18. The Teacher and the Student

We think that there is Teacher capable of teaching and a Student capable of learning.

Lets us start from here and see the reality of this statement.

To learn a language or whatever there is to learn, one must know a known language that is already in place and  is common to both the teacher and the student. Like one can learn French using English or vice versa. Or in the worst case, that a student is put into a new environment, like a child from India adopted in Japan, the child must have a sign language in place, that is common to himself and his foster parents.

How does a new born child ever learn without even a sign language in place when he is born. We say that we can condition a mind etc etc. But how does a new born learn, even when he doesn’t treat the world as separate from him, or doesnt even know that you are teaching and he is learning? Then we explain that he learns by instinct. So instinct is the source of learning and teaching, and not the capacity of a conditioned mind.

If at all a child could learn from the seeming sounds that parents make, it could also learn from the sounds that birds and animals make. But this does not happen. I am now over 50 and daily I spend 30 minutes with a crow that greets me morning and evening. We talk all the time. I tell him that you can crow away until death and I can ‘English’ away until death but we really can’t use our sounds to get across. This should have stopped our daily meetings. But it seems to continue and is very consistent. What we exchange are only feelings for one another and assume that we understand each other. Surprisingly it was a crow (not the same crow visiting me daily or even could be and I would not know) that taught me that I was not a body – mind based identity, which mankind only helped in unfolding further.

In case of humans, something happens and minds seem to communicate better than man and crows. Is has to be like in a dream or an illusion. Knowing one another verbally seems to happen all the time. Sometimes we understand and other times we misunderstand. In fact Knowledge happens to us rather than our ability to learn and teach. The best teachers still have a lot of worst students and the best students study without so called ‘not good teachers’ too. In fact google also can teach, even though not human. Then we say, self teaching and learning, as if an inner Guru and and outer disciple.  This should not have been the case if teaching and learning were our independent capacities as humans. 

Knowing a language or a subject is not a capacity of an individual because there are no individuals. If  it is true that one can learn a language, he must learn all languages. In fact there would be only one language. if it is true that one can learn a subject, he should be able to learn all subjects and facts like maths is difficult or science is difficult would not be valid. In fact all subjects are funny in a sense. We say 3 and 3 make 6. In fact 3 and 6 are only sounds. How it ever came about and how it came about to be believed to be true is, as mystifying, as its origin. Finally all would have been enlightened because so much of teaching seems to be all over the place about enlightenment.

So, knowledge happens to you and with knowledge, illusions take on reality, just like a sound 3, becomes a mathematical figure and the 'thingness' or 'objects' gets into names and forms.

So Knowledge based in dualistic language, is the basis of Ignorance of who we are and becomes the creator of reality to give rise to world of separate objects.

In the end, it is also true that this happens to you and is unavoidable so as to make an illusory world look really real. Realising this can help in de-conditioning the mind, out of the illusion of who we think we are.