VI. A Lecture for Public School Teachers

At the same time, this indicates that spirit must prevail since we can teach in this way only when we allow what we have to convey to be permeated by spirit. This indicates that spirit must prevail in the entire manner of instruction, that we must live in what we have to convey. Here again I come to something that belongs to the intangibles of teaching life. People so easily believe that when they face the child they appear as the knowing, superior person before the simple, naive child. This can have very important consequences for teaching. I will show this with a specific example I have used in another connection in my lectures. Suppose I want to convey the concept of the immortality of the soul to a child. Conforming myself to the child’s mood of soul, I give the example by presenting a picture. I describe a cocoon and a butterfly creeping from it in a very pictorial way. Now, I make clear to the child, “In the same way that the butterfly rests in this cocoon, invisible to the eye, your immortal soul rests in your body. Just as the butterfly leaves the cocoon, in the same way, when you go through the gates of death, your immortal soul leaves your body and rises to a world that is just as different as the butterfly’s.”