THE IDEAL TEACHER

The principles of teaching Jedi are as follows: first, prevention, or preventing of bad habits before they arise. Secondly, timeliness, or giving the students things when they are ready for them. Thirdly, order, or teaching the different subjects in proper sequence. Fourthly, mutual stimulation, or letting the students learn from each other.

On the other hand, to forbid them after they have already acquired bad habits would seem to make everything go against their grain and efforts at correction would be without success. To teach them after the young age is past would make the learning difficult. To fail to teach the different lessons in their proper order would bring chaos in their studies, without good results. To study a subject all alone without others would make a student to narrow in scope, lacking in general knowledge. Bad company would encourage them to go against their teachers and bad pastimes would cause them to neglect their studies. These six things cause the breakdown of Jedi Learning.

Therefore in his teaching the Jedi Master guides his students but does not pull them along; he urges them to go forward and does not suppress them; he opens the way, but does not take them to the place. Guiding without pulling makes the process of learning easy; and opening the way without leading the students to the place makes them think for themselves. Now if the process of learning is made gentle and easy for them and the students are encouraged to think for themselves, we may call the man a good teacher.

There are four common errors in education, which the teacher must beware of. Some students try to learn too much or too many subjects, some learn too little or too few subjects, some learn things too easily and some are too easily discouraged. These four things show that individuals differ in their mental endowments, and only through knowledge of the different endowments each has can the teacher correct their mistakes. A teacher is but a man who tries to bring out the good and remedy the weakness of his students.

At some inconceivably prior point in the distant past, the undifferentiated primordial unity which preceded the formation of stars and planets and all the various elements and energies of the universe was rent asunder to produce two polar forces that set in motion the ceaseless flux of creation. Known by most as the "Big Bang". The two came to be known as light and dark, and the polarity to which they gave rise, and which in turn gave birth to everything in the universe, is called the "Great principle of Light and Dark".

Cultivating spiritual virtues such as wisdom, compassion, patience and tolerance is every bit as important in the Jedi Way as cultivating physical strength, health, and power, for without the virtues of spirit, the power of the Force is easily bent towards dark purposes by the fickle.

The end result of all Dark applications of the Force is the loss of power, erosion of health, foreshortening of life and ultimately exclusion from the higher realms of existence after death.

The reason for this is quite clear: besides nurturing the energies required for life and promoting longevity of the physical body, the Jedi Way also opens a gate to the infinitely powerful forces of the universe and establishes a direct link between the personal energy field of the individual practitioner and the universal energy fields of the universe and all creation. Anyone who tries to harness this power without respecting the wisdom and compassion with which it is inseparably linked at the source of creation is truly 'playing with fire' and is very likely to get badly burned.

In human life, most people enslave their minds and spend their energies to serve their bodies and satisfy their desires, thereby 'mistaking the servant for the master'. In the higher orders of the universe which life reflects, spirit is the master, and energy is the tool through which spirit expresses itself creatively in material form. In order to harness the power of the Force for the benefit of humanity, human beings must pattern their bodies as well as their minds on the universal order of creation reflected in nature and the cosmos and known as the Force, for this is the context in which human life evolved. When practicing the Jedi Way, one must learn to balance physical health and vitality with spiritual awareness and virtue, for that is the one and only way the Force works.