baha’u’llah’s statements.  First, His stinging indictment of current education: “Man is the supreme Talisman.  Lack of a proper education hath, however, deprived him of that which he doth inherently possess.”  This deprivation must end.  Second, His statement of those qualities that are needed to comprehend divine things: “The understanding of His words and the comprehension of the utterances of the Birds of Heaven are in no wise dependent upon human learning. They depend solely upon purity of heart, chastity of soul and freedom of spirit.” (The Kitab-i-Iqan: 211)  These qualities children bring to school, carrying them in their souls. 

            Next, I suggest that we remember Jesus words spoken two thousand years ago: "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (The Book of Matthew:18:3)  Divine education is not only about converting children into adults, but also about converting adults back into children.  They come ready for divine education.  They are the promise.  Is school and education ready for them?  Are we the real threat to their spiritual well-being?  Do we, wittingly or unwittingly, by active force or passive negligence, deprive them of their “purity of heart, chastity of soul and freedom of spirit”, making it harder for them to comprehend spirit?    

            Perhaps in many places, yes.  But the tide is changing.  First principles are taking strong root.  As I conceive them, I will discuss some of these next.                          

                         

             

           

Three Kinds of Education: Part II: Consuming the Veils of Knowledge

We have consumed this densest of all veils, with the fire of the love of the Beloved -- the veil referred to in the saying: "The most grievous of all veils is the veil of knowledge." Upon its ashes, We have reared the tabernacle of divine knowledge. We have, praise be to God, burned the "veils of glory" with the fire of the beauty of the Best-Beloved.

(Baha'u'llah, The Kitab-i-Iqan, p. 186)

          To summarize part one: ‘Abdu’l-Baha stated that there are three kinds of education: material education, common to animals and human beings alike; human education, which is cultivation of the rational mind, science, civilization and culture; and spiritual or divine education, which is “true education” where we are seen to be made in the image and after the likeness of God, which is the goal of humanity. I have suggested that these three kinds of education are not only three contexts and components of education today, but also successive stages in a history of education driving the “evolution of spiritual man”, and that now humanity is in transition from a human education, based on human learning, to divine education, based upon the revealed Word. But most people are veiled from this. How?
          The chief barrier, the “densest of all veils,” obscuring the need to make a leap of consciousness is that one kind of knowing can block the acquisition of another and higher kind, because the higher reality can not be perceived using modes of knowing that provide proofs of lower order objects of knowledge. That is, what was once an open vista of vision can later turn into an enshrouding veil of knowledge.
          Sensory knowledge is/was adequate to the human condition for a time, but keeping within sensory knowledge itself hinders the development of the rational intellect’s knowledge of abstract realities. Likewise, intellectual knowledge and human education have brought marvelous advances in civilization, but science has distained investigating spiritual reality until just recently because it could not be proved “scientifically”. This is a conceit, for a lack of conclusive scientific proof of existence is not necessarily lack of existence. Thus “the veils of human learning and false imaginings have prevented their eyes from beholding the splendour of the light of His countenance.” (The Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh p. 240-241.) Intellectual knowledge is not the greatest knowledge and not the end of knowing, for it does not give the reality of knowledge, only images and semblances of it. What happens?
          When human learning obstructs spiritual understanding then science and art, the organized perceptions of the innate powers of discovery and invention, are cut off from their Source of Life, becoming a body without a soul, so to speak. Then the world of knowledge and understanding becomes materialistic, secular and humanistic. In such a case religious conviction and spirituality are replaced by a secular rationalism and its strict devotion to the empirical, with the self as god and science as king.
          And if science is king, then art is queen in a secular world. Religion and spirit may find a place in artistic expression, but only within the imaginative parts of culture. There they feed the imagination by providing themes for art, connecting the mind not to faith but to the fabulous, because the connection is not to an objective world of spiritual realities but to the subjective world of dreams, desires and fantasies. These are sometimes taken to be spiritual, but they stem from the wrong kind of understanding of spirituality, one of spectral will-o-the-wisps which stir up a froth of blurred enthusiasms. It is of such notions of spirituality that ‘Abdul’-Baha warns: “Know, O thou possessors of insight, that true spirituality is like unto a lake of clear water which reflects the divine education. Of such was the spirituality of Jesus Christ. There is another kind which is like a mirage, seeming to be spiritual when it is not.” (‘Abdu’l-Bahá in London p.107)
          When spirituality is perceived as only part of culture, rather than its source, humans also lose their moral grounding and purpose, because they lose touch with the Sacred. Ethics and morals quickly degenerate either into iron principles of behaviour that an educated class uses to govern the herd, or are relativized into situation ethics or subordinated to the aesthetic sense with its imaginative drive. In the purely imaginative there is a substituting of utopia for religion’s end of days.
          But religion is not dogmatic rules, imaginative stories, practical ethics, or even eschatological beliefs. It is neither a conceptual nor an imaginative construction. Rather, it is our mystical connection with the Creator with its own ways of knowing, because human consciousness is rooted in a powerful sense of the Sacred. (I will discuss this dimension in coming posts.)
          Recognition of spiritual reality can not be accomplished through any amount of human learning, any more than “seeing” an abstract mathematical truth can be done by the senses. To understand the Divine Word requires conditions of perception other than the senses, and more than logical reasoning or intuitive insight. For divine truths can not be sensed. Neither can they be induced or deduced. They are not invented, but revealed. Revealed truth can only be recognized if certain inner conditions are in place,because true spiritual perception and understanding is not a higher degree of intellectual intelligence, but, rather, a fundamentally different condition of consciousness.  What are the conditions of spiritual perception?
          Bahá’u’lláh writes that: “The understanding of His words and the comprehension of the utterances of the Birds of Heaven are in no wise dependent upon human learning. They depend solely upon purity of heart, chastity of soul and freedom of spirit.” (The Kitab-i-Iqan: 211) These qualities of “purity of heart, chastity of soul and freedom of spirit” are the conditions of spiritual knowing. No other conditions are listed. No other preparations are required. Not only does one not need academic, artistic, scientific, philosophic or religious training to comprehend spiritual truth, but such training, valuable as these are in themselves, often prevents it. “Call thou to remembrance Him Who was the Spirit, Who, when He came, the most learned of His age pronounced judgment against Him in His own country, whilst he who was only a fisherman believed in Him. Take heed, then, ye men of understanding.” (Summons of the Lord of Hosts: 56)
          But with the added tools of intellectual learning the condition is light upon light. As the Master put it: “If, then, the pursuit of knowledge lead to the beauty of Him Who is the Object of all Knowledge, how excellent that goal; but if not, a mere drop will perhaps shut a man off from flooding grace, for with learning cometh arrogance and pride, and it bringeth on error and indifference to God.
          The sciences of today are bridges to reality; if then they lead not to reality, naught remains but fruitless illusion. By the one true God! If learning be not a means of access to Him, the Most Manifest, it is nothing but evident loss.” (Selections from the Writings of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá:110)
          Part three of this discussion is my next post.

Three Kinds of Education-Part I

Briefly, there were many universal cycles preceding this one in which we are living. They were consummated, completed and their traces obliterated. The divine and creative purpose in them was the evolution of spiritual man, just as it is in this cycle. The circle of existence is the same circle; it returns. The tree of life has ever borne the same heavenly fruit.

(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 220)

            Northrop Frye reminds us that: “The theory of education, like other theories, should be based on the whole of its practice.” (On Education:29)  What is the whole of the practice of education?   It has grown in complexity over the centuries as more human powers have become manifest.  At the same time it has become simpler.  Let’s see how.

            ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote that: “Education is of three kinds: material, human and spiritual. Material education is concerned with the progress and development of the body, through gaining its sustenance, its material comfort and ease. This education is common to animals and man.

            Human education signifies civilization and progress -- that is to say, government, administration, charitable works, trades, arts and handicrafts, sciences, great inventions and discoveries and elaborate institutions, which are the activities essential to man as distinguished from the animal.

            Divine education is that of the Kingdom of God: it consists in acquiring divine perfections, and this is true education; for in this state man becomes the focus of divine blessings, the manifestation of the words, 'Let Us make man in Our image, and after Our likeness.'  This is the goal of the world of humanity." (Some Answered Questions:8)

            Divine education may be “true education”, but a theory of complete education today must include the material, human and divine as aspects of the totality.  Historically, these are enlarging contexts of understanding, with the divine being inclusive of the other two.  Yet, whatever its form and content, education has always been, as ‘Abdu’l-Baha mentions, about “the evolution of spiritual man” toward the goal of divine education.  It is similar to the growth of the fetus in the womb. Namely, that whatever its appearance at any particular stage, the purpose of the fetus is to pass through all conditions until it arrives at the human form.

            Today, at human maturity, educating the spiritual powers moves to the forefront of education, while the mental powers, which were the primary focus of education for past millennia, recede in importance.  I freely admit that in many countries secular, intellectual education does a very adequate job in the first two kinds of education, but in regards to divine education what happens?  ‘Abdu’l-Baha identifies the problem: “For the teachers of this world make use of human education to develop the powers, whether spiritual or material, of humankind…” (Compilation of Baha’i Education p.26 #68.)        

            Human education teaches about building a human environment out of Nature: about civilization—culture, art and science, law and government—those forms of rational thought and action which when taken together compose what Bahá’u’lláh calls “human learning.”  Human education develops the intellect, certainly one of our innate endowments.  But the intellect, unless aided by the spiritual only apprehends general ideas and things intelligible and perceptible.  Beginning with Adam naming things in the Garden, an eponymous “event” propelling humanity out of material education into human education, intellectual education has, over the past six millennia, passed through many stages, some of these I have discussed, notably mythical, language and numbers.  But, Abdu'l-Baha, notes: “The outcome of this intellectual endowment is science, which is especially characteristic of man.” (The Promulgation of Universal Peace: 29)

            To use human education and its forms of mental and scientific training to instruct students in spiritual realities, though, is analogous to using only the physical senses to educate and inform about intellectual ones; that is, in ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s terminology, using material education and its sensory modalities of knowing to develop the intellectual powers of abstract and instrumental reasoning.  This can only ever be partially successful, because, though the mind is connected with the senses, intellectual understanding is of another order, larger and more penetrating, than sensory knowing.  The mind penetrates behind the flux of appearances apprehended by the senses to grasp their inner relations.  Further, there can be no proof of the existence of intellectual or abstract objects using only sense data, only intimations of the existence of these invisible forms.  The proof of intellectual objects is by reasoning to logical conclusions.  When abstract realities are imprisoned within sensory impressions this distorts intellectual understanding, like using a two-dimensional map to comprehend the three-dimensional earth. 

            Finally, intellectual truth often overthrows what is obvious to the senses.  For example, to the naked eye the sun moves and the earth is stationary.  The intellect knows better–though it took several hundred years to figure out and prove the correct relation.  The senses, then, are, despite the influence of the theories of John Locke, signs and powers of the mind, not its essence and containing forms.
            Likewise, spiritual knowledge is another kind of knowledge than is intellectual knowledge and intellectual means of knowing can never prove the existence of spiritual realities, only mental ones.  Spiritual knowledge is knowledge of what ‘Abdu’l-Bahá calls “things-in-themselves”–and spiritual understanding is another order of knowing, though we use the intellectual powers to convey and help grasp it.  The mental powers are instruments and powers of spirit, branches of knowing, not the Root.  As the senses point to mind, so the mental powers point beyond themselves to something greater. 

                When we take the rational intellect to be the greatest instrument for knowing, and logical cognition as the highest form of knowing, then human learning becomes a veil to spiritual realities, closing the intelligence off from yet higher forms of knowing, even, when the veil becomes too dense and enshrouding, denying their existence.  Thus Bahá’u’lláh warns: “Beware lest human learning debar thee from Him Who is the Supreme Object of all knowledge, or lest the world deter thee from the One who created it and set it upon its course.  Tear asunder the veils of human learning lest they hinder thee from Him Who is My Name, the Self-Subsisting.” (Summons of the Lord of Hosts: 56.)  In another place He wrote: “Myriads of holy verses have descended from the heaven of might and grace, yet no one hath turned thereunto, nor ceased to cling to those words of men, not one letter of which they that have spoken them comprehend. For this reason the people have doubted incontestable truths, such as these, and caused themselves to be deprived of the Ridván of divine knowledge, and the eternal meads of celestial wisdom." (Kitáb-i-Íqán: 257)
                I will take up this discussion in the next post.
           

Transformation and Reformation

A new life is, in this age, stirring within all the peoples of the earth; and yet none hath discovered its cause, or perceived its motive.

(Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 195)

           

            The next few posts will consider education within the context of some larger questions, because education never goes on in a vacuum, but is embedded within a complex of social conditions.  Education usually works to maintain and support those conditions.  Less often it works to change them.  But I want to consider another question to establish context of another sort.   The question is: What does education do when spiritual conditions change?  

            If, as the Bahá’í Writings assert, the world’s equilibrium has been upset by a new revelation from God, and if, as those same Writings claim, the purpose of Revelation is to transform the inner and outer aspects of humanity, then it seems logical to believe that any educational system established either before that great transformation commenced, or in ignorance of it, will be unable to give to students something essential for their understanding the new spiritual world they are living in.  There have been two basic responses to this upset of equilibrium, each depending upon a certain sense of what is going on.  These can be roughly formulated as the difference between reformation and transformation. 

            In a previous post (Bringing the Future into the Present) I discussed the difference between creativity and innovation.  All innovations are creations, but not all creations are innovations.  Creativity is the bringing forth of any novelty, like building a mousetrap, innovation brings forth a new development in an established process, like building a better mousetrap.  Though innovations work to advance a process, the only goal of such advance is toward the end of that process.  All material processes follow the law of diminishing returns.  That means that over time it takes more to accomplish less.  Thus innovations tend to accelerate a process towards its final end.  They function, one might say, as a new carburetor does in an old engine, where the greater efficiency of the new part upsets the greater inefficiency of the older parts, sometimes accelerating their failure.  When significant innovations are no longer possible, only new creation is left.  A transformation in perception is needed. 

            Reformation is like innovation, though it is a bit more complex, because we are dealing with social processes and not mechanical ones.  Reformation is a response to perceived spiritual or social stagnation, either to develop potentials or to fix problems.  But reformation, unlike innovation, is also often undertaken with an eye toward restoration of a golden age, to purify corruption, to return to times when things were better, at least, simpler and more manageable.  But reformation does not challenge fundamental assumptions about reality.  The movement known as the Christian Reformation under Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and others of a few centuries ago, created this kind of disequilibrium within the Christian church, though it did not fundamentally alter the Christian world view.  Science did more of that.  “Back to basics” theories are an example of the return element of reformation in education, but moral education as an innovative addition to the established school curriculum is an example of its acceleration toward decline.  They are like the new carburetor.  Both work, though, to accelerate the disintegration of established education. 

            Reformation creates disequilibrium without creating a new equilibrium; rather it seeks to reestablish the old equilibrium, though with some tweaking. Oddly, it is an attempt to do the impossible: to return to the past by invoking the future only to end up reforming things as they are; rather like trying to advance one's understanding by using a circular argument.  Reformation does not grow into a new form, but grows into another example of the existing order of things.  At best it only contributes to a process which historians call cultural aging, the final stages of which are characterized by exhaustion, senility and death, for the creative drive within that tradition of experience is used up. 

            In such times we begin to see books with titles announcing the end of this or that: The End of Education, The End of History, and the like.  Real change only occurs through a thunderous orgy of violence.  Rather, the possibilities for change are set-up by this violent reaction to things as they are, as people feel imprisoned in time with the warden “tradition” anxiously guarding the walls.  Yet, such violence readies the mind for a transformation in perception.

            At that point humanity, or some portion of it, has reached the condition described by Baha’u’llah: “The civilization, so often vaunted by the learned exponents of arts and sciences, will, if allowed to overleap the bounds of moderation, bring great evil upon men. Thus warneth you He Who is the All-Knowing. If carried to excess, civilization will prove as prolific a source of evil as it had been of goodness when kept within the restraints of moderation. Meditate on this, O people, and be not of them that wander distraught in the wilderness of error. The day is approaching when its flame will devour the cities…”

            Transformation does this resetting of things on a new basis.  It looks to make things new.  Transformation starts, like all true creation, in a new state of mind.  It does not work, first, toward that new state as reformation does, or thinks that it does—a crucial point.  Transformation works toward the future only as a second movement.  I mean that transformation begins not with the present but in the future, not with knowledge, but in vision.  The transformational process starts in a new spiritual condition and works backwards to the existing present, so that it can then reverse direction and organically move toward the future. The process is this double-linking, spiritually and organically, of different worlds.  Transformation can grow into a new form because the new form is spiritually there in vision to grow into as a template of organic growth.  All transformation begins as a new creation, as something novel enough in human experience or cultural experience that it could not have been logically connected beforehand, only afterwards.  That is where Revelation comes in, because it provides not only a new vision of possibility, but of new kinds of possibility, and also infuses the soul with the energies to pursue and attain them, and a plan to get there.    

            Education seems in continual reformation in order to give what good it can from the existing set-up.  But education NEEDS transformation, in order to give what the established system in any form cannot, but which children require in this new day.  The key point is that no amount of reformation brings about a transformation, because what is needed is a vision of new kinds of possibility, not just new possibilities within an existing perceptual order.  The problem is that new kinds of possibilities can not be seen by those within the old mind set.  So they dismiss them as some kind of pipe dream.

            Northrop Frye wrote” “Every breakthrough in education is a breakthrough in vision.” (On Education:13)  But the opposite is also true, namely, every breakthrough in vision should also be a breakthrough in education. But the breakthrough is not accomplished by those working within the system.  Developing a “new education” is the work of those at the margins of the educational establishment, with the spiritual pioneers. Christopher Dawson in his book, The Crisis in Western Education, wrote: “Indeed, every advance in education has been prepared by a preliminary period in which the pioneers work outside the recognized academic circles.” (p.155-156)  I’ll explore this theme in more detail in the next posts.       

           

           

           

Structures of Metaphor: The Symbolic Dimension

To harmonize the whole is the task of art.

(Kandinsky: Concerning the Spiritual in Art: 3)

            A wise mentor once told me, “Don’t think about how to teach, remember how kids learn.”  When we think about this statement, the thought gradually dawns that many so-called learning disabilities are actually teaching disabilities.  The great psychologist Piaget believed: ‘There are no difficult subjects, only subjects taught in a difficult manner.”  I am not trying to beat up on teachers.  By and large they are the most overworked, underpaid and underappreciated workers on the planet.  But we do have to get a clear grasp of how kids learn in order to know how to teach them.  The best way, I believe, is through art.  But by art, I mean not a special skill to learn.  That is the learning of art technique.  I mean art as the Balinese are reputed to have said to some anthropologist: “We have no art.  We do everything as well as we can.” 

            Recent posts have discussed the tool subjects of language and mathematics.  Tool subjects are necessary to learn other subjects.  Art is also a tool subject, but as process of learning.  I mean that the artistic process is tool subject not just for other subjects, but for the Subject.  The gods may have given us words and numbers, but we are born artists and art, too, has its divine connection.  “All art,” writes ‘Abdu’l-Baha, ‘is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  When the light shines through the mind of a musician, it manifests itself in beautiful harmonies.  Again, shining through the mind of a poet, it is seen in fine poetry and poetic prose.  When the Light of the Sun of Truth inspires the mind of a painter, he produces marvelous pictures.  These gifts are fulfilling their highest purpose, when showing forth the praise of God.” (The Chosen Highway:167) 

            The tool subjects of language and math evolve into the two main knowledge systems of religion and science.  But science and religion as systems of knowledge and modalities of knowing are complemented by a third power, art.  Art is not system.  Art is the supreme expression of the symbolic and creative powers of the human spirit.  Science is systematic investigation of the outer world.  It is knowledge of the natural world.  Religion is knowledge of the inner world.  As revelation it is divine or revealed knowledge.  Art is their creative middle.  Art is what we say about ourselves.  It is human knowledge.  Artistic creation is itself the engaged cognitive process. The human process follows the model of the Supreme Artist: “O Son of Man.  Veiled in My immemorial being and in the ancient eternity of My essence, I knew My love for thee, therefore, I created thee, have engraved on thee Mine image and revealed to thee My beauty.”  Love is the fundamental substance of the universe.  Knowledge creates infinite forms from this substance.  The Artist engraves His own image in his work--that is, His work is itself His signature--so we may recognize Him, and reveals His beauty, which is the manifested form of His image, to all creation, so we may know who we are.

            The nature vs. nurture debate is a fuss and feathers controversy, of course, for every nature builds an environment to nurture its further development.  Education is the bringing forth of what is already there, but what is there grows within this form until it ultimately bursts the boundaries of what has been created to bring it forth, and then the process starts again on a higher turn of the spiral.  Our human environment is art.  It is how we nurture ourselves within culture and civilization.

            Art also generates and unifies knowledge.  “The third Tajalli is concerning arts, crafts and sciences. Knowledge is as wings to man's life, and a ladder for his ascent. Its acquisition is incumbent upon everyone.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah, p. 51) 

            Knowledge, whether religious, scientific or artistic, is structures of metaphor, and their internal form and workings is correlated with what is outside them to produce the symbol, which comes from the Greek sýmbolon, meaning ‘to throw together.”  When humanity separated itself in consciousness from Nature, symbols were invented as a bridge back to nature, but also as a scaffolding to reach unto heaven, the inner world of himself.  His symbols to accomplish this were given humanity by the Great Luminaries of the Spirit, and this process continues.  Symbols link together the spiritual with the material, natural with supernatural. 

            Symbols generated in one structure of knowledge can also be used to make discoveries in the other knowledge structure or in the world.  The architecture of human knowledge is transformation at work, is building the outer supports and enhancements of what is internal to the human spirit, as the light reflecting from the mirror amplifies the general illumination of the sun and enhances its brilliance.  When they are vital, the arts, whether the fine arts, the performing arts or collective arts such as festivals and ceremonials, are signs of an unfolding and corresponding inner attitude.  This attitude is both individual, reflecting the personal vision of the artists, and collective, emblematic of the spirit of the age.  In a famous phrase, the poet T.S. Eliot called such things “objective correlatives.”  These objective forms are symbolic forms, intellectual constructs, and they have their effect.  In his wonderful little book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, the Russian painter Kandinsky writes: “And so we come to the second main result of looking at colors: their psychic effect.  They produce a corresponding spiritual vibration, and it is only as a step towards this spiritual vibration that the elementary physical impression is of importance.” (Kandinsky: 24)  Further he writes that: “art is not vague production, transitory and isolated, but a power which must be directed to the improvement and refinement of the human soul.” (Kandinsky: 54)   Arts, or the symbolic dimension organizing and encoding perceptions of reality, must correctly coordinate human potentials with actuality so the soul may improve and be refined.  This is similar to the Great Learning of Confucian educational theory that I discussed previously.  (Ancient East and Modern West)  New symbols of humanity’s unity to be created by the arts will ennoble and unify human vision, not just reflect current, fragmented vision.  

            The arts will not move to the center of human civilization until they move to the center of the educational curriculum and pedagogy.  That is where they are headed, and:  “Literature, music and art are the first and most sensitive spheres in which this spiritual revolution makes itself felt.” (Concerning the Spiritual in Art:14)                                    

Playin' the Numbers

Mathematical number contains in its very essence the notion of a mechanical demarcation, number being in that respect akin to word, which, in the very fact of its comprising and denoting, fences off world-impressions….So also numbers are something that mark off and capture nature-impressions, and it is by means of names and numbers that the human understanding obtains power over the world.  In that last analysis, the number-language of a mathematic and the grammar of a tongue are structurally alike. (Oswald Spengler: The Decline of the West: Vol. 1: 56-57.

            There are two ways to “read” the creation, verbally and digitally.  Traditional Christian theology believed the spiritual and material worlds were in correspondence.  Their metaphor was the analogical union of two Books, the verbum scriptum (which was revealed scripture) and the verbum factum, the Book of Nature.  Adam’s naming of things in Eden is a story of the birth of intellectual knowledge within humanity.  Those same names are written by science in mathematical notation, and indeed all forms of Numerology are systems of this sort.  I am not advocating for Numerology to be on the agenda of the next curriculum development meeting, I am simply pointing out the fact that letters and numbers are, as Spengler states, “structurally alike”, and that each letter and word has its numerical value, as any Scrabble player can tell you.

            For Alfred North Whitehead, “mathematics is concerned with certain forms of process issuing into forms which are components of further process…” a process rather than a structural definition of mathematics, perhaps only meaningful to other mathematicians in that form.  However, if one wanders into the backyard and starts measuring what one finds there, you begin to see what he means.  If you take the mathematician, Fibonacci, out with you he will explain how the simple recursion of the numbers that bear his name appear in such examples as the branching in trees, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, the fruit spouts of a pineapple, the flowering of an artichoke, an uncurling fern and the arrangement of a pine cone.   

            Then, if one looks even more closely at that pine cone, or into the sky, Benoit Mandelbrot will tell you that you are actually looking at examples of fractal geometry.  A fractal is a geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole.  This property, called self-similarity, operates by a mathematical equation that undergoes iteration, a form of feedback based on recursion.  Because they appear similar at all levels of magnification, fractals are often considered to be infinitely complex.  Natural objects that are fractals include clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines, snow flakes, various vegetables (cauliflower and broccoli), and animal coloration patterns.  A fractal says, metaphorically, that all things, being forms of light, are holograms, and, like holograms, you can split them into an infinite number of pieces and the original shape will remain, at least in fuzzy, mathematical outline, in each piece.

            When ‘Abdu’l-Baha explains that: “All beings, whether large or small, were created perfect and complete from the first, but their perfections appear in them by degrees. The organization of God is one: the evolution of existence is one: the divine system is one,” (Baha'i World Faith: 312)  He is not just speaking philosophically of essences and attributes, He is also speaking of words and numbers, words revealing the essence and numbers the appearance of perfections by degrees: structure and process, and the divine iteration of the cosmos.  The American philosopher, Emerson, described the same relation within knowledge as “the proportionate unfolding of the intuition.”    

            I discussed in previous posts how words and letters are runes written upon the world.  The right name releases the power of the thing.  The right number, science calls it its atomic number, puts that release into proper relation with other things.  Learning these two great incantations of human intelligence occurs in the first five years of life.  Words have the resonant power of metaphor that enables multi-variant poetic awareness to develop.  Numbers provide the power of precision to permit exact quantified knowledge of discrete material things and the ratios of their fitting into each other.

            Where does all this “number-ology” start and what are the sources of its development?  As with all “elementary” learning, there is a metaphysical and a physical origin, an inner origin of innate awareness and a manifest start in the visible world; there is the structure of it and the process of its organic unfolding. 

            Organically, numbers start with a vague sense of difference.  The number sense is not the ability to count, but the awareness that some quantity has changed in a small collection. Some animal species are capable of this, as when a mother bird “knows” when one of her young is missing though she can not count them.  It is the number ability that can precisely measure these quantified changes.  The number sense is innate, the number ability is educed by the teaching of mathematics.  Number sense and ability have, too, early associations with music and its distinct and regular vibratory differences of tones, notes, and harmonic scaling, and with astronomy which follows the music of the spheres. The living world is built upon the Pythagorean numbers. So in learning numbers children are not just learning how to count things, but learning how things organically unfold from within.  Pythagoras also “claimed to have heard the whispering sound of the heavens.” (Tablets of Baha'u'llah: 144)   

            Like words, numbers were, first, the essence of things, and the priest classes of ancient civilizations, such as Babylon, used mathematics in their religious rituals and to chart the heavens.  Numerology, the early systematizing of numbers, claimed—and still claims--to know how numbers add up for human destiny, and how numbers mesh to predict events.  Many think Numerology is a lot of hokum, and in that form it may be.  Yet religion has based many prophecies on some magical affinity of numbers, and certain numbers, such as 360, 72, 40, and 9, are of great symbolic and, often, actual importance.  Scientifically, atomic number is the basis of chemistry and physics and changes in number sense create revolutions in perception and technology.  Quantum numbers continue to redefine the basics of many sciences and to fuel the technological revolution.

            For Greeks of Plato’s time numbers were the geometry of things. Some traditions say that over the doorway of his Academy Plato had written: “Let none enter who are ignorant of geometry.”  Arabic numerals really came from India, and Indian thinkers first came up with the idea of zero. Algebra is the way we connect our ideas about geometry with our ideas about numbers. The word Algebra is derived from the Arabic word Al-Jabr, and this comes from the treatise written in 820 by the Muslim mathematician Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī. 

            The two main tool subjects of language and mathematics are most important to know not just in themselves, but also because the two main knowledge systems of humanity are religion, based on the Word, and science, based on number.  (See: Number: The Language of Science by Tobias Dantzig)  The Baha’i Teachings assert that “science and religion, the two most potent forces in human life, will be reconciled, will cooperate, and will harmoniously develop.” (The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh: 206)   Reconciliation, cooperation, and harmonious development between science and religion is possible because, like words and numbers, religion and science are, as Spengler says, “structurally alike.”  That phrase has two large implications.  First, it implies that science and religion are fractals, each a “reduced-size copy of the whole”, the whole being, for me, Revelation.  Secondly, “structurally alike” is another way of saying self-similarity, which is another term for holographic.  It is also the mathematical principle, if A=B, and B=C, then A=C, which is the structure of metaphor and analogy.  I will explore that topic in the next post. 

            For now, if you need a math lesson go count butterflies.  And take Plato,  al-Khwārizmī, Fibonacci, Whitehead, and Mandelbrot with you for the older kids.