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Yoga-Based
Education System |
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If anybody has to practise yoga at a young
age, people would remark, “Yoga, so early?” Even
now many people still think that yoga is only a pastime for
retired people, but I always felt that yoga has more to do
with the evolution of the human mind and the human body.
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| Mind
preparation for yoga |
When
you want to prepare a garden, grow flowers and trees, what
do you do? Do you just sprinkle seeds? Many people might do
that, but nothing would grow. First you have to prepare the
soil, make it soft and pull out the weeds. Then you can sow
the seeds and they will grow into nice flowers and fruit-bearing
trees. The same law applies to the human mind. The mind has
to be prepared for accepting the seeds. |
| The mind assumes
many stages. There are certain stages where nothing goes into
the head. Surely you have met such people in your life. Whatever
you tell them falls on deaf ears; nothing penetrates their
brain. They are like hard soil, and the best of seeds will
not grow there. No matter
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how much you work at it. Then there are some people who are
like soft soil. When you tell them something, they are completely
responsive. These people have what are called receptive minds.
Therefore, what is important in yoga is that we try to transform
the quality of consciousness. They everything can be planted
in the mind without any obstruction.
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Place
of Super Mind |
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In
fact, millions of years ago pineal gland played an active role in
the development of the human brain. Therefore, people of those times
has greater psychic and spiritual qualities and better control over
their emotions, but with the passage of time the pineal gland has
followed a course of degeneration.
In yoga, the pineal gland is said to be the physical correlate of
Ajna Chakra. Mystics and occultists refer to it as the third eye
and philosophers call it the supermind. The pineal gland is very
active in children, but by the time they reach the age of eight
or ten it begins to calcify, and in elderly people it has little
or no role to play in life.
This is very unfortunate because in yoga the pineal gland is considered
to be the controlling and monitoring station in the brain. Just
as an airport has a control tower. The human brain also has a directing,
regulating and blocking tower, which controls all the faculties
of the brain. In yoga we call this control station Ajna Chakra;
the word ‘ajna’ itself means monitoring, ordering or
regulating.
When the pineal gland starts to degenerate, the pituitary gland
comes into action and the action and the emotions shoot up. This
is the reason why so many children become emotionally unbalanced
and disturbed during their pre-adolescent and adolescent years.
Adrenal glands have a very important role to play in the child’s
moral behaviour. Usually, those with criminal tendencies have a
overactive adrenal system.
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| Yogic
system of education |
There
are various processes through which knowledge can be implanted in
the human brain. During the last few decades many methods have been
introduced into the educational system. The oldest method, of course,
is teaching in a classroom with a cane. When the child is intelligent
give him high mark, and when he is dull give him a big zero. The
teacher gives a lecture, writes the points on a blackboard and the
student is expected to understand. If he does not then give him
a cross. This is a system of teaching, but not a system of education.
At every moment of our lives, right from birth, we are constantly
receiving impressions, but these are not registered in the same
form as when they went in. they are registered in the form of symbolic
vibrations. Have the educators developed a system to teach children
which works like this?
Geography, history, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, botany
or anything can be taught through symbolic methods. This is the
form of education which has to be used for the dull type of student.
You can explain a certain concept to an intelligent child and he
will understand it, but the dull child will not know what you are
talking about because his conscious brain, his intellect, is incapable
of receiving the knowledge that you are giving him. Therefore, you
will have to transmit the knowledge in a symbolic form directly
into his subconscious mind. This is precisely the system of education
in yoga.
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