Culture and Social Issues

Schools without walls

Interview of the journalist Patricia Pitchon with Benjamin Creme's Master

On 21 December 1990 Mr Benjamin Creme’s Master kindly agreed to offer his views on the educational crisis which, in a variety of ways, is affecting many countries around the world today.

PP: In many cities around the world, education is in crisis. Particularly in the West, the authority of both teachers and parents seems to be declining and the problem of discipline in the classroom is a major one. What, in your view, are the causes and what are the remedies?

The Master: The problem is not one of discipline. It is a question of freedom and a new sense of the validity of the child: his need and right for self-expression. Each child — at whatever level — comes into the world with his or her own set of purposes. A main one is to learn to live in peace and harmony with all others and in right relationship with his own environment.The possibility for this to take place is very rare. So great are the inequalities of opportunity and educational standards that few find themselves in a situation where their true worth and needs can be respected and served.

The world today is saturated with a new spiritual energy, the energy of equilibrium, focused by Maitreya. It drives everyone in two directions: inwards to his source, which gives a person an added and often powerful sense of himself as a unique individual, and also outwards to society, where he seeks to stake his claim. The problem of discipline is connected with this crisis in the psychology of the child, and with the need to recognize all young people as unique sons of God evolving towards the manifestation of that Sonship.

All educational establishments today without exception are in a state of transition, some more, some less. It will take a considerable time for the necessary adjustments in educational theory and practice to take place before the problem of discipline can be solved.

The young everywhere need and are demanding their freedom and the right to be treated not as subservient imbibers of predigested knowledge but as adventurers seeking the answers to their questions and the fulfilment of their dreams.

PP: In Japan there is an intensely competitive atmosphere in education. Children in Japanese society study long hours, and many go to extra classes after school returning home quite late to do their homework. What is your view of this trend?

The Master: This problem is not confined to Japan but has reached its acme there. As a result of the commercialization of learning, vast numbers of children are being subjected to these injurious conditions. The results will show as the present generation reaches maturity.

However, people everywhere are amazingly resilient and quickly replenish their reserves when invited to do so. This will happen in Japan in the not too distant future and increasingly elsewhere.

A new dimension — the dimension of the soul — will become more and more accepted as the basis for the child’s need. When this has become the case each child will be seen as an evolving soul moving towards the fulfilment of his or her potential for this given life.

The new science, the psychology of the soul, will be the basis of all future educational efforts and will transform life for both the child and the teacher. Schools and colleges will lose their institutional aspects and integrate more and more with the society in which the child is found. A closer relationship, therefore, between school and work will become the norm, and open the way for “schools without walls”.

PP: Recently an article on education in The Independent, a London newspaper, described the creation of several unusual schools in Harlem, a well-known black neighbourhood in New York. One is a marine science school, another emphasises the arts, a third has a strong business orientation, and so on. The academic results of children emerging from such schools have soared, which seems to prove that, even in neighbourhoods riddled with severe social problems, the creative potential of many children is there to be tapped. Are these schools the beginning of experiments in the direction you are describing?

The Master: Yes. These are the first signs of the new awareness of multiple experience, wide-ranging action and interests, rather than the narrow specialization predominant at present. Each child brings to life the sum of his or her many achievements in the past, and much is lost to the world of talent and gifts when the opportunity for their expression goes unprovided. Out of these many experiments much will be learned of the true needs and inner capacities of the child, which today are severely underrated. This is the source of much of the ‘indiscipline’ and lawnessness which abounds.

PP: Do you mean, by this, that education will become individually tailored?

The Master: Precisely. Each child is unique and the education must reflect that individual need. With the new science will come an understanding of the Rays*. When the individual rays of children are known, their gifts and limitations can be better assessed. The role of the teacher, therefore, will change profoundly. Each teacher will become a mentor.

PP: In parts of the West, consensus between families, schools and governments has broken down. How should this consensus be reestablished?

The Master: In my eyes, there never was such a consensus.

PP: Education has always been taken seriously in Eastern Europe, but how will schools adapt to a waning of ideological content? Will an exacerbated nationalism or, in some cases, a religious content replace political ideology?

The Master: The nations are evolving at different rates and inevitably the changing structures of schools and educational theory will vary. The loss of an ideological basis should not be seen as a calamity.

On the contrary, it provides a new sense of freedom to the unconditioned mind of the child. This is a healthy and wholesome process. It is not ideology or religion but the imposition of these conditioning factors which brings harm to the expanding mind of the child.

PP: What can India do, via education, to lessen strife due to religious and caste differences?

The Master: Education is the answer to India’s problems, as it is throughout the world. The difficulty for the Indian subcontinent is the problem of implementation. No one denies the need, but the problems of educating 800 million people steeped in superstition, caste envy and hatred have until now baffled all governmental efforts.

India, together with many other countries, requires the concerted aid of the developed world to ease this immense burden. Once tackled in depth, there will grow in India a new awareness of the stranglehold which ancient religious and social taboos have had throughout the centuries.

A start is being made and great teachers like Sri Sathya Sai Baba are initiating new and far-reaching procedures to this end. It will take time. The roots of superstition, separation and greed are deep, but a new time is coming for India as for all the world.

PP: What, in your view, are the immediate aims of education? What are the first steps in laying a more appropriate foundation?

The Master: The first step is to accept the autonomy of the child. Each child requires education, otherwise he cannot fulfil his potential. However, that education must fit him as you would require a pair of shoes to do, and as the shoes become outgrown and must be changed, so too must the educational structures, outlook, curriculae and concepts respond to the child’s changing needs.

Basically there are two educational structures in many countries: one for a small élite, preparing them for the higher echelons of influence and power, and another for a broadly based, egalitarian rump which is equipped for the lesser posts in industry and other fields.

Each has advantages and disadvantages, but takes no account of the variety of gifts and levels of evolution to be found among children everywhere. The truly gifted child must find the environment to fulfil his gifts. This is relatively rare today. The broad mass of children produce a less sustained level of achievement but must feel that all resources are at their disposal.

It is of course true that the truly gifted child will achieve eventually under most conditions, but much valuable time is lost for many, for want of the necessary stimulus at high level. This is an essential requirement if the needs of the new time are to be met.

* Note from PP about the "rays": According to the Masters, seven types of energy sweep through our solar system; they affect every atom within it and are referred to as the Seven Rays. Man, considered as a personality with physical, emotional and mental bodies, and as a soul, responds to, and is coloured by, a particular combination of these rays, depending on the individual concerned. At each level (physical, emotional, mental, personality and soul) a particular ray predominates, and the effects are expressed via particular strengths and weaknesses.

For further information about the rays see the chapter “The Seven Rays“ in Benjamin Creme's books "Maitreya's Mission Vol. One " and "Maitreya's Mission Vol. Two"
Source: Benjamin Creme, Maitreya's Mission Vol. Two, Pages 174 - 178

Life in the New Age

Maitreya's Forecasts

In April 1988, a close associate of Maitreya, long established in London’s Asian community, contacted freelance journalist Patricia Pitchon. He started a series of briefings in which he presented some of Maitreya’s teachings and forecasts of world events with the view that they be published through Share International and made available to the world’s press. Later, Maitreya’s associate also made contact with another journalist who received additional information. Maitreya gives His teachings orally, and His associate conveys them to the journalists.

As regular readers will know, each article may cover a wide variety of topics ---- from a flood in Bangladesh to a lesson in Self-realization. Many of these topics recur again and again, each time adding some new information from Maitreya. For the sake of clarity, therefore, we have edited the excerpts presented here so that teachings on a particular topic are grouped and can flow together. Maitreya’s purposes in releasing this material are further to prepare humanity for His emergence and to help us understand the spiritual laws governing our lives.

The forecasts of world events included in many interviews are given out primarily to illuminate one of the most important of these spiritual laws: the Law of Cause and Effect. It is only by grasping and working within this law, Maitreya says, that we can resolve the present social, political, economic and environmental crises.

From the book: Maitreya's Mission Vol. Two (Pages 185 - 187 - First Edition Sept. 1993)

Violence, Crime, Drugs, and Self-Respect

Society as a whole is attempting to emerge from its bondage, and the eruption of crime, corruption, drugs and violence are the inevitable prelude. In the case of violent crime, the Self realizes it is imprisoned in the web of the mind to such an extent that there is no purpose left in life. The vibrations of mind, spirit and body are disturbed, and crimes are committed.

The Self is not the perpetrator of these crimes; the perpetrator is the confused mind which has taken over the Self. Take, for example, child abuse. In many cases, a single, powerful thought has taken hold of the mind, to the exclusion of all else. This is destructive. In order to help the person to detach himself from that thought, it is necessary to lead him to an awareness of the Self, the ‘observer’, the ‘watcher’.

The Self is not the mind. This will create a space inside the person and will enable him to free himself. There are no shortcuts to this process, but it is itself part of a method which also includes beneficial breathing techniques. Maitreya is training certain people who are fitted for this type of work, and appropriate training will yield results. In addition, harmless drugs will be found which will help to calm the nerves.

It is in cities, Maitreya says, that crime combustion occurs, where people are addicted to drugs, sexual violence, murder and other crimes. This process of combustion brings the dirt up to the surface. Neither the police nor the military, however, will be able adequately to control the outbreak of crime now occurring.

At the moment, prison is the only alternative for violent and dangerous criminals. But violence cannot be cured by sentencing people to prison. Moreover, Maitreya points out, not all people are in prison for violent crimes. Many who are in prison are not even criminals. Maitreya says: ‘‘When a murderer is executed, the physical body is punished, but can you punish the mind? It is the mind, not the physical body, which is responsible for the act. You think you have destroyed the cause of the murder by destroying the physical body.

The problem has not been solved. Once dissociated from the body, the mind still has to run the course of its mental life. It acts as an invisible force and comes into contact with another mind in a physical body, and compels it to commit an act of murder. Suddenly a man goes berserk and kills a number of people.’’ Maitreya says to scientists, psychologists and doctors: Try to investigate this problem.

Even if you multiply the prison population you will not solve the problem if you do not attend to the minds of prisoners. The prison population has become aware of who they are and what they are. They are no longer prepared to put up with the inhumane conditions and treatment that they have endured for so long.

Eventually, government policy will turn to building more open prisons containing educational centres to teach prisoners to value both themselves and life itself. It is important to make the person understand the environment and the Self. Self-realization (a gradual process entailing non-identification with anger and other destructive emotions and ideas) brings equilibrium in mind, spirit and body. When the mind is still sick it can do mental harm beyond the walls of the prison.

As for the drug epidemic, the politician’s contribution to the problem of drug addiction consists of television advertisements to curb drug abuse. But the politicians alone, Maitreya says, are to blame for the desperation of these people. If people are so straitened in life that they cannot even eat properly, they will lead desperate lives.

They will sell their bodies, steal, and end up in prison. If you deprive people of any future in life, deprive them of nourishment, they will end up on drugs to help them to forget their desperation.

And from drugs it is not far to crime, even murder. The massive threat posed by drugs cannot be solved through fear of the law. Strong policing will be needed to crack down on the organized gangs of drug producers, but it is not the answer to the individual drug user. Drug addicts are suffering from spiritual starvation, from extreme Self-alienation.

Life becomes purposeless and people want to bring their lives to an end, and so they commit slow suicide via drugs. If life has no meaning, then ‘meaning’ is what must be restored, and for this to occur, it is necessary for the person to experience himself differently, to experience a sense of his own worth. Once that happens, he can grow in Self-awareness.

Chaos, corruption and crime will recede in society as people gain happiness and peace through learning to control their lives through Self-awareness.

Self-respect
How can this be achieved? Not through the fear of laws, or by preaching ideology. Not by restricting people’s movement, or by extra police or more prison cells. The only answer, Maitreya says, is developing detachment in mind, spirit and body. You must become free from any ism ---- for that is the deadliest drug.

This can happen only when the Self is given self-respect. It is like a sponge ---- it absorbs illusions like water and engulfs the Self. When helping drug addicts it is no use telling them not to take drugs, or sending the police to arrest them. The only way to transform their lives is by teaching them: ‘‘Be what you are.’’

They should be taught to practice detachment, even while they are still taking drugs. The next time they take drugs, they will find themselves a little reluctant about continuing their habit until eventually they will realize that it is the body that is being injected with drugs, and not the Self. Through awareness and then detachment, habits of all kinds will fall away like leaves in the autumn.

The power of the environment should also be used to create Self-awareness. When an individual enters a church he feels peaceful and tranquil; the Self experiences this, and the mind is no longer in confusion or turmoil. Living in the bleak, depressing conditions of a run-down council estate, a person’s mind will be desperate and reach for drugs to find escape.

That is why the environment should be a high priority among the country’s leaders. ‘‘Clean your environment and your life will respond to it.’’ If there is no stress or strain in your surroundings, then there is no need for drugs, for within the human body is the most powerful drug known to humanity ---- detachment.

An energy has been released in the world which counteracts negative forces. Eventually, certain judicial reforms will take place, and minor or petty crimes will not lead to prison sentences.

When world tension begins to decrease, when the principle of sharing begins to be implemented through a variety of social, economic and political reforms, people will feel less threatened and there will be less and less crime.


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