It is necessary to have such a civilization which does not teach distinctions from the very childhood and which may lead to the understanding of oneness

The reality is that from the beginning there are no distinctions in the mind of a child. Distinctions are taught by us. It is true to such an extent that a child is not able to distinguish between a dream and reality.

A child weeps in the morning after seeing a dream at night. He is weeping for a toy which he saw in a dream; he is asking for that toy. The child is not able to distinguish between what he sees in a dream and what he sees when he is awake. His seeing is without any distinction. A person addresses his father as ”father,” but a child who hears this will also address that person as ”father.” For the child it is difficult to understand that that person was not his father. He does not know whether he is a Hindu or a Mohammedan; he does not know anything. He is still in the world of oneness, but that oneness is full of ignorance.

A saint ultimately enters into the same world of oneness, but then his oneness is full of knowing. Whosoever is ignorant can be divided; we cannot divide the oneness of the saint, because his oneness is born out of his knowing. Children are born out of oneness, but they are taught distinctions; it is necessary to teach them some distinctions; it is useful for living. It is necessary to teach what is poison and what is nectar, it is necessary to know where there is a door and where there is a wall. It is also necessary to teach where is harm and where there is safety — these distinctions have to be taught.

But it is necessary to see that behind all this teaching of distinctions there should develop continuously a sense of oneness in his mind — meaning he should remain aware of the fact that sometimes poison acts like nectar and sometimes what is taken to be nectar acts like poison. He should be able to understand that there are times when a man recovers when poison is administered and there are times when nectar taken in excess may kill the person. When a child grows up some distinctions will have to be taught, but the child’s awareness should also develop to understand that all the distinctions are just functional, that the distinctions are made looking to the limitations of man. Within him a current of oneness should continuously flow. He should be aware of the fact that all things are united from within.

The impact of our life on the child should be such that he visualizes life in its oneness. He should not feel that inner and outer, subjective and objective are two things — he should feel life as a whole. He should understand that he is the same person when he is eating and when he is praying; that his prayer is connected in some deep way with his eating, it cannot be separate. The child should become aware of this inner principle, and it is not difficult for a child, who in reality feels that he is the same person, to become aware who eats and who prays. But he becomes confused when he sees that his father becomes a different person when he eats, a different person when he is sitting in his shop, and a third person when he is praying. When he comes home he becomes a different person, and when he is facing a servant he becomes yet another person. The child is not able to understand this.

A child is being told that he should respect his father because he is old. The child then wants to respect the old servant also, because if old age is a matter for respect, then the old servant should also get respect. Such behavior on the child’s part is beyond our understanding. We then tell the child to respect his old father, not the old servant. Then we are creating a distinction.

But this distinction is not just limited to one between a father and a servant; it creates two faces within him: one to be shown to the father and the other to be shown to the servant. The child learns that he has to stand in a temple one way and sit in the shop in a different way. One has to be clever in the shop and simple in the temple. This way we are teaching him divisions. Slowly all these distinctive impressions, layer after layer, will get built in and the child will take these distinctions as conclusive in his life.

Source: Revolution in Education

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