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Psychic Education and Spiritual Education

So far we have dealt only with the education that can be given to all children born upon earth
and which is concerned with purely human faculties. But one need not inevitably stop there.
Every human being carries hidden within him the possibility of a greater consciousness
which goes beyond the bounds of his present life and enables him to share in a higher and
a vaster life. Indeed, in all exceptional beings it is always this consciousness that governs
their lives and organises both the circumstances of their existence and their individual
reaction to these circumstances. What the human mental consciousness does not know and
cannot do, this consciousness knows and does. It is like a light that shines at the centre of
the being, radiating through the thick coverings of the external consciousness. Some have
a vague intimation of its presence; a good many children are under its influence, which
shows itself very distinctly at times in their spontaneous actions and even in their words.
Unfortunately, since parents most often do not know what it is and do not understand
what is happening in their child, their reaction to these phenomena is not a good one and
all their education consists in making the child as unconscious as possible in this domain
and concentrating all his attention on external things, thus accustoming him to think that
they are the only ones that matter. It is true that this concentration on external things is
very useful, provided that it is done in the proper way. The three lines of education —
physical, vital and mental — deal with that and could be defined as the means of building
up the personality, raising the individual out of the amorphous subconscious mass and
making him a well-defined self-conscious entity. With psychic education we come to the
problem of the true motive of existence, the purpose of life on earth, the discovery to which
this life must lead and the result of that discovery: the consecration of the individual to his
eternal principle. Normally this discovery is associated with a mystic feeling, a religious
life, because it is mainly the religions that have concerned themselves with this aspect
of life. But it need not necessarily be so: the mystic notion of God may be replaced by
the more philosophical notion of truth and still the discovery will remain essentially the
same, but the road leading to it may be taken even by the most intransigent positivist.
For mental notions and ideas have only a very secondary importance in preparing one
for the psychic life. The important thing is to live the experience; that carries with it its
own reality and force apart from any theory that may precede or accompany or follow it,
for most often theories are no more than explanations that one gives to oneself in order
to have, more or less, the illusion of knowledge. Man clothes the ideal or the absolute he
seeks to attain with different names according to the environment in which he is born
and the education he has received. The experience is essentially the same, if it is sincere;
it is only the words and phrases in which it is formulated that differ according to the
belief and the mental education of the one who has the experience. All formulation is thus
only an approximation that should be progressive and grow in precision as the experience
itself becomes more and more precise and co-ordinated. Still, to sketch a general outline of

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