The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 9

On Teachers and Teaching

Mastery means to know how to deal with certain vibrations. If you have the knowledge and can deal with the vibrations, you have the mastery. The best field for such an experience and experiment is yourself. First, you must have mastery over yourself and when you have it, you can transmit its vibrations to others in so far as you are capable of identifying yourself with them. But if you cannot deal with the vibrations in yourself, how can you deal with them in others ? You can, by word or by influence, encourage people so that they do what is necessary to master themselves, but you cannot yourself have direct mastery over them.

To master something, a movement, for example, means, by your simple presence, without any word, any explanation, to replace a bad vibration by the true one. By means of the word, by means of explanation and discussion, even a certain emanation of force, you exert an influence upon another, but you do not master the movement. Mastery over a movement is the capacity to set

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against the vibration of the movement a stronger, truer vibration that can stop the other vibration. An example can be easily given.

Two persons are quarrelling in your presence; not only are they quarrelling, they are about to come to blows. Then you approach and explain to them that it is not the thing to do and you give good reasons so that they stop in the end. You exercise an influence over them in this way. But if, on the other hand, you simply stand before them, look at them and send out a vibration of peace and calm and quietness without uttering a word, without any explanation whatsoever, and if as a result the other vibration does not stand but falls off by itself, that is mastery.

It is the same with regard to curing ignorance. If words are necessary to explain a certain thing, then you have not the true knowledge. If I have to speak out all that I mean to say in order to make you understand, then I have not the mastery, simply I exercise an influence upon your intelligence and help you to understand, awaken in you the desire to know, to discipline yourself, etc., etc. But if I am not able, simply by looking at you, without saying anything, to make you enter into the light that will make you understand, well, I have not mastered the state of ignorance.

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Q. The problem of teachers is: how to control the classes, how to bring the students under discipline ?

How can you have control over your students or discipline them unless you have control over yourself ?

Q. But to learn to have control or mastery over oneself would take a whole lifetime !

It is a pity ! But how can you hope otherwise ? When you have an undisciplined, disobedient, insolent student, it means a certain vibration in the atmosphere which is unfortunately very contagious. If you do not have in yourself the contrary vibration, the vibration of discipline, order, humility, calmness, peace that nothing disturbs, how can you hope, I say, to have an influence ? You may tell the student that such a thing should not be done; but the result may be worse or he may mock at you. And if, on top of it, you do not know how to control yourself, but get into a temper, well, you may be done for, you may lose for your whole life all possibility of controlling your students.

Teachers who do not possess perfect calm, endurance

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that can stand all test, tranquillity that nothing shakes, who have not cast off their amour propre are not the kind that can ever succeed. You must be a saint, a hero in order to be a good teacher. You must be a great Yogi to be a good teacher. You must yourself have always the perfect attitude if you demand from your students a perfect attitude. You cannot ask of any person a thing which you cannot do yourself.

So then look within yourself at the difference there is between what is and what should be; that will give you the measure of your lack of success in the class.

Now I would like to add one word, since I have the occasion. We have asked many of our students, when they are grown up and know something, to teach others. There are some, I believe, who know the reason why; but there are others who think that it is because it is good to serve in some way or other, because teachers are needed after all and that we are glad to have them. But I tell you, for it is a fact, I have never asked any of those who were educated here to give lessons unless I saw that that was the best way for them to get self-discipline, to learn what they are to teach, to attain an inner perfection which they would not otherwise than by being teachers

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and having this opportunity, an exceptionally severe one for self-discipline.

They who are successful here as teachers,— I do not mean an external, artificial and superficial success,—they who become truly good teachers, are exactly those who are capable of making an inner progress towards impersonalisa-tion, capable of eliminating their egoism, becoming masters of their movements, possessing insight, comprehension of others and a patience, proof against all test and trial.

If you have passed through that discipline and succeeded, then you will not have wasted your time here. I ask every one who accepts the work of giving lessons to accept it in that spirit. It is all very nice to be obliging to give service, to be useful; it is a very good thing, certainly. But it is only one side, perhaps the most unimportant side of the question. The much greater, more important side is this, that you have been given the Grace so that you may arrive at mastering yourself, at an understanding of your subject and of other persons which you could not have done but for this opportunity. And if you have not profited during all these years that you have been teaching, well, it means you have wasted at least half of your time.

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Q. What about the organisation of studies at the Ashram school ? If the students are given full freedom, as it is supposed you have given them, that is to say, if they are permitted to come to the classes or go away from them as they like or learn or not learn their lessons according to their choice, then how can a system or organisation work?

But when did I say that a student is free to come and go as he likes ? You must not confuse matters. I said and I repeat that if a student feels that a particular subject is foreign to him, if, for example, he has a capacity for literature and poetry and a disgust or even dislike for mathematics, in that case, if the student comes and tells me, "I prefer not to follow the course of mathematics", I cannot answer him, "No, you must absolutely do it". But once a student has decided to follow a class, it is quite an elementary discipline for him to follow the class, to attend it regularly, to behave decently while he is there. Otherwise it is unworthy of him to go to school at all. I have never encouraged people to loiter about during class hours or to come one day and be absent the next day, never, for, to begin with, if you are not able to submit yourself to this very elementary discipline, you will never succeed in

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having the least control over yourself; you will be always the slave of every impulse and fancy of yours.

If you do not want to study a certain line of knowledge, it is all right, you are not obliged to do so. But if you decide to do a thing in life, whatever it is, you must do it honestly, in a disciplined, regular and methodical manner, without giving yourself to fancy. I have never approved that a person should be the plaything of his impulses and caprices. You can never get sanction for that out of me, for you are then no longer a human being but an animal.

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