Page 5 - NAMAH-Jan-2022

Mental Education

Of all lines of education, mental education is the most widely known and practised, yet
except in a few rare cases there are gaps which make it something very incomplete and in
the end quite insufficient.

Generally speaking, schooling is considered to be all the mental education that is necessary.
And when a child has been made to undergo, for a number of years, a methodical training
which is more like cramming than true schooling, it is considered that whatever is necessary
for his mental development has been done. Nothing of the kind. Even conceding that the
training is given with due measure and discrimination and does not permanently damage
the brain, it cannot impart to the human mind the faculties it needs to become a good and
useful instrument. The schooling that is usually given can, at the most, serve as a system
of gymnastics to increase the suppleness of the brain. From this standpoint, each branch of
human learning represents a special kind of mental gymnastics, and the verbal formulations
given to these various branches each constitute a special and well-defined language.

A true mental education, which will prepare man for a higher life, has five principal phases.
Normally these phases follow one after another, but in exceptional individuals they may
alternate or even proceed simultaneously. These five phases, in brief, are:

1. Development of the power of concentration, the capacity of attention.

5