Spirituality for children

An exact approach based on traditional pramāṇa [1] for children, at least 15 years or older:

1. Understand that just as you can pay attention to the physical world - the body and outside the body, you can also pay attention inwards. Systematically.

2. For at least 100 hours, follow a light, regular, daily practice [2] that takes you inwards, away from physical sensations, memories of sensations, and away from anything or anyone outside you. In other words, away from the outside world and ideas or thoughts about it.

3. Make a map of your own personal inner world, especially how you turn inward; emotions, thoughts, and/or sensations at different levels; how you go deeper inward; how you return to outward attention.

4. After 100 hours, compare your map with that of others. Good ones to compare against may be those of mystics or of Gurus from your chosen path [2].

The 100 hours will give enough experience to understand the experiences behind the words of others. [3] Reading the words without practice merely builds imaginary frameworks without any validating experience.

NOTES

[1] In India, the traditional ways to validate knowledge or understanding are called pramāṇa. Three ways are
a) pratyakṣa or direct experience (from my own practice),
b) anumāna or conceptual framework (my own understanding) based on pratyakṣa, and
c) āgama - validating my own experience and understanding against reports or teachings of trusted others.
(Respectively 2, 3, and 4, of the approach above)

[2] The Heartfulness Way practices are an effective inward approach. To start, take a set of guided introductory sessions first. Available online through the Masterclasses at heartfulness.org. Or through a nearby trainer or centre via heartspots.heartfulness.org.

[3] For Heartfulness practitioners, Daaji's March to Freedom articles in the Heartfulness magazine, Babuji's Towards Infinity and Efficacy of Raja Yoga. Also, Babuji's Autobiography or the 1944 Whispers vol. 1, or Chariji's In His Footsteps, vol. 1. Please do not read before practising for at least 100 hours.

Rote learning and traditional learning methods

Rote learning - simple memorisation and regurgitation of textual/teacher-enforced knowledge - directly causes atrophying of two of the three traditional ways of getting valid knowledge - direct perception, analysis and prediction based on direct perception, and authoritative or authentic sources.

How does a baby learn?

I think primarily with its sense organs. Its brain is used mainly for memory, and for innate processing of physical events such as hunger, discomfort, and pain. [1] But, it is also used for emotional learning - happiness, surprise, etc. - from the moods of people and other living things around the baby. It is probably fair to say that a baby learns through direct perception of its physical and mental world and simple rule-making or analysis of its perceptions.

How does a child learn?

A child (in India at least!) is stuffed with facts, generally randomly and confusingly put together sans a consistent/logical framework. Such facts are often completely out of sync with the child's world, making them even more difficult to memorise and regurgitate. It learns to behave primarily based on physical, emotional, and mental reactions of surrounding adults to its own behaviour, and not from being allowed to explore freely in a safe and prepared environment. Ultimately, a baby's natural capacity to learn through its own senses and independent thinking is lost by childhood's end.

Why does it matter?

A child who depends mainly, or completely, on inputs, assessments, and discipline from the outside world and other people has lost the ability to sense its internal world - its own body [2] and mind. It has lost confidence in its own conceptual frameworks of its world. It is not taught how to travel skillfully among sensations, percepts, and concepts - basic ones or higher degrees or layers of concepts. It does not know how to validate what it reads and hears against its frameworks since insistence on rote memorisation means ignoring or deleting the frameworks. Nor does it know how to subsume, expand, or otherwise modify its frameworks since a child is not encouraged to experiment and analyse. [4]

Isn't it inefficient to teach through experimentation and self-analysis?

It depends on the definition of inefficiency. In the animal kingdom, a human child is already the most inefficient because it takes about twenty years to learn to fit into adult human groups.

Compared to other, more specialised, animals, humans are general-purpose, and are not the best at anything physical. Humans have succeeded as a species due to the evolution of their mental capabilities. This evolution came from original ideas and their sharing. There is also an exponential growth of knowledge across generations. So, yes, it is more efficient to learn from the experience of others (authoritative sources). After all, they have already gone down many mental and physical blind alleys and found viable paths that save time. Also, teaching is often a more efficient process than replicating an experience.

However, evolution of human consciousness requires the evolution of a majority of human beings, not just the rare special ones. Also, useful learning, understanding, and perhaps most importantly, creativity, result only when each human child, teenager, and adult has learned to generate and validate its own sensations, percepts, and concepts.

What is validation of knowledge or true understanding?

In a traditional Indian darśana, something is true or valid if it is found to be valid according to all the pramāṇas or channels of knowledge for that darśana. Thus, in sāṁkhya-yoga, something is obviously valid, true, or factual if one has directly experienced it (pratyakṣa), it fits into one's conceptual frameworks (anumāna), and it has been recorded precisely and faithfully by authorities (āgama).

However, all three validations are not necessary or even possible. So they are ranked. A directly-experienced sensation - a physical sensation, a thought, a mood/emotion, or even an energy sensation - always has precedence over concepts and authoritative sources. This is because concepts and their relationships change. So does understanding of authoritative sources, with more and different direct experiences, and changes in one's ideas, and different (deeper, wider) inputs from authorities. A truly original experience or conceptual framework, never experienced or thought-of by anyone else before, obviously means āgama cannot be used for validation.

Finally, in the oral tradition of yoga, āgama (arrival, etc. in Sanskrit) is construed to mean the transfer of the direct experience or inference of the authority into the student or practitioner. [5] For the first, an experience transfer, or evocation, requires a prepared mind or brain. In the spiritual context, that preparation comes through meditation and contemplation. When āgama is considered as transferring theories or concepts or ideas, we have the more usual meaning of teaching a concept after assuming that the student knows the concepts required to understand it.

Conclusion?

In both material and spiritual contexts, simple rote-memorisation isn't enough for "future-proofing" human beings. In a dynamic world filled with new ideas, cross-linkages across scientific and other fields of knowledge, and regeneration of traditional approaches to life, skills in validating one's own experiences and ideas and those of others are increasingly essential. Paradoxically, such skills come not from frenetic external activity, but an elegantly simple and relaxing journey inside oneself - leading one to concur with true sages that a natural human life can be both simple and stress-free, though not necessarily easy!

NOTES

[1] Sounds - language and play-acting, touch, taste, etc. as well. Babies are often stopped from experiencing things using all their senses. Unfortunately, this teaches behaviour at the expense of direct perception.

[2] One's reaction to hunger, for example, and eating only till one's body is naturally satiated, is trained artificially based on precepts like "finish your plate" [3] and mindless intake of over-processed food.

[3] This makes sense only if one is also allowed to take only as much as needed.

[4] Essentially, an experiment is a prediction of sensations, or percepts, based on concepts and their implications.

[5] A matter seen or inferred by an accomplished person (āpta) is taught in the form of words in order to transfer one's knowledge into another. The vṛtti from that word, with its matter and meaning as the object, is the listener's acquisition (āgama) - Vyāsa Bhāṣya for PYS I.7, translated by Swami Veda Bharati in his PYS w/ VB, vol.I, Samādhi Pāda, pg. 149

Two bodies or what do we really know?

Indian philosophy uses terms like bodies and layers to discuss different categories of concepts. Much like human biology uses "systems" - the nervous system, the skeletal system, the circulatory system, etc. In Vedantic philosophy, after many centuries of discussions, three bodies and five sheaths are defined.

Let us, though, try to start from basics or first principles.

I have a physical body as do all other human beings [1] - I can see, touch, taste, smell, and hear my own physical body, and interact physically with those of others.

Simple.

I also have "something" which is non-physical. Yet it can feel and act. Indirectly, it perceives, and responds, to certain sounds - words in a language, e.g. - and symbols - the English letters of this article on a screen, e.g. Its action is called 'thinking' [2] and it can also cause creation of sounds and symbols. My "something" is called my mind or my mental or subtle body. Even though it is not visible or physically palpable, my mind's activity is obvious. [3]

Thus, human beings have two bodies, one physical, and the other non-physical.

So what?

Well, that takes us to an interesting and ancient philosophical problem. How do I "know" or perceive anything? By physical interaction alone? Or by mental interaction alone? Or both? Is there any other way?

Since we have accepted two bodies, both physical and mental interactions are obviously ways in which we know something.

There is also another way which involves the sensation-percept-concept triad described earlier. My physical senses work with sensations. My mind works with percepts. But, my mind also works with concepts. If I take a set of sensations or percepts and create a conceptual framework based on them, my mind's activity is called "inferring" or "induction". If I then predict physical events outside me or percepts within me based on that framework, I 'deduce" them, or the activity is 'deduction'.

The three bodies and five layers or sheaths described in Vedanta [4] are either one or the other of the two bodies described above. Experiences beyond these two immediately palpable bodies are called 'mystical', 'transcendental', 'revelations', etc. Reports of such experiences form the bases for various religions and spiritual paths.

To answer the question in the Mind sandwich article, on the grosser side of the mind (or the liquid side of the ice block) is the physical body. On the other side is something very like the subtlest level of the mind. Yet, that something is always described as un-graspable by the mind.

Notes

[1] And as do all living things, in fact, in some form or the other.

[2] in general. Cogitating, cognising, analysing, comparing, etc. may all be included in thinking.

[3] The Cārvāka philosophers denied the mind, or mental activity, using, ironically, logical and not physical arguments!

[4] Three bodies (gross, subtle, causal) further sub-divided or categorised into five sheaths (physical, energetic, mental, intellectual, and bliss) are used to discuss philosophical and/or psychological problems and theories.