So, education’s sole objective should be to educate the mass of people how to change this world. To change the world, people have to know the actual reality of the world in due perspective and thereby to transcend that reality. If they know it, they will automatically want to change the undesirable societal condition of the world. On that condition, the teacher cannot parrot some methodological ideas which are barren and inefficacious. From the teacher a student will learn something and then he should be prompted to ask questions one after another to get plausible answers themselves with the aiding and abetting with the proper help and guidance from the attending teacher.
That is a two-way traffic and two-way-traffic education is truly dialogical and interactive. And interactive and dialogical education is the only proper way to educate the mass of people who are burning within themselves to change the unjust world. To reiterate it again, first and foremost they should know and be of the firm conviction that the world they live in is utterly an unjust one. Gaining this conviction is not just gaining in knowledge but remold one’s mindset with a vision, a vision that shows the new light at the end of the tunnel at the crossroad of life’s one and only true mission.

Freire is a Brazilian educator who conducted many educational workshops among the poor and illiterate peasants and factory workers of Latin American countries to lend a hand to their political education so that they could know the world better. And he returned with immense and enthusiastic responses from them. He says in his book, “In the midst of the argument a man who previously had been a factory worker for many years spoke out : ‘Perhaps I am the only one here of working class origin. I can’t say that I’ve understood everything you’ve said, but I can say one thing – when I begin this course I was naive, and when I found how naive I was, I started to get critical…’ ”

And getting critical is the bottomline of Freire’s pedagogy as far as the liberating education is concerned. It generates critical consciousness and that “conscientization” then cries for freedom from all shackles of oppression prevalent in the society. Freire says : “Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsively. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for the human completion.”

Now let us briefly point to the “culture of silence” which shackles the mindset of the wretched of the earth. The oppressors of the world do not like the idea that the wretched people never raise their voice against injustice and cry for their legitimate demand of freedom. It is rather that they remain “dumb dudes” meekly surrendering themselves to their existential fatalism. They should not get critical of their essences of existence reverberating in their political consciousness. And here lies the crux. As long as the oppressed people eschew the “culture of violence”, their juggernaut of economic appropriation and political shenanigans will roll on undisturbed and uninterrupted.

So, let them sing the songs of silence!

Philosophy is literally littered and splattered in all passions everywhere in this book. What kind of philosophy? Very simple spiritual and mystic in good measure – it is spiritual philosophy all the way. It is a spiritual odyssey into the human life and it particularly rests on the common people’s craving for life. That is why Gibran is called to be the peoples’ philosopher. His philosophy is just situational and is situated within the nitty-gritty elements of life.

It should reiterated that The Prophet is no common book of poetry, rather it is a book of philosophy passionately conveyed in verse and in impeccable simplicity. By the way Al Mustafa, the protagonist of The Prophet, leads us to ultimate destination and to a quest for meaning of life. Here Al Mustafa acts as the exponent of Gibran’s philosophy which he does in a prophetic manner of a sage. He preaches truth and wisdom with prophetic authority. Truth opens the vista to wisdom and wisdom explores the pulsating love for and unflinching adherence to life. That is the true beauty of wisdom. It is mystic in subtle sense. And a kind of mysticism not far removed from spiritualism is explicitly imbued in Gibran’s philosophy and literary works. That is why he is most often referred to mystic poet-painter William Blake (1757-1827). He had religiously carried his legacy to the point of revivalism and reaffirmed it in the faceless world of the 20th. Century.

I think in The prophet, Gibran has embarked on a mission to get to the meaning of death vis-vis life itself and to create a niche for death in life and this death instinct is very common with the mystics like Gibran. Like life itself, death has a strong metabolic consonance in life. As we can never disown life, so we cannot disown death either and in death only life becomes full and complete as though death is an open speculum in which life’s whole universe gets reflected in full gaiety so much so that we can do a thorough soul-searching in a trinity of time. The trinity of past, present and future are inflated and deflated simultaneously to give way to a flux of time in temporal space and in the process life is laid bare and at rest to the eternity’s sublime tranquility.

In The Prophet, Al Mustafa is all set to bid adieu to Orphalese to return back to the isle of his birth and for him to return back his ship is coming with the mist. Where will he return back? To the isle of his birth. Then the burning question prompts us to immediately ask that where he had been so long away from his home and hearth. He had been with his people alive with life’s full glory and that is where his home and hearth is. He had seen all and experienced everything of life with a sage’s wisdom. And now he is wise enough to leave a legacy and testimony to life for others to imbibe to life’s content.

He will deliver everything what he has gained all through his life. That everything’ is his wealth of wisdom. Now is the time to depart from this temporal space and to go back to his isle of birth where he will attain salvation. This salvation is a sort of mystical rebirth of his. So, he had had no right to prolong his stay. He had waited too long and at last he had got the call of his vehicle. He will board on that vehicle to carry him on to the path of salvation.

He will live in eternity but he will never be dead. His physical death ends only in spiritual birth, a beginning of a whole saga of life and death in continuity. That was why his beloved Almitra happened to hear him say at the departing moment :

“Forget not that I shall come back to you.
A little while, and my longing shall gather dust and foam for another body.
A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.”

So, he departs only to come back again and again. He will come back to the whirlwind of life in many lives and deaths. The Prophet cannot be mortal, he is immortal in his wisdom.