The purpose of the teaching

We are frequently asked, "What is the purpose of the teaching?" There are, of course many purposes but we will assume that for the moment that the question refers to the ultimate purpose. The ultimate purpose of the teaching is to prepare the student to be capable of being aware of the many levels of consciousness or inner feeling available to be able to choose and generate or bring into being any level of consciousness so desired, because many areas of service can only be rendered when in a given state of consciousness or being. Healing, for instance, cannot be practiced while in a state of consciousness called fear, nor in the state called anger, etc.
Many of the ideas of the teaching are to make the student aware of the usual states of consciousness by the use of tools such as the picture of man, the Tone scale, etc.
Much work on self knowing is necessary before the potential student can remove the obstructions to higher states of consciousness, thus the reason for schools. Only by being at least somewhat familiar with the possibility of many states of consciousness can the student begin the work of actualizing these states of consciousness in his or her own being. This is a stage wherein the potential student becomes a student.
Many people are present in a school setting who first must attain a desirable state of well-being before they could first be considered a potential student. Some have to learn first the most fundamental knowledge of how not to destroy the body, then how not to disintegrate the whole being. Being a potential student, much less being a student, requires to much energy energy for sick or disintegrating persons to be involved. So in a school situation many levels of work are going on at the same time. First, to make possible the transformation of sleeping, disintegrating persons into potential students, then the transformation of potential students into students, then students into beings who experience any level of consciousness required for the task at hand.