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		<b><font face="Times New Roman"><i>A True Professor</i> </font></b></p>
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<font face="Times New Roman">THE Mother says a professor, a true professor, must be truly a
yogi. That is to say, a teacher, even a schoolteacher, one
imparting what is called secular education, has to be nothing
less than a yogi. The Indian term for teacher is 'guru' and
'guru' meant a teacher both spiritual and secular. This distinction of the two words is made by the modern spirit, it did
not belong to the ancient culture. The secular knowledge was
also considered a necessary part of the spiritual knowledge,
that which prepared for it and led towards it. The 'aparavidya' or the 'vedangas' were but limbs of the supreme knowledge 'para vidya' and 'veda'.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A teacher has to be a yogi does not mean that he is to be a
paragon of moral qualities, following, for example, the ten
commandments scrupulously. Not to tell a lie, not to lose
temper, to be patient, impartial, to be honest and unselfish,
all these more or less social qualities have their values but
something else is needed for the true teacher, something of
another category and quality. I said social qualities, I might
say also mental qualities. The consciousness of the teacher has
to be other than mental, something deeper, more abiding,
more constant, less relative, something absolute. Do we then
prescribe the supreme Brahma-consciousness for the teacher?
Not quite. We mean the consciousness of a soul, the living
light that is within every aspiring human being. It is a glad
luminousness in the heart that can exist with or without the
brilliant riches of a cultivated brain. And one need not go so
far as the vedantic Sachchidananda consciousness.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That is the first and primary necessity. When the teacher
approaches the pupil, he must know how to do it in and through
that inner intimate consciousness. It means a fundamental</font>
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Page 202<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">attitude, a mode of being of the whole nature rather than a
scientific procedure: all the manuals of education will not be
able to procure you this treasure. It is an acquisition that
develops or manifests spontaneously through an earnest desire,
that is to say, aspiration for it. It is this that establishes a
strange contact with the pupil, radiates or infuses the knowledge, even the learning that the teacher possesses, infallibly
and naturally into the mind and brain of the pupil.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Books and programmes are of secondary importance, they
are only a scaffolding, the building within is made of a different
kind of bricks. A happy luminous consciousness within is the
teacher's asset, with that he achieves all; without it he fails
always.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; If the teacher is to be a yogi, the pupil on his side must be
at least an aspirant. But I suppose a pupil, so long as he is a&nbsp;
child, is a born aspirant. For, as the Mother says, a child's
consciousness retains generally something of the pure inner
consciousness for sometime at least until it is overshadowed
by the development of the body and the mind in the ordinary
normal way. Something of this, we know, has been expressed
in the famous lines of the visionary English poet:</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
</font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Hath had elsewhere its setting,</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And cometh from afar.<b>. </b></font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But trailing clouds of glory do we come
</font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From God, who is our home:</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
</font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Shades of the prison-house begin to close
</font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Upon the growing Boy. .<sup>1</sup></font><sup>
</sup>
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But if the right teacher is found, that pure flame in the</font>

<font face="Times New Roman">child's consciousness can be kept burning, can even be made
to burn brighter and higher. A teacher too on his side in the
presence of a pure child-flame in his pupil may profit by its
warm touch; for the two by their intimate interaction grow
together towards a greater fulfilment in both.</font>

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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; When we speak or think of education and consider the relation </font>
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<font face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;<font size="2">1 Wordsworth: Ode on the Intimations of Immortality.</font></font>

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Page 203<hr>

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<font face="Times New Roman">of the teacher and the pupil, we generally confine ourselves
to the mental domain, that is to say, aim wholly or mainly at
the intellectual acquisition and attainment, and only sometimes as per Necessity as it were we turn at most to the moral
domain, that is to say, we look for the growth of character, of
good manners and behaviour—social values as we have said.
Here we have tried to bring into the educationist's view a
more important, a much more important and interesting
domain—a new dimension of consciousness.</font>

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