Some time ago I saw a documentary about a Pakistani school girl, Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban, because she actively defended girls right to school education. I had heard news about that before, but they didn’t stop me like the documentary, which brought the whole thing nearer.
Malala survived the attack. It is the irony of fate that the attack, which aimed to kill and suppress the voice of this activist threw her in one fell swoop to international forums. Wayne Dyer describes this ‘irony of fate’ in his presentation The Wisdom of Tao Te Ching (1:16:50-1:17:50)
He says that the more we oppose nature and its life-sustaining powers the stronger nature expands its powers.
Dyer talks about dandelions, which some people see as weed and want to wipe them out from their courtyard. All efforts to wipe them out may lead to the discovery, that the flowers are blooming later even more graceful than before.
So, Malala continues her mission as education defender. The Taliban says that it has nothing against education as far it is Islamic education. In the same time it accuses Malala of excessive liberalism and westernisation as she wants to be educated according to the western world view.
Malala replies to these accusations by asking, why should there be a split between East and West in the first place. There is no eastern education and western education. Education is education and its fundament is in the real world, in which we are living.
When people want to get closer to each other they must focus on their common characteristics, what unites them rather than look for differences that individual egos have. In the matter of education the most relevant common factor in every culture and society is the goal to educate the human heart.
Some people have more success in this than others. It doesn’t mean that they are better people. It means that the level of consciousness they are living in is different, because education is one way to expand our consciousness. The real competition we always have within ourselves.
I believe that the Taliban has nothing against the western liberalism when it comes to life-sustaining things, like medicine, architecture or the positive effects of economic life.
When one talks about western liberalism it brings in mind strong images of the dark side of the western societies.
When people try to find reasons for the ill-being of people education is an easy target for negative attention, because education is an important part in the upbringing of western people. However, the destructive effects of western liberalism are not due to education, but rather due to the lack of sophistication.
I write in my article ‘New Political Culture’ that a society can be civilized without being cultivated or sophisticated. With ‘sophistication’ I mean nobleness of the heart, which has nothing to do with the snobbery or cultural consciousness of the upper classes.
Cultivation of heart, which is the ultimate purpose of education creates at best a connection to the consciousness of the universe. The fact is however that not even a long education is a guarantee for nobleness of the heart. This is due to the spiritual laziness of the people, which Nazi leaders tried to defend in the Nuremberg Trials after World War II as the Nazi Regime collapsed by saying: “We were only following orders.”
Regardless, if these words are presented by a Nazi leader, a spiritual leader of a religious movement or leading figures of some country:
it is the same spiritual laziness.
Wayne Dyer presents a clear attitude to this in the video
‘How To Be a No-Limit Person’ (0:37:31-34): If a rule is immoral, it is immoral to obey it.
On the other hand people can be really cultivated without any kind of education. It brings the thought that sophistication – nobleness of the heart – has nothing to do with the knowledge we gather in learning institutions. The video Spiritual Reality suggests that knowledge is nothing but experience (0:24:40) I would say that knowledge is feeling.
People talk about emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is basically cultivated, noble heart. It is sensitive enough to detect the big picture, see the forest for the trees, and find own part in the whole. It works naturally towards common goals. Its reverse side is hardened mind, which blindly adapts to the rules of a dictator, who happens to be in power.
Unfortunately, that what we learn on different levels of education only trains us to adapt the norms, thinking models and rules of the society.
In this manner the education system in a way supports spiritual laziness instead of fostering creativity and life-sustaining powers.
Emotional intelligence rises above the law. It knows that we are all guardians of the law. The law is within ourselves.
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their [b]hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)