Today we human being are bent to one side. Our growth is lopsided. We are not in balance. We are falling. Automatically. We are leaned more towards anxiety instead of peace and tension instead of happiness. Because we have given more weightage to knowable, visible, concrete, outer, predictable, reproducible, objective and mind perceivable that is science. Even when we know that science is ever changing in the light of new facts. What today seems true make turn out to be half truth or may turn wrong later on. Even then we adamantly take it as full truth in the present moment. Child learns and imbibes many things from mothers and many things from father. Both are complementary to each other. From mother child learns care from father discipline, from mother resilience, from father willpower, from mother working in a group, from father how to tackle a problem when you are alone. Even when parents don’t teach things, child imbibes these values. Presence of father or just acknowledging the presence of father consciously, biological or non-biological, or father figure, makes things working.
THE EDUCATION THAT has prevailed in the past is very insufficient, incomplete, superficial. It only creates people who can earn their livelihood but it does not give any insight into living itself. It is not only incomplete, it is harmful too – because it is based on competition.
Any type of competition is violent deep down, and creates people who are unloving. Their whole effort is to be the achievers: of name, of fame, of all kinds of ambitions – obviously, they have to struggle and be in conflict for them. That destroys their joys and that destroys their friendliness. It seems everybody is fighting against the whole world.
Education up to now has been goal-oriented: what you are learning is not important; what is important is the examination that will come a year or two years later. It makes the future important – more important than the present. It sacrifices the present for the future. And that becomes your very style of life; you are always sacrificing the moment for something which is not present. It creates a tremendous emptiness in life.
With these considerations, Osho has suggested education into five dimensions.
The first is informative, like history, geography, and many other subjects which can be dealt with by television and computer together.
But about history – we have to take a completely radical standpoint. Right now history consists of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah, Adolf Hitler, etc. These are not our history, these are our nightmares. Even the idea that human beings can be so cruel to other human beings is nauseating. Our children should not be fed with such ideas.
In the future, history should consist only of those great geniuses who have contributed something to the beauty of this planet, to humanity – a Gautam Buddha, a Socrates, a Lao Tzu; great mystics like Jalaluddin Rumi, J. Krishnamurti; great poets like Walt Whitman, Omar Khayyam; great literary figures like Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Rabindranath Tagore, Basho.
The second is the inquiry of scientific subjects, which is tremendously important because it is half of reality, the outside reality. They can be imparted by television and computer too, but they are more complicated, and the human guide will be more necessary.
And the third will be what is missing in present-day education, the art of living. People have taken it for granted that they know what love is. They don’t know…and by the time they know, it is too late. Every child should be helped to transform his anger, hatred, jealousy, into love.
An important part of the third dimension should also be a sense of humor.
Our so-called education makes people sad and serious. And if one third of your life is wasted in a university in being sad and serious, it becomes ingrained; you forget the language of laughter – and the man who forgets the language of laughter has forgotten much of life.
So love, laughter, and an acquaintance with life and its wonders, its mysteries…. These birds singing in the trees should not go unheard. The trees and the flowers and the stars should have a connection with your heart. The sunrise and the sunset will not be just outside things – they should be something inner, too. A reverence for life should be the foundation of the third dimension. People are so irreverent to life.
The fourth dimension should be of art and creativity: painting, music, craftsmanship, pottery, masonry – anything that is creative.
All areas of creativity should be allowed; the students can choose. There should be only a few things compulsory – for example, an international language should be compulsory; a certain capacity to earn your livelihood should be compulsory; a certain creative art should be compulsory. You can choose through the whole rainbow of creative arts, because unless a man learns how to create, he never becomes a part of existence, which is constantly creative. By being creative one becomes divine; creativity is the only prayer.
And the fifth dimension should be the art of dying.
In this fifth dimension will be all the meditations, so that you can know there is no death, so that you can become aware of an eternal life inside you. This should be absolutely essential, because everybody has to die; nobody can avoid it. And under the big umbrella of meditation, you can be introduced to Zen, to Tao, to Yoga, to Hassidism, to all kinds and all possibilities that have existed, but which education has not taken any care of.
I just read a Corona joke. A young boy is asking his mother, “Who is my father?” Mother answers, dear son we made love during Corona time and he was wearing mask, so I don’t know. Even if mother doesn’t know or cannot recognize the father, it doesn’t mean the boy doesn’t have father. Science can easily confirm the father but to find out from whole population, though not impossible, is very difficult or time taking. Our education is based on scientific facts. But what about the facts which science has not discovered or will not be able to discover. Even if we continuously explore the space, at any given time there will always remain some unexplored space. We cannot reach the brink. Space is limitless. This is mysticism.
Boy about whom we are talking will not imbibe the qualities or values from father if he has nobody to acknowledge as his father. Similarly if we do not acknowledge mysticism, we will not be able to imbibe the mystical values. That’s why we are lopsided. To be in equilibrium, to be in balance we should combine science with mysticism, mind with awareness, outer with inner,visible with invisible, predictable with unpredictable, knowable with unknowable, objectiveness with subjectiveness, concrete with abstract, reproducible with nonreproducible etc. We have just to acknowledge the presence of unknowable, unpredictable, invisible, abstract, nonreproducible inner, subjective, mysticism.
Tags: Education Into Five Dimensions
