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<title>-010_Education as the Growth of Consciousness.htm</title>
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<p class="paracenter"><b>IX
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<p class="paracenter"><b>EDUCATION AS THE GROWTH OF 
CONSCIOUSNESS </b>
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<p class="para"> All knowledge is within you. 
Information you get from outside, but the understanding of it? It is from 
within. The information from outside gives you dead matter. What puts life into 
it, light into it is your own inner light.
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<p class="para"> All education, all culture means 
drawing this inner light to the front. Indeed the word 'education' literally 
means, 'to bring out.' Plato also pointed to the same truth when he said that 
education is remembrance. You remember what is imbedded or secreted within, you 
bring to the light, the light of your physical mind, what you have within, what 
you already possess in your being and inner consciousness. Acquisition is not 
education. Indeed a miser is not a rich man, rich is he who knows how to utilise 
his wealth, even so a possessor of much information is only a carrier of loads.
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<p class="para"> True education is growth of 
consciousness. It is consciousness that carries the light and the power of the 
light. We are born upon earth with this consciousness at the centre of our 
being. And a growing child is nothing but a growing consciousness. Growth of 
consciousness means an increasing intensity and a<i>n </i>increasing amplitude 
or wideness of the light. Unfortunately, placed as we are under the 
circumstances of life as it is, this light of consciousness
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</p><p class="pageno">Page-39</p>
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<p class="para">is not allowed to grow in its natural and normal way. The 
external demands of life and the world put a pressure upon it which turns it 
away from its straight path. Things are demanded of this light or consciousness 
which do not belong to its nature, which are not an expression of its nature. As 
though it is twisted, tortured or smothered under utilitarian necessities.
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<p class="para"> The brain should be a flowering 
of this consciousness, a developing vehicle for the expression of the increasing 
consciousness. For that a guidance is needed so that one may always turn within 
and look for that consciousness, feel it growing, and with one's will and 
thought and act help its growth and development. A brain is not developed by the 
mass of information that may be pressed into it. Informations are necessary but 
they should be presented in such a way that they serve as fuel, helpful fuel to 
the mounting fire; they must not be merely piled up upon and around the fire or 
be as so many wet faggots crushing it down with their weight. A true learner is 
one who seeks sincerely this inner consciousness which is one's own; the true 
teacher is one who knows how to lead the learner towards this inner light.
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<p class="pageno">Page-40</p>
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