Fundamental Education 

CHAPTER XX

VOCATION

With the exception of persons who are totally disabled, every human being has to do something useful in life.  The difficult thing is to know what each individual is useful for.

If there is something truly important in this world, it is to know ourselves.  Rare are those who know themselves, and even if it seems unbelievable, it is difficult to find someone in life who has developed their vocational sense.

When someone is fully convinced of the role that they must play in existence, then they make their vocation into a mission, a religion, and they become in fact and in their own right an apostle of humanity.

Those who know their vocation or who are able to discover it for themselves go through a tremendous change.  They no longer seek success and they are not much interested in money, fame and gratitude; their pleasure is now in the happiness provided them by having responded to a deep, unknown, innermost call of their own interior essence.

The most interesting thing in all of this is that the vocational sense has nothing to do with the I, since although it seems strange, the I abhors our own vocation, because the I only craves big paychecks, position, fame, etc.

The sense of vocation is something that belongs to our own inner Essence; it is something very internal, very deep, very intimate.

The sense of vocation leads the human being to undertake the most tremendous enterprises with true boldness and true selflessness at the cost of sufferings and ordeals of all kinds, so it’s hardly unusual that the I would abhor one’s true vocation.

In fact, the sense of vocation leads us down the path of legitimate heroism, even if we have to stoically endure every kind of infamy, betrayal and slander.

The day that a person can truly say, “I know who I am and what my true vocation is”, from that instant that person will begin to live with true integrity and love.  A person like that lives in their work and their work lives in them.

Really, there are very few people who can speak that way with true sincerity of heart.  Those who speak like that are the select few, people who have the sense of vocation in the highest degree.  

Finding our true vocation is without a doubt the most serious of social problems, the problem that is at the very foundation of all of society’s problems.

To find or to discover our true individual vocation is, as a matter of fact, equivalent to discovering a very precious treasure.

When a citizen finds with total certainty and beyond all doubt their true and legitimate occupation, by just this fact alone they become irreplaceable.

When our true vocation corresponds totally and absolutely to the position we occupy in life, we then perform our work as a true apostolate, without any greed and without desire for power.

Then, instead of producing in us greed, boredom or desires to change our profession, our work brings us true, profound, innermost happiness, even if we have to patiently endure painful difficulties.

In practice we have been able to verify that when a person’s job doesn’t correspond to their vocation,  they then think only in terms of more.

More is the mechanism of the I.  More money, more fame, more projects, etc., etc., etc., and it's not unusual for the person to become a hypocrite, abusive, cruel, merciless, inflexible, etc. 

If we carefully study bureaucracy we can verify that rarely in life does the job correspond to the person’s vocation.

If we study the different working class trade unions closely, we can evince that the trade very rarely corresponds to the individual vocation. 

When we carefully observe the privileged classes, whether they be from the East or the West, we can verify the total lack of a vocational sense.  The so-called “good kids” now commit armed robbery, violate defenseless women, etc., in order to kill boredom.  Not having found their place in life, they go around disoriented and become rebels without a cause, just to “change things up a little.”

The chaotic state of humanity in these times of worldwide crisis is frightful.

No one is content with their work because their job doesn’t correspond to their vocation.  Job applications pour in because no one wants to starve, but the applications don’t correspond to the vocation of the applicants.

Many drivers should have been doctors or engineers.  Many lawyers should have been ministers and many ministers should have been tailors.  Many shoe shiners should have been ministers, and many ministers should have been shoe shiners, etc., etc.

People are in jobs that don’t belong to them, that have nothing to do with their true individual vocation, and due to this the social machinery functions terribly.  This is like a motor that was built with pieces that don’t belong in it, and the result must inevitably be disaster, failure, absurdity.

In practice we have been able to verify to complete satisfaction that when someone does not have the vocational disposition to be a guide, a religious instructor, a political leader or a director of some spiritual, scientific, literary, or philanthropic association, etc., then that person thinks only in terms of more, and they dedicate themselves to projects and more projects with unmentionable secret purposes.

It is obvious that when the job doesn’t correspond to the individual vocation, the result is exploitation.

In these terribly materialistic times in which we live, the position of teacher is being arbitrarily occupied by many merchants who don’t have the least vocation for teaching.  The result of such infamy is exploitation, cruelty and lack of true love.

Many people take up teaching with the exclusive purpose of making money to pay for their medical school, law school or engineering school, or simply because they haven’t found anything else to do.  The victims of this kind of intellectual fraud are the students.

The true vocational teacher is very difficult to find these days and it is the greatest happiness that school, college and university students can come to have.

The teacher’s vocation is wisely interpreted by Gabriela Mistral’s moving piece of prose titled “The Teacher's Prayer”.  The small-town schoolteacher, addressing the Divine, the Secret Master, says:

Grant me such devoted love for my school that not even beauty's flame will detract from my faithful tenderness.  Master, make my fervor long-lasting and my disillusion brief.  Uproot from me this impure desire for justice that still troubles me, the petty protest that rises up within me when I am hurt. Let not the incomprehension of others trouble me, or the forgetfulness of those I have taught sadden me.

Let me be more maternal than a mother; able to love and defend with all of a mother's fervor the child that is not flesh of my flesh.  Grant that I may be successful in molding one of my pupils into a perfect poem, and let me leave within her my deepest-felt melody that she may sing for you when my lips shall sing no more.

Make me strong in my faith that your Gospel is possible in my time, so that I do not renounce the daily battle to make it live.

Who can measure the marvelous psychic influence of a teacher inspired thus with so much tenderness by her sense of her vocation?

Individuals come across their vocations in one of three ways.  First:  self-discovery of a special capacity.  Second:  the vision of an urgent need.  Third:  the very rare direction of their parents and teachers who discovered the vocation of the student by means of the observation of his or her aptitudes.

Many people have discovered their vocation in a certain critical moment of their life, confronted with a situation that cried out for an immediate remedy.

Gandhi was just an ordinary lawyer when because of an assault on the rights of the Hindus in South Africa he cancelled his return trip to India and stayed to defend the cause of his compatriots.  A momentary necessity set him on the path toward his entire life’s vocation.

The great benefactors of humanity have found their vocation when faced with a situational crisis that demanded an immediate remedy.  Let’s remember Oliver Cromwell, the father of English liberties; Benito Juarez, who forged the new Mexico; Jose de San Martin and Simon Bolivar, fathers of South American independence, etc., etc.

Jesus the Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Hermes, Zoroaster, Confucius, Fu Hsi, etc., were men who at a certain moment of history know how to comprehend their true vocation and felt called by the inner voice that comes from the Innermost.

Fundamental Education is called to discover, by various methods the latent capacities of students.  The methods that the outdated pedagogy is using in this day and age to discover the vocations of its pupils are, without any doubt, cruel, absurd and cold-blooded.

The vocational questionnaires have been created by merchants who arbitrarily occupy the teachers’ positions.

In some countries, before entering high schools and vocational schools, students are submitted to the most horrible psychological cruelties.  They give them questions about mathematics, civics, biology, etc. 

The cruelest things of these methods are the famous psychological TESTS, the index of I.Q. intimately related with mental swiftness.

According to the type of answer, and according to how they qualify, the student is then imprisoned in one of the three baccalaureates. First: Physical Mathematics, second:

Biological Sciences, Third: Social Sciences.

Engineers, architects, astronomers, aviators, etc. come out from the Physical Mathematics.

Pharmacists, nurses, biologists, doctors, etc. come out from the Biological Sciences.

Lawyers, writers, doctors in philosophy and literature, corporate directors, etc. come out from the Social Sciences.

The study program of each country is different and it is clear that the three different baccalaureates do not exist in all countries. In many countries there exists only one baccalaureate and having completed it the pupil goes on to the University. In some nations the VOCATIONAL ability of the student is not tested and he enters a faculty with the desire of having a profession to earn a living even when this profession does not coincide with his innate tendencies, with his VOCATIONAL sense.

There are countries where the VOCATIONAL ability of the students is tested and there are nations where it is not tested. It is absurd not to know how to VOCATIONALLY orient students, to not test their abilities and innate tendencies. Stupid are the VOCATIONAL questionnaires and all that jargon of questions, PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS, IQ indexes, etc.

Those methods of VOCATIONAL tests are useless because the mind has its moments of crisis and if the test is done in one of these moments, the result is failure, and disorientation for the student.

Teachers have been able to verify that the students’ minds have, like the sea, high and low tides, its plus and its minus. There exists a biorhythm in masculine and feminine glands. There also exists a biorhythm for the mind.

At specific times the masculine glands are found in PLUS and the feminine glands in MINUS or vice-versa. The mind also has its PLUS and its MINUS.

We suggest to whoever wants to know the science of BIORHYTHM to study the famous work titled BICRHYTHM written by the eminent sage, the ROSICRUCIAN GNOSTIC, Doctor Arnold Krumm Heller, Doctor Colonel of the Mexican Army and Professor at the Faculty of Medicine in Berlin.

We emphatically affirm that an emotional crisis or a state of psychic nervousness, when faced with the difficult situation of an exam can lead the student to failure during the prevocational exam.

We affirm that any abuse of the motor center produced perhaps by sports, by an excessive walk or by arduous physical work, etc. can originate an INTELLECTUAL crisis even when the mind is found in PLUS and leads the student to failure during the prevocational exam.

We affirm that any crisis related with the instinctive center, perhaps in combination with sexual pleasure or with the emotional center, etc. can lead the student to failure during the prevocational exam.

We affirm that any sexual crisis, a spell of suppressed sexuality, sexual abuse, etc. can exert a disastrous influence on the mind leading it to failure during a prevocational exam.

Fundamental education teaches that the vocational germs are found deposited not only in the intellectual center but also in each of the other four centers of the psychophysiology of the organic machine.

It is urgent to take into account the five psychic centers called Intellect, Emotion, Movement, Instinct and Sex.

It is absurd to think that the intellect is the only center of Cognition. If the Intellectual center is examined exclusively with the purpose of discovering vocational attitudes of a specific individual, besides committing a grave injustice that results, for a fact, very damaging to the individual and to society, an error is incurred because the germs of vocation are not only found contained in the intellectual center, but also found in each of the other four psycho-physiological centers of the individual.

The only obvious path that exists to discover the true vocation of pupils is TRUE LOVE

If parents and teachers join, by mutual agr4ement, to investigate in the home and at school, to observe, in detail, all the actions of the students they would discover the innate tendencies of each student.

That is the only obvious path that will permit parents and teachers to discover the vocational sense of students.

This demands true LOVE from parents and teachers and it is obvious that if true love does not exist from parents and authentic vocational teachers, capable of truly sacrificing themselves for their disciples, then such an enterprise is then impractical.

If governments truly want to save society, they need to expel the merchants from the temple with the lash of willpower.

A new cultural age should be initiated, diffusing everywhere the doctrine of FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATION.

Students should defend their rights courageously and demand true vocational teachers from the governments. Fortunately there exists the formidable weapon of strikes and students have this weapon.

In some countries there already exists within schools, colleges and universities, certain guiding teachers that are really not vocational; the position that they occupy does not coincide with their innate tendencies. These teachers cannot orient the rest because they cannot even orient themselves.

True vocational teachers capable of intelligently orienting pupils are needed with urgency

It is necessary to know that due to the plurality of the “l”, the human being automatically represents diverse roles in the theatre of life. Boys and girls have a role for school, another for the street and another for the home.

If one wants to discover the VOCATION of a young person, one has to observe them at school, at home, and even on the street.

This work of observation can only be carried out by parents and true teachers in intimate partnership.

Among the antiquated pedagogy there also exists the system of observing grades to deduce vocation. The pupil that excels in civics with the highest grades is then classified as a possible lawyer and the one who excels in biology is defined as a potential doctor and he who excels in mathematics, as a possible engineer.

This absurd system of deducing VOCATIONS is too empirical because the mind has its highs and lows, not only in the total form now known but also in certain, particular, special states.

Many writers who in school were terrible students of grammar excelled in life as true masters of the language. Many noteworthy engineers always had in school the worst grade in mathematics and multitudes of doctors went to school failing in biology and natural sciences.

It is unfortunate that many parents instead of studying their children’s aptitudes only see in them the continuation of their beloved EGO, psychological “I”, their MYSELF.

Many lawyer fathers want their children to continue in the lawyer’s office and many business owners want their children to continue handling their egotistical interests without being the least bit interested in the vocational sense of their children.

The “I” wants to always ascend, climb to the top of the staircase, make itself felt and when their ambitions fail then they want to obtain, through their children, what they could not obtain for themselves. These ambitious parents put their boys and girls into careers and positions that have nothing to do with their VOCATIONAL SENSE.

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(NOTE: Some of the translation set forth here was not made by the administrators of this web site, though we have made some revisions.)