How can we fulfil our greatest potential? The importance of developing the imagination and creativity within a young person so that the spirit's mission/potential can come forward and be realised. 7-year periods. Think through your heart and not just your brain. True education is about learning from all experience and reaching inwards in order to reach out. "It is something that is so subtle, something so gentle, something that gives the word a new inner meaning." H-A

Good Evening. Education, what is it? Is it imparting knowledge? Is it an expansion of consciousness in order to achieve a level of rational and logical thinking? Or is it something more? As ever, we need to start at the beginning.

The spirit enters the body at the moment of fertilisation of the seed, choosing that body for the experience it will give it in order to take its evolution forward. And by its evolution I mean the understanding that the spirit brings with it, gained from the sum total of all that it has been in all previous existence, every experience it has undertaken, every thought it has made. I regard thought as being unique to each spirit, each person; it is the aspect of you that is creative, it can open up new dimensions within you.

Every thought that you think goes out into the universe for eternity and my definition of the universe is that it is the sum total of all thought on every level. Each one of you has chosen your physical body as a means of finding and fulfilling your mission in this lifetime, whatever that may be. It means choosing a physical body that is born into an environment that is going to provide the kind of challenges that your spirit feels it needs in this lifetime.

Part of the fulfilment of your mission is to discover what it is and I would like to feel that any education system actually incorporated into it some form of study and understanding that would enable each spirit to gain a sense of why it is here. And if you think about it, it is of fundamental importance that such a realisation takes place. This is what your life is about; this is why you have chosen to be here at this time. However powerful your spirit, however much wisdom it has attained over its many lifetimes before coming into this physical body on Earth, what does it mean without that realisation? What is it you are trying to achieve?

Life in the physical body gives you experience that you cannot attain in spirit: expressing emotions in a physical way, watching your own physical body respond to your mode of living. Every time something happens that seems to indicate that your physical body is not functioning well or has a dis-ease, it is usually reflecting your way of living, your inability to cope with the challenges that you have set yourself.

So what am I suggesting? Am I suggesting that from the age of one you should start meditating? No, of course not, because the first seven years of a child's life is about discovery, finding out about your physical body; making that connection between the spirit, the heart and the mind. I consider that, in the first seven years, it is of paramount importance that a child is given the opportunity to express itself in a creative way, with pain, with drawing, with playing creating games, being part of games – extending that imaginative and creative side. Now I think that that is more important at this early age than an orthodox view on education which focuses on reading, writing and arithmetic. You see, in exploring the creative part of the psyche at this early age, it is preparing the spirit to move forward in a much more expansive way which will give it a much greater opportunity to discover its inner potential.

Sound and music are also an important part of those seven years. Remember that in choosing your body, you have chosen a way forward that will be both limited and yet advantaged by the environment into which you have been born. If you have chosen an environment where you are very hemmed in, then the greater the challenge to break out in a non-destructive way. If you were born into a very free environment, then the challenge is to find the boundaries to contain yourself.

So whichever you have chosen, whether it is an over- boundaried or an under-boundaried one, the challenges are similar – to find the balance. And that balance can be helped by your tutors, and by your parents who are perhaps your greatest tutors.

Being a parent is a tremendous responsibility for you are bringing that spirit into the world. The first part of its life is the discovery of the physical body that it has chosen, handling the question, have I chosen the right body? Now you may laugh at this, but it is in the first three 7-year periods of life, up to 7, up to14 and up to 21, that there is a tremendous challenge in coming to terms with the physical body that you have chosen. It is rather like buying a new car, at first it feels wonderful doesn't it? And then you begin to find the good things about it and the not so good things about it. You have to be patient and you have to learn the best way of driving it, the best way of treating it, learning to love it, loving it for its good points and its bad points.

Many difficulties, especially in teenagers when puberty sets in, are the accumulated disillusionment by some spirits at the body they have chosen. That is a very important thing to consider if you are in a position where you are living with, working with or teaching young people. You should not be trying to cram that physical brain with a load of facts and figures, you should be trying to nourish a whole person who can regard themselves as whole, seeing their advantages, seeing their disadvantages, and finding harmony between the two. Between 7 and 14 is a time when both the right and left brain really start to develop. It is a time when you start to analyse, balancing the logical with the developing emotions, dealing with your parents - trying to understand them, beginning to see them as they really are. How do they compare with other parents, with other adults, with your teachers and of course your peers? Who are you and how do you differ from your parents?

For me, education is something very much more than bringing facts and figures into the analytical and logical part of the brain. It is about bringing sound, colour, physical movement and resonance into that young life. It is about showing that child how it can create boundaries that are not shackles, but are actually a means of stepping forward.

So my concept of education would place a much wider emphasis on the creative process. It would place a much wider emphasis on music, all types of music, not just one specific type because music reflects where you are; it is reflects your needs. There is no better or worse form of music, each represents a kind of chakric expression. What I mean by that is that music can represent the highest chakras and aspirations within you and also a totally physical level stimulating that physical part of your being. Music needs to help a person integrate on all levels.

I would like to see much more attention given to the artistic and creative sides of education, irrespective of the way in which that child is specialising. Because over specialisation is one of the first steps to the destruction of the human psyche; over-specialisation is like going down a narrow road that gets narrower and narrower, until you cannot see. Your mind can become full of figures and thoughts that are so restrictive that all levels of inspiration and creativity are suppressed.

This doesn't mean to say that you can't have scientists, mathematicians and deep and structured thinkers, of course you can; but they need to be able to use their talents and expand their minds in a much broader way.

The third seven-year period is when that spirit should be in a position of really touching the inner part of its being. You use mysterious words like psychic, meditation and yoga. I endorse all of these words, but I would like to sum it up by saying, try to think through your heart, not just your brain. Allow the thought to come up through your heart into your mind and think down from your mind into your heart because through that you can contact that spiritual innovative, creative side of you, touching the very spiritual aspect of you that carries that inner wisdom.

From the moment a spirit is created by the Godhead, it starts to accumulate wisdom. My definition of wisdom is the ability to look beyond knowledge and allow the sensitive side of one's being to reach within in order to reach out into the realms of the universe. So in that sense, of course, everyone is sensitive and intuitive, everyone has the ability to reach inside to reach out. And if you want to bring what you understand as spirituality into your education, that comes from within; for every spirit is created by God, therefore every spirit is a part of God, and you can contact God through your own spirit. It does not have to be contacted through any external source; it is reaching in to reach out.

Education is not something that stops when you leave school or college or university. It is something that goes on until you decide to leave the physical body and move into another dimension, either to come back into another lifetime or perhaps to move on if you feel that you have learnt all that you need to learn from physical life, from physical experience. For learning is not only about reading and factual information. It is about being; it is about looking at your life so far and saying to yourself, what have I done? And then saying, I have done a great deal. There is no such thing as failure, equally there is no such thing as success. So you don't have to be intellectually or emotionally competitive, you can just be yourself, for in yourself you stand as you are, accepting yourself in that moment of being, that moment of time. Every experience has its own value, its own education, its own spiritual breadth.

As you go on from 21 to 28 to 35 to 42 to 49 to 56 to 63 to 70 to 77 and so on, each one of those periods takes you further down a track of experience and one of the most difficult is from 21 to 28. It is a very impatient time for most people. It is a time when you haven't really had the opportunity to get the whole spirit surfacing, when it is tempting to become over-confident. And then as you approach the age of 30 things start to change for in the next 7-year period there is a broadening out, preparing you for the period that takes you from 35 to 42. 42 is a milestone when you evaluate your life and say either, this is where I want to be; or you say, this is where I need to be at this moment and I am going to step forward, I am going to open this door, that door, I am going to change my direction. Where do you want to be? What do you want to find?

When I look around your planet at the education systems and what you look upon as important criteria, I feel very sorry for many people because they feel that they are selling themselves short. They feel that they have got to be greater, that they are stuck, they don't know which way to turn next. There is no 'way' to turn next, there is only listening inside and allowing yourself to evolve. The closer you can become in harmony with your inspiration, in harmony with your karmic need, the more clearly you begin to understand and to see why you have chosen your particular body.

Some experiences seem 'good', some seem 'bad' but from my perspective there is no such thing as 'bad experience', there is only experience. Whatever happens in any lifetime there is always something to be learned from it. That is real education, that is how you need to educate yourselves – through acceptance, through honouring your vulnerability, through allowing yourselves to be where you know inside you need to be. This is where you begin to move beyond the need to please others into the wonderful energy of being yourself and allowing others to see you in your true light. Allowing your light to shine like a beacon.

In being yourself, in speaking your mind, in walking your talk – you match your loyalty with another's loyalty. It is about understanding why others respond to you in the way that they do. When you feel injured or hurt, try and accept it as an expression of your own vulnerability and say, OK, this is how it has been. But today is the first day of the rest of my life and I am no longer going to allow myself to feel put down. I am no longer going to give away my power to the world because I am frightened to take hold of it myself. For in taking hold of it yourself, empowering yourself - that is when your true inner vision begins to manifest. That is true education.

So education is about all these things. Of course it is about studying, of course it is about learning, but it is also about 'being'. And in a world that is becoming increasingly technical, increasingly electronic, increasingly Aquarian – don't lose sight of that inner being, of that emotional side that needs to be able to express itself. Find a part of your holiday in every day that you live, not in just a week or two weeks in a year. If you only find ten minutes in a day when you allow your heart to sing, then that is living, that is experiencing, that is growing, that is education!

I would like to give this message to your government and to every government on the planet. For education is not about intellectual cloning, it is not about statistics. Remember what I said about history - it is to be learned from, not lived to. So stretch out, move forward, expand, feel laughter in your heart, allow that creative side of you to blossom.

I want to explain what I mean by this creative side. It isn't about becoming a Picasso or a Rembrant because, in a strange sort of way they were very stuck people. I am talking about allowing a natural rhythm within to express itself. It is not saying, I have to be a great artist, I have to be a great musician, I have to be a great this or that. And it is not about expressing that creativity in an angry way if that is the only way you can express it. It is about finding an inner harmony, an inner love, something that is so subtle, so gentle, something that gives the word love a new inner meaning.

So I feel that all forms of education should give adequate opportunity for children, of whatever age, to be able to express their inner creativity and not be put down by adults who are trying to organise their lives for them. Parents' responsibility is to enable their children to be where they need to be, not where the parents think they need to be. It is a very simple remit, isn't it. What I am suggesting? I am saying that education is not just about knowledge, it is about finding that inner and outer wisdom, allowing the creative, intuitive, inspirational parts of you to expand in such a way that it makes your heart sing and brings something into your life that cannot be found in any other way.

So, ladies and gentlemen, that is my case for presenting an Aquarian educational system, very different to the model proposed by most governments and education authorities. They need to move beyond their fear, as do parents also. Surely the most important thing you want to see in your children is that they find fulfilment and fulfilment means expression on every level.

You talk about whether schools should be following certain religions or certain ways. As I see it, all schools should provide pupils with an all-embracing understanding of the major beliefs, so that their spiritual understanding can become inspirational from within rather than prescriptive from without. One approach is limiting, down a narrow path, the other is opening out into an infinite universe of understanding and wisdom.

So thank you for listening to me, I hope I have given you a new slant on education and as ever I am here to answer any questions that you may have.

I have a question H-A. It is about what part nature can play in children's education. You talk about us being, but there is also the being of nature and where we actually live and I feel that a lot of the creativity could come from contact with nature. I was wondering how things could be in the future.

I 100% endorse everything that you say. I have spoken in general terms; I have not been specific. But, of course, a most important aspect of education is an understanding of other forms of evolution on this planet: the earth kingdoms, the animal kingdoms, the plant kingdoms, the mineral kingdoms and so forth, so that children can be brought up to respect and to see these kingdoms in a new light. For example, to appreciate the colour and beauty of the trees and flowers and plants; to understand that a vegetable isn't just something that you eat, but is a living, growing thing and that if it is grown naturally in a balanced organic way, it will provide an energy for your body that a synthetically grown 'tortured' vegetable is unable to offer you. I cannot put it more strongly than that. An organic food is grown as nature intends and is whole. It is a natural part of the planet's evolution.

Humankind really has to learn that in trying to change the genes and structure of foods, they can seriously damage their own future growth and that of their descendants and the future population. Otherwise they will create new illnesses and diseases that will cause tremendous distress, pain and suffering in the short, medium and long term. Does that answer your question sir?

It does yes.

You see the spirits that choose to evolve through plants, fruit, vegetables and indeed, animals, have chosen to allow themselves to be eaten as food. That is the experience that they have chosen. And if a person is going to eat a fish, a bird or part of an animal, the more organic and pure it is, the more whole the energy that it imparts. But if the animal is kept in torturous conditions, if it has to suffer abominably in order to create more money for those who produce it, then it creates an anger, it creates negative energy. So you are consuming anger, you are consuming negative energy. No wonder the levels of stress are increasing and although human beings on one level are living longer, they are not living more healthily.

I put it to you, not only for the present generations, but for future generations, there are no alternatives. Humankind, collectively, must decide if it wishes to choose a route that ignores the basic principles of nature. If that is the collective choice of humankind, so be it. Thank you.

And that is an important part of education too, isn't it? Understanding the wholeness and the togetherness of the different forms of evolution.

I am very interested in your thoughts on something, H-A. It is to do with learning history. A large part of creating our children's awareness is to make them aware of the continuum of the historical scenario that they have found themselves in. And the more I think about it, the more it forms a very strong part of education as I experienced it from science through to literature.

It is interesting that while we are trying to become more global, there is still a very strong emphasis on local history and I am just curious about how we break away from that. Because on one level, being aware of your continuum is very important, but on the same level being aware of someone else's continuum is also important. It is a tricky one. We are becoming more global and at the same time wanting to re-connect with our own roots, so there is an opposite effect going on, in that whilst we are becoming more global, some communities are becoming more insular. Whether this is a response to losing our identities, I am curious to know what your thoughts are.