Principles and Goals of Integral Education

VII

Training in the Use of the "Free Progress" System

(A few practical words to the students)

The Mother favoured the "Free Progress" System of education for the outstanding students for the full flowering of all their potential and for the development of their true swadharma, self-nature. But it is not very easy on the part of an untrained average student to utilise the methodology of free progress in the right way. For example, in the Higher Course of SAICE, where the free progress system is in full operation since 1968, it is found that many students fumble in practice in making the proper choice. For, there, an individual student has full freedom to choose (i) the subjects of his study, (ii) the teachers whose active help he would solicit for his studies, and (iii) the way he would like to be taught a particular subject, in a Comprehensive, Major or even in a Minor way. Also, the student has complete freedom to initiate the study of a new subject at any time of the academic session, or even give up the study of a subject with a particular teacher under whom he was studying till then. Now, all these operations the student has to carry out in the "free" way, that is to say, as a psychologically "free" individual and not as someone who acts under the bondage of his passing impulses or extraneous motives. Egoistic desires, whims and idiosyncracies should have no say in the matter. But this is what happens mostly in practice if the student is not previously

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shown what is actually meant by "exercising one's free choice".

But a student may at this point raise the puzzled query: "Am I not already 'free'? Am I not acting all the time in my daily life as a free individual? And if so, what is this queer proposal of training me in freedom?"

If we ask the student at this point: "Will you please give me a few examples of your free actions?" he may perhaps promptly answer: "Well, I took two slices of bread at breakfast this morning. I went to my friend's place this evening and spent half an hour chit-chatting. I saw a film on TV last night. I have taken up Physics as one of my subjects of study and not Chemistry or Biology. I have decided to study German as a foreign language and that with the assistance of, say, Manimala-di and not of the other five available teachers in the Higher Course; etc. Are not these apt examples of free actions of a free individual?"

We are sorry to point out that none of these instances exemplify "free" actions. All of these have arisen out of the conscious, semi-conscious or even subconscious prompting of various factors beyond one's deliberate control. One has acted in most of the cases of one's daily life as the puppet of various urges and impulses beyond one's conscious control. To act freely one has first to "know" oneself and "master" oneself. Without having sufficient training in these two psychological operations, it is vain to expect that one can use the "Free Progress" system in the right and convenient way.

To remove any possible lingering doubt in the mind of the students, let us cite two concrete examples, which, we hope, will make the point unambiguously clear.

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First Example: Let us imagine that on one sultry summer day of May, in the scorching heat of the mid-day sun, a bullock-cart driver is driving his beast of burden along a pitch road of Pondicherry. The famished animal appears to be terribly tired. Saliva is trickling down its muzzle. Tears are flowing from the comers of its eyes. Incapable of drawing the cart fast, the bullock slows down. Being angry and exasperated, the cart-driver gives the animal two hard lashes and it immediately gathers speed and even trots for some time.

Now our question is: Has the beast of burden gathered its speed voluntarily of its own "free" will and deliberate decision? The students will answer, and that too promptly, "Surely not — it is the alien will of the cart-driver which is at the root of the accelerated speed of the bullock." Very good. Now let us go to a second more sophisticated example.

Second Example: Imagine for a moment that a few of us, myself and a number of students have been sitting in a particular classroom and seriously discussing a philosophical topic. Suddenly, a tiny whining boy appears in the room and starts crying at a loud pitch and thereby disturbs our discussion.

I appeal to the tiny tot four or five times to stop crying or to go away from our classroom. But the boy, being a sample of egoistic human consciousness, has already developed a budding personal vanity and self-importance and does not want to tolerate any contradiction coming from any quarter. Its spontaneous tendency is to oppose it. It has developed no psychological freedom to curb this tendency. And I take this fact into consideration and decide to adopt a roundabout

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stratagem to stop the child from crying and disturbing us, by "frying him in his own oil"; that is to say, I seek to utilise one of his own weaknesses as a thorn to take out a second thorn. Let me elucidate.

The boy is still in our room and crying all the time in a loud voice in spite of everybody's repeated appeals to him to stop whining.

Suddenly I take a counter pose and command the tiny tot in a stem voice: "Look fellow, you have to cry very loudly for five long minutes without a moment's respite. Start; start without delay. We won't allow you to go out of this room until you have carried out my order. Start crying, I say, without any further delay."

The boy may get puzzled for a moment but then his self-pride becomes active with redoubled force. In his egoistic blindness, he cannot see through the game I have been playing and vehemently protests: "No, I will not cry; I cannot bear carrying out at anybody else's order. I am free and as a free being I decide to become silent and quit this place." And our purpose is adequately served.

Now the question is: Did the boy stop crying of his own free will, exercising his own free choice? Surely not. He acted as a slave to my will without knowing it at all. And that is precisely our situation all the time during our daily life if we have not learnt how to know and master all our psychological movements. And that exactly is what is needed if a student would like to fulfil his function as a participant in the "Free Progress" classes of SAICE. But how to prepare oneself for this important and interesting task? Let us proceed to the elaboration of this training procedure although

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necessarily in brief.

Man's psychological field is always subject to various psychological factors like urges and influences, desires and tendencies, promptings and drives, half-known or secret, open or camouflaged, and all these coming from inside oneself or from the world environment outside. These various forces combine and jostle together to form a psychological resultant like the polygon of forces in Physics; and the resultant is at the root of man's actions and reactions. So we are all the time just like puppets, although we vainly pride ourselves on our claim to act always as free agents. To become really free, before acting or reacting, or before taking any decision whatsoever in any matter, we have to look within and analyse carefully the nature of this driving resultant. We have to ask ourselves a set of three questions: What? How? and Why? What is the exact character of the resultant that is trying to push me to any particular action or reaction? And, then, how did the resultant arise in me, gain in intensity and seize me in its grasp? Finally, and this is the most crucial question: why did this particular resultant appear in me at this moment to push me inexorably to its active manifestation? In other words, why did I think in this way, or feel in this way now? On analysis, I shall find that my psychological consciousness on the surface will be prompt enough to furnish an explanation which will be pleasant and justifiable so that my action or reaction or decision may seem to myself proper and right. And, as a result, I stick to my decision of the moment and carry it out in practice. But this will not do if I would like to act and react as a genuinely free being and not as a slave to my hidden psychological forces. And for

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that, we have to clearly understand another interesting psychological phenomenon. Let us clarify the point.

To simplify matters, let us point out that an individual human being, a mental creature but inheriting his physical-vital nature and evolutionary animal propensities, is always pulled by two contrary urges: (i) an urge towards pleasures, happinesses and satisfactions of all sorts, a felicific tendency; and (ii) an elan towards the discovery of what is right and good at that moment and in that given situation, a truth-seeking drive. These two types of urges are almost always in conflict and fight to gain control of the dynamic will of the individual, to make him act out the resultant. The Upanishads have declared that the manomayapurusah prana-sa-rira-neta, "mind is the leader of the vital and the physical". But in fact, it is not so. Instead of being the leader, it is most often led by the physical and vital pushes and passions. And as the function of the mind is to justify and give reasons, it seeks to side with the promptings of the body and the vital and rationalise them by all means.

To make our exposition easy and simple and confine it to a reasonably short compass, let us broadly generalise and define "mind" as the truth-seeking faculty of man, and the "vital" as the "pleasure-hunting" factor in the same human being. These definitions are not correct definitions at all and will not apply on all occasions and in every situation but let us ignore that point for the moment and keep to the rough nomenclatures as given above. Let us recapitulate before we proceed further: Mind — the faculty that seeks to know what is right and good and true; Vital — the faculty hunting after pleasures, happinesses and satisfactions. The vital is, by our

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simplistic definition, supposed to be blind and impetuous; whereas the mind is considered to be poised, discriminatory and rational. Now these two faculties in man quite often come into conflict in the affairs of daily life and the dealings of an individual. Man's behaviour and nature and the mode of his actions and reactions are mostly governed and shaped by the outcome of the conflict between these two opposing contenders. And this typifies one's actions and decisions at five different levels of human behaviour. These may be succinctly described as follows:

1.The vital is active and dominant, and the mind is silent and passive. Result: the individual is, in a given situation, completely driven by the psychological resultant and there is no "freedom" at all.

2.Mind tries to wage a semblance of fight and then buckles and allows the vital to go on its wayward track. Man continues to act as a slave.

3.Mind, instead of fighting, justifies the case of the pleasure-seeking vital and the individual smoothly glides downhill. Surely this is not the manner of a "free" man.

4.Mind offers a successful battle and holds its ground and keeps the vital at bay. Result: the individual does indeed what he thinks to be right at that moment but the recalcitrant vital goes on strike and withdraws all the energy and happiness from the being, which is surely not a desirable state.

5.Mind becomes, not only the successful "leader" but the "converter" of the vital, so much so that the latter finds genuine happiness in collaborating with the mind and giving its complete adhesion to all that the "senior brother" decides. And this is what is needed.

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And the student wishing to derive the maximum advantage from the "Free Progress" system of education should train himself assiduously and persistently to come to this fifth stage of his psychological functioning and act as a harmonised homogeneous being at all times and act and react rightly and with illumined deliberation before every event and in all circumstances.

And for that he has to keep a well-defined and well-formulated central goal of life before his eyes at all moments of his daily life. He should not live his life in an ad hoc way like an errant wave on the surface of the sea. And at every moment he should judge with reference to the goal what he should do or not do in a given situation. And this should apply in his academic field also: for example, what subjects should he seek to study and under which teachers and in which way? Should he give up a particular subject at any particular moment of the Academic Session or, perhaps, should he initiate the study of a new subject with the previous teacher himself or with an altogether new teacher? etc. In other words, everything should be done by him as a truly "free" individual as our discussion before has shown and not mechanically in a puppet-like fashion or in the unconsciously manipulated way like the crying child of our analogy before. And if he can do this always and that too sincerely and consistently, he will deserve to be reckoned as a fit member of the Mother's "Free Progress" Classes. Otherwise the unimaginably great amount of freedom granted to him will come to nothing and, in actual practice, he will completely misuse this freedom and continue to act under the goad of his whims and fantasies or under the involuntary constraints

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of all that is in vogue around him.

Here ends our short delineation of the training procedure meant to turn an ordinary average student into one who fully deserves to participate in the framework of the "Free Progress" system as defined by the Mother.

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