Materialism has de-romanticised teaching. Examinations and the conversion of knowledge into capital for economic growth have turned teaching into another wealth-questing pursuit. Relationships between teacher and pupil have become those of business traders. We have forgotten that teaching and learning are founded on a spiritual experience.

<B> Three dimensions of knowledge </B>

The success or failure of teaching lies on man?s capability to share. Few teachers are sharers; many are givers, indifferent to the taking. Real sharing demands the individual?s ability to transcend personal welfare and empathise with the other. The knower, the one in quest of knowledge, and knowledge or the fact are three dimensions real teaching and learning constitute a continuum. As long as these three dimensions exist, conflicts and incomprehension are bound to becloud teaching and learning. The difficulties of learning are the result of the absence of a meaningful connectedness between partners. The learner distances himself further and further from the teacher because knowledge as capital is the wrong base for communion. In fact, it is the communion, which is the spiritual experience. Without communion, the widening gap between teacher and learner is the cause of conflict, violence and every form of tension that makes learning difficult.

<B> Learned-centred</B>

How does teaching constitute a spiritual experience? An effective teacher can be heard only when the learner is centred. Studentship is the highest form of surrender. The learner is made to reach his centre by awakening the witness in him. Too often the pupil?s mind plays tricks on him. The unprepared learner erects a wall between himself and the teacher. Listening is itself a spiritual experience. Unless the learner is available, the message does not go in.

A teacher?s task is to help learners respond. All the problems related to discipline in class are the result of the teacher?s inability to make the learner respond. Teachers must combat the egoistic structure that identifies them with power and authority, with the knowledge they have and become the sharers with the prime mission of transforming themselves and their learners. The knower becomes knowledge and that knowledge becomes an experience carrying the learner into this unifying experience. In this spiritual experience, the dancer and the dance become one.

<B> Accommodate difference</B>

Only a spiritual experience can accommodate difference. Learners are at the outset outsiders. But as the experience of learning starts, differences of outlook, character, behaviour get into place. To be able to accommodate difference before the metamorphic exercise of transforming the learner is the initial stage of the spiritual experience of going beyond dualities. In our normal life, we are caught by dualities and to be non-dual, the metamorphic agency must be identified. Accommodating difference implies creating a meditative space to allow merging into the other because there is much within one, which replicates itself in the other.

<B> Spiritual leaders</B>

We are reducing science, mathematics, history to a cluster of facts and figures or formulae. Mathematics was a self-transcending experience for Robert D?Unienville; in his early days, Sookdeo Bissoondoyal could elevate the learner to heights that made him equal to the teacher. In fact, this is another important feature of teaching as a spiritual experience. If knowledge is not the end, but experiencing, both partners are on an equal footing. The teacher is subservient to the exercise of experiencing. Imagine the variety of pedagogical strategies the teacher uses to make learning possible. After the first few stages of the initial experience of co-learning for mutual experiencing, discovery, enquiry, and investigation become operative tools of experiencing. Very often these tools are absent and misunderstanding between teacher and taught create barriers. The understanding that emerges from this experiencing is like an orgasm or an explosion or an epiphany.

My kind readers may feel that I am unnecessarily mystifying a profession that has become degrading, fraught with risks and threatening to the incumbent?s security. It is unfortunate that all teacher training has treated the child as a brain, not as a person. Theories like multiple intelligence, neuroscience and research into the child?s learning strategies see the child as an object and neglect the mutuality of this experience, which needs a spiritual base. The term ?spiritual? has too often been demonised in a world of dialectical reasoning. No amount of rationalisation can erase the potential effective teaching has for spiritual growth.