Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c6.s2.4

c6.s2.4

Hindu Thought takes up the position that the individual as conceived in the context of social life, and the laws of the State, is essentially a psychological and biological fact. But the individual, in order that his ultimate datum of personality may be understood, must be viewed from other perspectives, those of his elemental nature, his potentiality for growth and transformation, his self-sufficiency, his capacity for effecting harmony between conflicting trends of impulses. Such a view of the self will necessarily take it out of its usual habitat. It means that the normal functions in terms of which the biological self ties itself to its material home must be checked so as to lay bare the core and kernel of one's being, the true self, the naked personality, stripped of the envelope with which it is shrouded by the accretions of passing impulses and emotions. When the personality is thus denuded of its material and social trappings, five planes of vital and psychic tendencies reveal themselves. These are called, in the writings of the Hindu thinkers, the five *Koshas* (sheaths). Normal worldly life sets up barriers between them so that they manifest themselves one at a time. The purpose of Hindu Culture seems to be (1) to disclose the personality as a continuum, rather than as a stratified structure, and (2) thus to make the human self the meeting point of Heaven and Earth. As the Upanishadic text says: "He drew out the lustre of the heavenly fire and filled the earth" (Agnerjyotirnichāyya pṛithivyā adhyābharat). Thus the inhibitions that daily life necessitates, the processes of 'rationalization', symbolization, dramatization, and other kinds of distortions, must be righted in the course of spiritual culture.