Ancient Indian Education (Brahmanical and Buddhist) c6.s3.9

c6.s3.9

There are a few other fundamental pedagogic principles involved in this educational condition of intimate relationship between the teacher and his pupil. The Guru takes the place of what Freud defines as the Super-Ego of the individual pupil, i.e. the embodiment of the ideals and traditions in which he is brought up. Every individual is subject to an innate conflict between a sense of what he *is* and what he *ought* to be. He imbibes the ideals and traditions of his society, which regulate his life from the outside, or from the plane of the unconscious. In both cases, he feels himself to be the passive instrument of social, or mysterious forces. The ideals, however, are sometimes assimilated as parts of his conscience or Super-Ego, when his actions come under the regulation of his own self, though not without a conflict between the different parts of his nature. This inner conflict is resolved by the Guru, to whom, a different personality, the pupil can project his Super-Ego. The ideals can now more easily enforce themselves, as there is no longer now any loophole for ignoring them, as one could in the matter of one's own thoughts suggesting them. Bergson also points out that man obeys a moral obligation against his will, yielding to the pressure or propulsive force of its social consequences. But he will obey it naturally when its appeal comes from "a Great personality incarnating morality" which is not relative but "complete or absolute", "as the multiplicity and generality of its maxims merge more completely into a man's unity and individuality" (*Morality and Religion*, p. 24).