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CHAPTER V FUNCTION Education consists of leading man, as a thinking, The previous chapters have evidenced a recurring restorative, martial, and pedagogical content pattern in physical education. This chapter introduces the recurring emergence of self, others, and transcendence as the hierarchical basis of human motivation. Together, these six elements represent the what and why of the transcultural paradigm for physical education introduced in the next and final chapter. Almost a century ago, William James wrote of the extraordinary potential buried and unrealized within the human body, mind, and spirit: I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being . . . the so-called "normal man" of commerce, so to speak, the healthy Philistine, is a mere extract from the potentially realizable individual he represents, and we all have reservoirs of life to draw upon of which we do not dream. (O'Brien, 1964, p. 155) Tart (in Roberts, 1981) defined consciousness as "a pattern or a general style of mental functioning at any particular time" (p. 52). At the pinnacle of consciousness is a moment-to-moment awareness that all things seen and unseen are divinely One. The current term often used to describe this overall state of higher consciousness is transcendence. Froebel (1896) described the innate tendency of humankind to evolve toward this ultimate state of awareness: "It is the destiny and life-work of all things to unfold their essence, hence their divine unity, and therefore, the Divine Unity itself--to reveal God in their external and transient being" (p. 2). School as a state of mind called leisure (needed to seek the cultus) is the fertile ground in which an understanding of ultimate Unity within Diversity and interconnectedness of all things is cultivated. Froebel (1896) wrote: The educator, the teacher, should make the individual and particular general, the general particular and individual, and elucidate both in life; he should make the external internal, and internal external, and indicate the necessary unity of both; he should consider the finite in the light of the infinite and the infinite in the light of the finite, and harmonize both in life; he should see and perceive the divine essence in whatever is human, trace the nature of man to God, and seek to exhibit both within one another in life. (p.15) The transcendental experience has been at the center of religious faith for thousands of years. White (1984) commented on the various names and symbols given to it: Enlightenment has been given many names. Buddha means "the enlightened one;" Christ and Messiah also mean that. St. Paul called it "the peace of God that passeth under-standing" and Richard Maurice Bucke named it "cosmic consciousness." In Zen it is satori, in yoga it is samadhi or moksha, in Sufism it is fana, in Taoism it is wu or The Ultimate Tao. Jurdjieff labeled it "objective consciousness," Sri Aurobindo spoke of the Supermind, mystery schools and occult paths speak of "illumination," "liberation," and "self-realization." Likewise, enlightenment has been symbolized by many images; the thousand-petaled lotus of Hinduism, the Holy Grail of Christianity, the clear mirror of Buddhism, Judaism's Star of David, the yin-yang circle of Taoism, the mountaintop, the swan, the still lake, the mystic rose, the eternal flame. (p. xvi) The perennial belief in the existence of an uninterrupted intuition of Oneness is rooted in the recurring notion that humankind is uniquely situated to simultaneously experience the finite and the infinite. John Amos Comenius (in Ulich, 1950), for instance, wrote that man is at once: 1. A rational creature, Similarly, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi saw human development beginning with mother and child and gradually expanding outward to family, neighborhood, community, nation, peoples, and God (Schultz, 1985). In the late 1960s, Abraham Maslow introduced a modern version of transpersonalism, calling it the "Fourth Force." He listed Freudian psychoanalytic theory as the First Force, behaviorism the Second, and Humanism the Third (Sutich, 1969). Maslow (1968) stated: I consider Humanistic, Third Force Psychology, to be transitional, a preparation for a still "higher" Fourth Psychology, transpersonal, transhuman, centered in the cosmos rather than in human needs and interest, going beyond humanness, identity, self-actualization and the like. (pp. iii-iv) This "Fourth Force" eventually inspired the birth of transpersonal education which Roberts and Clark (1975) found rooted in patterns, similarities, and agreement among ideas. With unity and integration as its foundation, transpersonal education offers a final and natural step beyond the personal and interpersonal motivations often applied to the education process. Walsh (1980) has summarized the theoretical foundation of transpersonal education and its role in tapping the hidden resources of human consciousness in suggesting: 1. our usual state of consciousness is severely sub-optimal Evolution through and beyond the personal and interpersonal realms of consciousness leads to a transcendence characterized by: 1. ineffability: the experience is of such power and so different from
ordinary experience as to give the sense of defying description. Sri Aurobindo (1953) stressed the importance of physical development in the transpersonal quest. He wrote: The perfection of the body, as great a perfection as we can bring about by the means at our disposal, must be the ultimate aim of physical culture. Perfection is the true aim of all culture, the spiritual and psychic, the mental, the vital and it must be the aim of our physical culture also. If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use. (p. 7) At the core of this perfection between mind, body, and spirit is a synergy reported by Maslow (1962). This synergy requires extraordinary sensitivity to one's body and the ability to relax when necessary (Orlick, 1979). The result is an integration of the body, mind, emotions, and spirit (Vaughan, 1982) and the harmonious development of both right and left brain (Williams, 1978). Physical educators, including teacher trainers, have taken little note of methods and means of teaching toward the higher realms of Maslow's hierarchy. Roberts (1985) noted that "studies of biofeedback, meditation, imagery, and related topics now number in the thousands, but for the most part teacher educators wander blissfully ahead ignoring this body of knowledge" (p. 58). Roberts further suggested with some optimism that: By the end of this decade educators unfamiliar with research on biofeedback, meditation, psychedelic drugs, or imagery and relaxation may be as out-of-date as someone today who is ignorant of Freud's work with the unconscious, Skinner's principles of operant conditioning, Maslow's idea of self-actualization, or Piaget's stages of cognitive growth. (p. 58) The 1990s have arrived without evidence of any great transpersonal awakening in the physical education profession or the nation, but the decade is still young. Shifts can and do sometimes occur, and that brings us to Paradigm 21. Chapter 1.
Introduction |