Students

Preparation of the Student

GYN AKSU

WHILE THE WESTERN thinker often confuses psychological

schools in the East with what he imagines religious colonies to

be, there is the matter of how the Westerner looks to the eastern

thinker. In a word, certainly in Afghanistan, the most honest

and sincere enquirer from Boston or Birmingham looks—

outlandish.

The main reason for this is not far to seek. All our training,

literal-minded as it is, looks for systems which can be compared

by anyone with an adequate familiarity with such literature as

is at our disposal. When we find these similarities we are pleased.

When we do not, we label all the things we have been looking at

as different from one another. The central fact which I have

understood from attempting to understand the study of

metaphysics in Central Asia is that the oriental is not 'oriental'

as we think him to be, more often than not. When he is unmoved

by something, it may be because he does not regard it as

important. We could go further, and say that he knows that it is unimportant. When he is cited by us as 'tolerant' of different beliefs, it may be that he regards them with comparative favour, because he may know of the essential unity of such creeds. 



But what strikes me as extremely important is to learn how he knows about importance and unimportance in things which we have to decide about through opinion; how he sees the essential unity in things which we regard as different, whether they be schools, ideas or formulae. His answer, one which we could well ponder if we will, is that these sensations of correctness and harmony, of identity and difference, are arrived at by the practice of certain techniques. This is summarised in: 'Prepare yourself, then learn.' The major technique for this seems to me to be an exercise in self-sensing, carefully carried out under direction and never as a task.

 

GYN AKSU was born in Sinkiang (Chinese

Turkistan) and has travelled and lived in the Gobi as

well as in Mongolia. He is fluent in many Far Eastern

languages and dialects. In this piece he emphasises

what he calls 'a major common denominator of Oriental

training, one of several which, for me, undoubtedly

underlie materials which can be called the survival of a

most ancient knowledge'.