|
The Ponomauloa School was founded in August 1983 by Mike Gabbard (Krishna Katha das), Carol Gabbard (Devahuti devi dasi) and Carter Reed (wife of former senator Rick Reed). The purpose of the school was to give an education to the children of the Science of Identity Foundation cult who had been prohibited from attending public schools and were not presently being schooled.
The ciriculum noted includes chanting, hatha yoga, maths, english, Chris Butler's (Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa) book "Who Am I?" and topics centered around the Science of Identity Foundation philosophy. Chris Butler admits in this talk that he was not educated, he was not interested in learning and turned to surfing instead, his only career interest was in becoming a pro-baseball player, that he received Fs in school and only attended college to avoid the draft. But here as Guru he is speaking as an expert on education. In this talk he is directing Mike Gabbard to focus on topics that reflect the "real life" of the children including death and 'goons' running the government. In front of an audience of boys and girls, some under the age of six, he suggests that Gabbard teach the boys about controlling their sexual desires and explain a "wet dream". "Screw the history books" Butler declares and defines history as "exploitation and domination, attempting to dominate and exploit, attempting to enjoy, fighting for the goods of enjoyment and the suffering then that that causes." And now Chris Butler Jagad Guru Speaks on education… TALK ON EDUCATION April 15, 1984 You know why they have all this business about prayer in schools and no prayer in schools? Because they want to feel that the responsibility for giving their children spiritual guidance and example is not theirs, they want to put it on somebody else... Yeah, that's the problem, the reason why everyting is falling apart, the reason why their children are all bad is because they don't pray in school as if praying in school is going to make them spiritual, as if the teachers sitting up there is saying, "Okay everybody now let's pray." That this will make spiritual life for the children to come to know God. The fact is, it's the parent's responsibility to raise the children to come to know God. If they neglect their responsibility and their child goes to hell because of it, then the parent must take responsibility in the same way that a spiritual master who neglects to give instruction and direction to his disciple must pay for this irresponsible action. A parent is a type of spiritual master. A parent is the teacher of the child. If a person has a child but he has no way to free his child from the wheel of birth and death, then he is not a fit parent. He's not fit to be a parent. If a parent has a way, he knows of the way to liberation from material entanglement but he neglects to instruct his child and direct his children in the ways of spiritual life, then he is even worse off, he is even more irresponsible. His responsibility is even greater because he knows how the child can be liberated, but if he doesn't give the child this guidance, he is sinful, a most sinful person. A person who's ignorant of spiritual life, then they cannot give any spiritual guidance, if they fail to give spiritual guidance to their children, of course, they are irresponsible, but they are less irresponsible than someone who knows the way to freedom but he does not care enough to give his child the guidance, the direction. Therefore all of you here, this empty space that's taken up [of children who left the room during the lecture] is not taken up by bodies only, it's taken up by living beings, spirit souls, who are caught on the wheel of birth and death who are in bodies, and their bodies are taking up the space. Their bodies will take up a certain amount of space, for a certain amount of time, and then their bodies will no longer take up space, their bodies will decay, deteriorate, and will again go back to the dust. It's a temporary situation. While they're here, in this particular body, taking up a certain amount of space, it's your duty to help that living being become free from the wheel of birth and death. Don't neglect your duty! Parents who send their children to schools with the idea that the school will take full responsibility for giving that child spiritual direction, are simply in illusion. Ultimately the parents are responsible for the children's material and spiritual wellbeing. If a person starts a school however, and says that this school is meant to help you direct your child, I will work with you parents, I will work with you as a parent to give your child the guidance that you want him to have. It's your responsibility as a parent to give your child true education. If you would like assistance in this, then we will start this school, you see. In this way the parents and the teachers of the school work together to give the children that spiritual education, that spiritual guidance. Then the person who starts the school also then takes responsibility for the children. So then the child has two parents, his physical parents and then his teachers, but in these materialistic school systems these foolish materialistic people are thinking that one prayer in the beginning of the day is somehow going to keep God in the classroom. "So let's all pray, one moment of prayer to that Supreme Being, if you believe in It, or whatever, you have some vague prayer written by some politician, you see, and they pray... and the kids are going aaaaah, aaaah, aaaah, sticking each other with rulers, playing, throwing paper wads. "Okay, everybody finished praying? Let's open your text books to Darwin's..." Right? "How life came from matter. How we all have come from the ape. How we are all material in essence and origen." What is this nonsense? They don't want to make true real changes, either in themselves, or in the school systems. They think that "Let's center the whole battle on whether or not we get to have this little prayer in the beginning or in the end, center it around that." Foolish people, and kids hate school, you know that? In these materialistic schools, the children hate schools, they're like jails, they hate them. The teachers aren't interested in teaching, they're simply going for their pay check, which of course you can know by the fact that they go on strike if they don't get enough money, right? "Fuck the kids, we want our money, we want more money, we only make twenty-two thousand a year. You know how hard it is to live with $22,000 a year when you've got three cars and four houses?" Oh, I pity you, hard life you live. They're not interested in teaching. And the children know it of course, they're not stupid. They may not be educated, but they're not stupid. You raise your hand, "Uh, teacher how come?" "What is it? Dummy!" What, do you expect the kid to know everything already, why the hell do you think he's in school? If he knew everything you knew he wouldn't be in school. You think he's weird because he doesn't know everything you knew he wouldn't be in school. You think he's weird because he doesn't know everything you know, that's why he's the student and you're the teacher, fool. That's why you're getting paid and he's not. They haven't figured that out yet. What do you teach in the school here, Krishna Katha das, in our school? I come to school everyday. Bhakti das, come sit here. We're going to have a game. Are you all in the same class? You all learn different things don't you? Nitai das, you go to school don't you? How old are you? Nitai das : "Six" How long have you been going to school? One day, one week, one year? Do they teach you what years are yet? You can sit down. That's why you're still going to school, you don't know enough yet. That's why you go to school, so that when you get asked questions you can answer, so the next time I ask you questions you can answer, then the bigger your body gets, the more questions you're expected to be able to answer. That's what's called the bummer of growing up. When you're little and you don't know what a year is, it's ok. Nobody really yells at you, but when you're big and you don't know what a year is, everybody goes, "What you don't know what a year is?" You see, so it's good to stay little, but it's very hard, very hard to stay little. You can try to stop your body from growing, but it's just going to grow, it's going to grow, and grow bigger everyday, and everytime it grows bigger people expect more from you. You have to learn how to be a big person, and that's a bummer I'll tell you, but that's life. What's funny about it is after about 30 years old, that's when you get quite big, then it gets 40 then after a while it starts getting small again, it starts hunching over and shriveling up, your body starts shriveling up and gets small again, then it goes right back to the dirt. Then nobody expects you to know nothing. Babies and dead people, they're not expected to answer questions. I want to know what do they teach you in school? Sadao : "In the morning after we have a chant then we have yoga..." You have yoga? Yoga is chanting, chanting is yoga. Do you know the meaning of the word yoga? "No, I haven't researched it." Don't use words that you don't know the meaning. The word yoga means linking up, connecting the spirit soul with the Supreme Soul. Love for Krsna is called bhakti yoga, loving service to Krsna is called bhakti yoga. Now what you mean to say is that you are learning yoga asanas or postures, yoga excercises. So if you're going to teach them yoga, you must teach them yoga as it is. There are different stages of yoga, different kinds, of branches of yoga you should learn this. So you do yoga asanas. Okay, speak on. "Then we come back and we do our academic work, that's Math, English... When we come back from our yoga asanas then we read out of Who Am I? book." What do you read? "We just read through the chapters and we talk about what we read." Can you understand that book? "Yes, Srila Prabhurad." Really? They can understand the book? That means you have to learn a lot of different terms, a lot of different words, when you come across a word in a the book just stop and then learn what the word means, like molecule. What the hell is a molecule? It's a cell? What's the difference between a cell and a molecule? Do you know that yet? "Molecules make up the cell and atoms make up the molecule." That's right, I think he knows more than you guys. How much of the book have you read, did you start at the beginning? "Yeah, I think we're on the seventh chapter." Oh, so you're going to slowly and learning all the terms and this and that, how long do you spend on that? So this is a combined biology class and all kind of class, you don't need to separate them? We don't need to separate our classes into Biology, and Math and this and that. What we have to do is deal with the subject we are interested in and you look at that and then to understand that subject you have to learn about Biology, you have to learn a little bit about math, you have to learn a bit about this, and so then you have a reason to want to be interested in Math. I went through 12 years of school and 2 or 3 years of college and I never really had a clear idea of the difference between and atom and a molecule and how cells were made up of this. The reason was because I wasn't interested. Why? So what? Who cares? But when it came to things I was interested in my real life? In my family, I was brought up learning, seeing real life things, like our family was driven out of the southern state of Louisiana when I was a baby because they were shooting at my parents because we were communist/black lover, nigger lovers. Therefore because of these things I was always interested in reading these things(illegible), Discrimination and political things and when the CIA comes to our house and bugs our phones you become interested in our real life, you know on a real level. So I was interested in politics, or I was interested in you know, communism, I was interested in capitalism, I was interested in capitalism, I was interested in exploitation and prejudice and violence and war and all these things, and I was interested in baseball because I was going to be a major league baseball player, therefore I was interested in reading about baseball. I learnt how to count homeruns and batting averages, what does it mean? I need to know what it means? So only those things that I was interested in did I learn about, and I got as much as I needed about that science to be able to apply it to what I was interested in. After that I wasn't interested in learning any of that stuff. Who cares? Right? So if we can get you to be interested in the real goal of life, real spiritual life, real understanding who you are. How you can actually use your life to serve Krsna, how you can actually come to conquer death, then you'll become interested in these things. You become interested from a personal angle but also from caring about others, being concerned about other people, therefore you become interested in social issues: Genetic engineering, Eugenics, Nuclear Power, Racism, Crime, or whatever, right? But from the platform of a real purpose in life. Now this baseball business or anything like that doesn't last long. It goes as far as you go until you flunk out of the baseball scene or you realize that you don't weigh enough to be a pro-football player. That was the other thing I was going to be. But you see I weighed as much as one of those guys' foot. Besides it doesn't take that much knowledge. You don't need to know algebra to play baseball. I remember it was a real revelation when I was a kid, it was unbelievable, that anyone would even consider that I wasn't going to be a major league baseball player, my economic future was solid. I didn't have any problem at all therefore I didn't need to study or learn all that stuff because there wasn't even a question because after all when I was only 10, 11 years old and in Molokai the scouts came from major league baseball teams to come watch me play, they were already talking to me about signing a god-damn contract. Where's the problem? I was 13 or 12 years old and my father came after I got another F on a report card, that means failure. I think it was in Math, he said "What are you going to do when you grow up? How are you going to make a living?" I said, "Oh, don't you know, I'm going to be a major league baseball player." And he looked at me and he said, "What if you don't make it?" I couldn't believe it. I was thinking "Gaw, this guy's really stupid, doesn't he know? But it left a little there in my mind. Is it possible? I never even considered that it might not, but after I considered that I figured, besides, I got tired of practicing, baseball's rough, specially in Hawaii where it's always hot and sunny. I went surfing instead. Then there was absolutely no reason to learn anything at all. Not even Math. The only reason to learn was to stay in school to be able to go to college for a while so you don't get drafted so you don't get taken to Vietnam. That was the only reason to learn, so that you don't flunk out. That's no motive. The question (illegible) is whether or not a person has an actual motive to his life to know God to be able to develop his love for God, then his learning will become easy. Now when you're children you don't necessarily have that as your goal. You don't really maybe appreciate fully the goal of life is to develop love for God. You don't really fully appreciate that yet. But still if the foundation for your learning is the Science of Identity, you can then branch out into learning all kinds of other things. If for example your study of the Science of Identity is your core, your foundation, your center point, from there you can branch off and somebody can specialize in Biology. Maybe you can learn just enough Biology but you're really not that interested, but you know enough to understand the difference between life and matter that's really the main thing you've got to know. You don't need to know more than that. But you may have a real inclination to study in that direction, to specialize in that direction, and maybe some other angle doesn't suit you that much. Do you learn anything about Politics? Do you learn anything about government? Do you learn anything about things like that? "We have a America history class." Oh those things are terrible. They make you go to sleep, they're full of lies "And when Krsna Katha das sees something in the newspaper, he'll take it to school and talk to us about it." The newspapers are full of lies too. What you've got to do is get one of these kids to run for office. Then you'll learn what politics is. Make real life stuff. Find out why you have to be a certain age to run for office. Maybe kids know more. Or a school board. Then you'll learn about politics. You want to learn about politics? "I'm not particularly interested in it." That's because you don't know what it is yet. You think politics is that little thing in the history book. That's not politics, that's sleeping. Those are just corpses. Those are just facts and figures of politics that's gone by. Real politics is you talk to Krsna das about why he's being sued and has to give money to these people and so on for printing the truth in his newspapers. This is politics. Politics is, see this studio next door? Well it's run by the people who control the politics in the state. Big, big guys go over there and ask for money every once in a while, this is politics. Politics is a lot of very real life things. You would become interested in politics in Hawaii if your mother ran a store. Let's say Bhakti dasi ran a store and some goon, you know what a goon is? A goon is a very big ugly man who comes to take you money or beat you up or something like that. For example to Nitai das a goon would be Karnipur das. He'd be a goon. If these goons came to your mother's shop, say she sold flowers, and they told her, and you're sitting there watching "You give us this amount of money every month otherwise your kids are going to get smashed. They may not come home from school one day. Then you become interested in politics, or if you don't have that direct personal experience, you learn about the personal experience of other people. By learning about the personal experiences of other people in things like this, whether it's war or crime or this or that, then you can identify with it as being applied to yourself then you can begin to be interested in it. Why is it like that? Who is that guy? Where's his trip? What is this all about? How come they get to do that to us? You see, you would immediately start asking your mother, who is that? Where is he from? Why don't we call the police? And she says, they run the police? Why don't we tell the government? They run the government. How do they run the government? Well you see there is a state legislature and the members of that are elected, but to be elected to office they need money for putting ads on TV and to put ads on TV they have to get donations from people, and these people who have all this money who like to give donations, and because they give them donations, therefore they vote like the people who give them the money like them to vote and so on and so forth. Real life experience. You have to make school real life. Then take it back to the basis. Now the most real life thing is, the point is, if you have as your center the Science of our Identity. Who we are and what our business is. #1 We are spirit soul, not the body. #2 Our natural position is we are dominated by the Supreme Person, we are not God. We are part and parcel of God and everyone else is too. You know what this means? This means that everyone here is your relative. If you brother starts getting smashed you get upset, why? Because he's your brother, right? More and more when you begin to experience that you are a spark of Krsna, a part and parcel of Krsna, Krsna's child, then you you experience everyone else also as God's child, then you will experience that feeling when somebody else is getting hurt that you feel you don't like it. You don't like their suffering. You want to keep them from suffering. Ok? Now, your natural function is engaging in Krsna's service, engaging in God's service is serving His children, helping his children. Working for the well being of all His children. That then takes into account the entire scope of our life: politics, the criminal system, family life, biology, nuclear power, this, that, everything gets taken in there because you're dealing with people's material well-being and their spiritual well being. Do you understand this. You become interested in everything, everything is concerned with people's material or spiritual well-being. Look at any subject, it's concerned with people's material or spiritual well-being. It's connected one way or another. Whether it's genetic engineering and biology using people as it they're just things, right? Whether it is, or politics where they're making it so that people's spiritual life and their material life is disturbed by exploiting them. So the duty of the parents and the teacher is to make it so that the Science of Identity is their foundation, understanding their identity. Now understanding their identity as relatives, all living beings are relatives, we're all related, we're all brothers and sisters, right? Theoretically, philosophically you understand this, okay. Then what you have to do is you have to start making them aware of what's happening to their brothers and sisters what's happened to their brothers and sisters in the past: whether it's the Jews that due to the fact that they had a certain kind of body they were discriminated against and destroyed, and eugenics, the final solution. In other words you must make it connected. Not simply let's memorize what's in the stupid history book. Screw the history book. The only reason to have the history book there is to be able to get some of the facts and figures if you want them, okay, give you some things to talk about or whatever, right. And to be able to have your school board thing, or whatever it is, pass the stupid tests that you have to pass in order to make it so that they people are saying your educated. So it's the teacher's duty to be creative, not simply we buy some text books, give the kid some text books we look over it with them and that's it. You have to make it so it's real. If it's not real to these children, if it doesn't have real life, if they can't apply it, then they're not going to be interested in it. If they don't connect it up, then they're not going to be interested in it. What are the main things in life? Happiness, suffering, birth, death, diseases, old age. What is history? History is exploitation, domination, attempting to dominate and exploit, attempting to enjoy, fighting for the goods of enjoyment and the suffering then that that causes. But they will not experience any interest in these subjects of World War II, for example, unless they know a little bit about suffering, and unless the teachers feel some empathy, some compassion for the suffering of others, then they will not be able to teach history so that it is actually getting across what this is. When they say the Civil War ended in this date, began in that date and this and that, it's not something to memorize, it's something to experience that there was suffering there. The people were suffering there. So if you don't feel, that if it's just a date and something you learned in school by memorizing it, then you're not going to get across to them that it has anything to do with reality. When you talk about prejudice or when you talk about suffering they have to experience or know what you're talking about. So you must be creative, you must use your intelligence, how to make it so that they actually can feel it, be interested in it. Make it real. Your teachers never did it for you, but that doesn't mean you should teach them in the same way that your teachers taught you because you teachers didn't give a shit about you. That's the difference. Now if you think you're going to start another school and just have another school where you don't care about actually making it so that the children experience these things are real, why do it? Why go through the motions? Why not just send them to a private school? Send them to some other school, collect them at the end of the day. Right? What do you do now, Krsna Katha das so that the classes you teach are interesting? Krishna Katha das: When we talk about current events we try to tie it in with the things that we talk about in the Science of Identity class. Yes. But they must have an interest. They may not be interested in the Science of Identity. You must make it so that they understand that it has to do with them. That someday they will get old. Someday they will, as they get into puberty, they're going to experience more and more sex desire then their mind is going to start driving them insane, then they're going to know what we're talking about when we talk about going nuts over sex and so on. Now they may not know. And they won't really be able to get into that until they do know. Until they have some experience. You must talk to them on their real life. Do you understand this? Controlling the senses, controlling the mind, not being agitated all the time, servant of the mind and the senses. This is the real thing. Death is a real thing. Have you ever seen anything dead? Have you ever seen anything die? What? Sadao: "Yeah, I saw my grandfather die." You were in the room? Sadao: "Yes." Yes. So that's good. Therefore when we speak of death you know what we're talking about, and therefore when I look at you I can see you're a little serious about spiritual life. Some other children are not as serious about spiritual life, and one reason is they never experienced death. So when we talk about death they don't have a clue what we're talking about. But if you went back and looked at pictures of your grandfather, you could see pictures of his body when he was a small boy, when he was the age of your body right now, you know, and you look at him and you look at that body, you go, "The guy that I saw suffering on the bed, that same person was once the same age I am now, therefore I should find a solution to this problem because sooner or later I'm going to get to that point. Now I'm not saying that you should all go watch people die, although it's not a bad idea, although they don't have anything like that like "Come watch people die places." And what we experience in the movies and on television about death, is very phony, it's not real, it's not in any way like the real experience of death, you know. Bang! Bang! "Oooh!" Die. Okay, then go back down have a soda pop and have a beer, then again of Bang! Bang! again somebody else died, "Oooh" then finished, you know. This has nothing to do with the real thing. So it must be real. Make it real, see the children have no experience. So for example, you became interested in the Science of Identity and spiritual life when you began to experience real things and real problems in your life, but children don't have any problems yet, it's just play. The only problem is that our parents stop us from playing and make us go to school, that's the real problem at the moment for them, but you know, you talk about the pain of divorce and the pain of a broken love affair and the kids look at you like, Can I go play now? They don't know that yet. But it's not wrong to tell them these things because what happens is. They've heard these things, but they can't relate to it yet, but later on, then they experience and they go, "that's what he was talking about." "This is what they were talking about, I never knew what they were talking about before." The young men, the first night they have a wet dream, that's the day they go, "Oh, oh, something's happening and I don't know what it is, but I think I do, and how do I control this? It's such a powerful thing? And it's pleasurable." And then they enter in to the world when you start talking about controlling sex desire and so on, and so forth then they can relate. So speak about these things, but understand that you should try, when you reach them, you must speak on a real level, real life level, not just simply official school level. "Oh, I'm the teacher, you're the students and this is an official school and we're just going to give you this, you memorize these things and that's the end. That's how it goes and the you get older and automatically as you get older you get wiser, as you body gets bigger then we kick you out of school, we no longer need to have you as our responsibility any more as if they're going to learn simply through osmosis by being in school. How many of you here can tell me anything at all that you learned in school, right now if one of you were to stand up and tell me everything you learned in school either in any of the subjects, it would be very difficult for you to speak more than five minutes. When was the war of 1812? You sit there and go huh? "1815?" Do you know what were talking about Sukhi dasi? What do you learn in school? Do you have the same classes as the boys? Sukhi dasi: I think so. You mean you're not in the same classroom? Different classrooms. You like the school? Sukhi: Yeah Most of you children like the school, right? Isn't that right? You know why? Because we made the school because you wanted the school? You know what I mean? The reason why a school was put together was because all the kids wanted to go to school. They're looking like this? When do we get to learn? When do we get to go to school? And the parents are going [Don't know when] [And the kids] We want to learn. See when we were brought up, when we were kids, the schools were already there and you don't want to go to school. And when you get to school, all you want to do is get out of school. So you're lucky. If you want to learn, you can learn, if you don't want to learn, you're going to have a bery difficult time learning, you won't learn anything. I learned everyting after I got out of school. In fact it's hard for us to even overcome the lies that we learned in school. "Are you sure Darwin wasn't correct about that?" Like Syamasundar dasi, or Smaranam das, they're having such a hard time. Many teachers are just habitual liars..... So it's good we have this school you can go [to Karnipur] You still watch a lot of TV? Karnipur das: No, I try not to. Good, television is a drug. But the main reason you might watch television a lot is because you don't have anything else to do and you don't feel like you can get into something, it's like maybe because you don't know enough, like, you can't read if you don't know how to read, you know what I mean? So it's easier just to watch TV there's no struggle, there's no chance of failure because you always win at the end of the show. You identify with the good guy and he wins at the end of every program, so you keep winning, you don't need to sit there and realize that I have to do something with my life. You don't want to take that, that's why television is so bad. We should have a policy in our school books that, this brings us to the point of before that the parents being ultimately responsible for their children's education, that the school should have a policy that only certain programs on television can be watched, no other television shows can be watched and parents can make suggestions on what programs and so on, and work with parents in this way that only certain programs can be watched. No programs that are promoting evolution, molecular evolution. No programs which are simply sense gratification which of course leaves you with very few programs which is good. News, some documentaries, some news shows. Televisions are bad. Better if you don't have a television. Best thing is not even have a TV. So if parents, for example, don't control the watching of television of their children, if their kids watch this crazy show and that crazy show and come to school and pollute all the other kids, right and go. "Oh see batman yee." And all the other kids start going "Ohh batman, yeeee." Then the child has to be kicked out of school. He can't come to school. That's it. So children who break this rule, and this is the parents responsibility, then they don't go back to the school. Same with movies. So in this way, it's not a question of the school working against the parents, or the teachers conflicting, but the aim of the parents and the aim of the teachers has to be the same. So you have to have your PTA. Where you are actually communicating on the same wave length of what is the goal of the school and so on. If you have people just sending their kids there to school so they can be in Maya and you can raise their children and they get to be in Maya and they think they're going to be in Maya and their kids are going to learn how to be spiritual in school, then forget it. Be very strict. Okay well let's chat and let all those guys with the little bodies come on back. Typed by : Lxpd
|
