In the Bahá'í view,
the education required to enrich the human mind and spirit must seek to develop
those essentially moral attributes--including truthfulness, courtesy,
generosity, compassion, justice, love, and trustworthiness--whose reflection in
the everyday lives of human beings can create harmonious, productive families
and communities and make the enjoyment of fundamental rights a reality for all
their members. Such education, moreover, must help to instill in every
individual a keen, emotionally grounded awareness of the fundamental unity of
humankind.
(Baha'i International Community, 1996 Mar 15, United Nations
Decade for Human Rights Education.)
The
last post ended with a discussion of the virtue of sharing as a means of
gaining eternal life, and with the Buddha’s statement that if we knew as much
about sharing as He did we would not let even a meal pass without sharing some
of it. But sharing is not for
rewards. It is not that we can either be
happy here or happy there, because, spiritually, here, (i.e. this world) is the
anteroom of there, (i.e. the spiritual world).
The real goal is for everyone to be happy all the time. Giving does not mean throwing wealth away
mindlessly and indiscriminately in some moral spasm of guilt, but to use personal
and collective wealth wisely to create more wealth and riches for all: that is,
to use inner wealth to create more riches because more riches creates more opportunity
to express wealth for everyone. This is
the sociological version of the principle: Give a man a fish and feed him for a
day. Teach a man to fish and you feed
him for the rest of his life. But it has
this further twist: if you teach him both
to fish and to share his good fortune of knowledge, then he feeds himself and
others for the rest of his life, as you did for him.
Thus
“to be reliant on the unfailing bounty of the Source of all wealth”, as Shoghi
Effendi wrote, does not mean to ask and then sit idly for the manna to fall
from heaven. It means effort and
striving so that the moving ship can be steered towards its proper port, and to
steer others to theirs.
In
the two sentences of Shoghi Effendi’s statement are found all the main
connections linking the interactions between the spiritual and material
dimensions of prosperity. But the
spiritual must be first. As Shoghi
Effendi said: “Laws and institutions, as
viewed by Bahá'u'lláh, can become really effective only when our inner
spiritual life has been perfected and transformed.” (The Compilation of Compilations vol II. 238)
Within
the perspective set by this statement on the secret of right living we can
explore in some depth the questions posed by the House of Justice on what people
need, for they are the key to knowing how to achieve prosperity.
A
proper education means more than learning a body of academic knowledge, or a
set of skills related to gaining employment, or a certain cultural canon of
beliefs and assumptions about Reality.
‘Abdu’l-Baha explains that: “education is of various kinds. There is a
training and development of the physical body which ensures strength and
growth. There is intellectual education or mental training for which schools
and colleges are founded. The third kind of education is that of the spirit.
Through the breaths of the Holy Spirit man is uplifted into the world of
moralities and illumined by the lights of divine bestowals. The moral world is
only attained through the effulgence of the Sun of Reality and the quickening
life of the divine spirit. For this reason the holy Manifestations of God
appear in the human world.” (The
Promulgation of Universal Peace: 329)
A
proper education conforms with and provides forms for the expression of
essential human nature. The basic
content of such a proper education is called “spiritual principles”, which I
talked about in Renewing the Sacred. Spiritual
principles are statements such as, “Love thy neighbor”, and the purpose of such
statements is to train people to appropriate moral and spiritual action. They work because spiritual principles educe
or bring forth moral potentials, called human values, (such as, love, justice,
trustworthiness,) that are innate attributes of the essential human reality,
and give them manifest form, called virtues.
Spiritual
principles not only educe the innate spiritual attributes of the human essence,
but also over time expand their range and power. They recur with every revelation from God,
for continuing to send Revelation is God’s moral relation with humankind and
revelation is progressive. Hence these
attributes are given new application and expression when they are restated in
new form within a new revelation. A
proper education also includes the bringing forth of these virtues in a form
appropriate to the needs of the age in order to transform the human world.
For
example, all religions have the virtue of loving one’s neighbor. In past ages, one’s neighbor was usually
thought of as the members of one’s clan, or tribe, or city, or nation. But, in a globalizing world, the idea of
neighbor must expand to include every human being on the planet. Hence Baha’u’llah says: “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.” (Tablets of Baha’u’llah:87)
Inculcating
spiritual principles in human consciousness so they guide human action is the
foundation and goal of a proper education.
But a proper education also includes the physical and mental training outlined
above. And such training must include
the ways to acquire knowledge, cultivate the powers of intellect and reasoning,
teach practical skills for earning one’s livelihood, nurture the desire for
excellence, and inculcate a dedication to service.
This
last is of the utmost importance for personal prosperity because: “Genuine
wealth is created when work is undertaken not simply as a means of earning a
livelihood but also as a way to contribute to society. We hold that meaningful
work is a basic need of the human soul, as important to the proper development
of the individual as nutritious food, clean water and fresh air are to the
physical body.” (Baha'i
International Community, 1995 Oct, Turning
Point For All Nations)
This
comprehensive approach to education should not go on only within our formal
institutions of learning, but be part of everyone’s daily social and personal
interaction. It must be embodied in the
workings of social institutions, pervade the media, be part of civic
discussion, and preached from pulpits.
Every human interaction can be a laboratory where the efficacy of the
hypothesis that the solution to our economic problem, indeed almost any
problem, comes from identifying and applying spiritual principle can be tested,
refined and tried again.
A
proper education must educe human spiritual nature. The first part of knowing how to live life is
to know who you are. So, let us go to
the first question posed by the House of Justice and ask: Who Are You?
A direct link to purchase my book, Renewing the Sacred: A New
Vision of Education, is:
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