The Children and their Teacher

The students were exasperated by their dreadfully strict teacher, who never allowed them a moment’s respite. Every day, they conjured up naughty plans to distract him but somehow never managed to fool him. One day, the cleverest of the boys, who was also the most streetwise, came up with a bril­liant plan. As his classmates gathered around him after school, he explained to them.

“Tomorrow morning when we come to school, I’ll approach the master first and ask him how he feels and why he’s looking so pale. I’ll wish him well and say that he should take better care of himself. Then, you all should fol­low my lead and one after the other repeat the same questions so that we can instill doubt in his heart. After the fifth or sixth person, surely he must begin to wonder whether we’ve got a point or not. When thirty of us have told him the same thing, he’ll have no choice but to believe us and let us off school at least for a couple of days.”

The boys were all excited and commended the clever boy for his astute idea. The boy made them all promise not to tell their parents and stick to their scheme. The next morning, the students were all on time and awaited the arrival of the clever boy, for they could not begin their plot without him. As soon as he arrived, they nodded to each other and one by one entered the classroom.

“Good morning to you, sir. Are you all right sir? Why do you seem so pale this fine morning?” said the clever boy to the teacher cunningly.

“I’m perfectly fine. What are you blabbering about? Go sit down in your seat,” the teacher ordered the boy in his usual abrasive manner.

The first seed of doubt had been planted. The students then walked into the classroom one after the other and each addressed the teacher in turn, commenting with concern on the latter’s health. Despite his repeated denials, the teacher slowly began to believe the boys, as he had heard the same remark about his pale countenance thirty times. He began to shiver and actually feel feverish. Soon, he was hastily packing his papers and books and hurrying home, with thirty boys in tow.

All the way home, he was thinking about how his wife had recently been neglecting him, and how despite all his kindness and generosity she’d been wishing him ill. Entertaining these negative thoughts about his innocent wife, the teacher hastened through the narrow backstreets to his humble home, while the boys followed him closely every step of the way.

He slammed the front door noisily, intending thus to announce his untimely arrival to his wife as he entered their house. When she saw that he had returned from school so early, she quickly approached him and inquired about his health.

“Are you blind? Don’t you see how sick I am? You’re such a hypocrite! You can very well see how awful I’m feeling, yet you pretend that nothing’s the matter with me!” he retorted.

“My darling, what are you saying? You must be suffering from delusions. Nothing is the matter with you!” his wife said, trying to appease his anger.

“You’re despicable; you’re a horrid woman! Can’t you see my sorry state? Is it my fault that you’re blind and deaf to my needs?” he continued, cruelly slandering his wife.

“I’m going to bring you the mirror so you can see for yourself that nothing’s the matter with you.”

“To hell with your mirror! You’ve always hated me and wished me the worst. Go and prepare my bed, I need to rest!”

The woman was stunned, unable to move or decide what she should do, when her husband screamed at her: “Get going, you good-for-nothing! Do you want me to pass out right here?”

The woman decided to remain quiet and do as he asked; otherwise, he might indeed think that she had foul intentions, and he could truly turn nasty. Thus, she prepared his bedding on the floor and left him with his students, who had accompanied him into the house. The boys gathered around his bed and began to review their lesson loudly, having been instructed by their ring­leader to make as much noise as possible to exacerbate their teacher’s fantasy headache.

“Quiet!” snapped the teacher. “Quiet, I said! Go home. Leave me in peace.”

The students were free at last; wishing their teacher all the health in the world, they practically flew out of his house. They didn’t go home, though, and instead remained in the streets, playing various games that they’d long fantasized about. Their mothers, however, soon found out that their sons had skipped school, and when they found them on the streets they reprimanded them, refusing to accept that they’d been excused by their teacher. They threat­ened to visit the teacher’s home the next day and find out the truth. And so they did. They found the poor man lying miserably under several duvets, sweating like a pig and moaning in pain.

“Dear sir, forgive us, for we didn’t believe our sons,” confessed the women. “Now we can see for ourselves how ill you really are! May God grant you a long, healthy life.”

“I’m actually grateful to your perceptive sons for having detected my malady,” said the teacher gratefully. “I was so intent on teaching them that I had totally ignored my own health. If it hadn’t been for them, I’d have soon been dead for certain!”

And such was the fate of the ignorant teacher, who’d been fooled by base­less repetition and indoctrination conducted by mere children.

The END

Learnings

1: This story is a beautiful depiction of the power of words. Although the teacher was totally fine, he still believed the words of his students and started feeling ill and he eventually became ill. That's how external wordplay works on us. Take time to ponder how your words have changed life, for good or bad for others whom you have interacted with powerfully.

2: This story brings out the power of suggestions and how our conditions are being shaped by the opinions around us. We may be doing something good but when the people around us start pointing out mistakes in our work, it makes us feel that we are not good and we start feeling depressed. This story is giving an opportunity to all of us to pause for a moment and think about the areas where the suggestions of others have created tremendous changes in our thinking and emotional patterns.

3: As the student gave the teacher suggestions of him being ill, we can also give people elevating auto suggestions which can improve the condition of others. Use this powerful technique in a positive way. One should always use this technique in creative and positive way so that the receiver benefits and the suggestion germinates into a beautiful tree

4: One must be strong willed so that he is not affected by the outside suggestions which are not conducive for oneself. The strong will gives us protection from such negative suggestions.

5: We are constantly bombarded with such an auto-suggestions by the world around us. How we can save ourselves? This can be handled by discrimination. Whenever a desire or a thought arises in the mind (either spontaneously or driven by outside influence) we need to carefully scrutinize it and reject what is not good for us.

6: This story also illustrates how the power of repetition works. When 30 students spoke of the same thing, it created a powerful thought form and students were able to impact the teacher’s thinking.

7: Our words have the power of creation and destruction, we should be very careful with what we speak. What those students have done is in the playful mood to get a holiday, but it has created havoc in the life of the teacher. He really becomes sick. The students are oblivious to what wrong they have done or what they have created but we can see that by giving wrong suggestions, we can alter the course of a good life. Words have so much power that we can create or destroy someone’s life. God forbid, if something bad happens to the teacher, students may not understand now, but later on when they realize their mistake, they would feel guilty for life!

8: So-called ‘facts’ in our life may not be absolute truths. Looking from the Mother's point of view, we can see that the teacher was sick and from that perspective the students were right. However, the teacher’s becoming sick is a result of wrong suggestions given by students! Even if the teacher being sick is a fact, the reason for it is an unwholesome act of students.

9: This is called the self fulfilling Prophecy, where we get so much entangled in our own creation that we do not remember whether it is an exogenous event or something created by us. If we try to broaden our horizons, we will see that whatever we are finding in our lives has been created by us. All the things experienced by our mind are nothing but our own creation. A lot of times family members/relatives/ friends say something either intentionally or unintentionally and it leaves a big mark on us. Than our mind starts working on it and it becomes our own story and we forget that the root of this story was created by outside influence. Think deeply about how you have witnessed a situation which was actually not created by you, but you have taken it to be fact. And we end up making that situation a ‘truth’ of our lives. And it leads to endless suffering!

STORY CREDIT: The Book of Rumi: 105 Stories and Fables that Illumine, Delight, and Inform

by Rumi. Translated by Maryam Mafi. Foreword by Narguess Farzad.