by Ernest L. Norman

We have discussed, in part, the penal systems and institutions in the world about you, and emphasized rather strongly that the present corrective measures are only ways of trying to correct some very obvious fault which lies within the individual; that it has not occurred after he has become an adult but rather these corrective measures should be entered into while one is still a child! The ounce of prevention here is likewise recommended.

Speaking of the educational systems as children are taught in the schools about you, there has been some advancement in the buildings and in the extent to which the educational systems have been instituted in your civilization; yet they are but a step removed from the medieval times of the dark ages during the period of the Reformation. Just as are the penal institutions, and just as are the systems of psychiatry and medicine but a step in advance of these systems which were in use but a short period of time before. There is still much room for improvement in the educational systems as they exist for the children and the growing youngsters and teenagers of your time and day. I would remind you that the idea of vocational guidance is one which obviously has been rather sadly neglected. Usually, the child is left to grow up and become subjected to numerous pressures about him, until somewhere along in his adolescence, he becomes imbued with some idea that he would wish to become something or another. Now, this may be well and good to a certain extent, but we must remember that sometimes a child has been influenced by a psychic memory or an impingement from some previous lifetime. The child, in expressing such vocational aptitudes or desires is, in a sense of the word, merely wishing to work out a karmic condition which he may have incurred in a previous lifetime. Or, as I have said, he may be falsely pressured into adopting some vocation which he is entirely unsuited for and one in which he will quite likely waste a considerable portion of his life vainly trying to orient himself into performing and which will later become a very odious profession. (more…)