When one is very young and as I say
“well-born”, that is, born with a conscious psychic being within, there is
always, in the dreams of the child, a kind of aspiration, which for its child’s
consciousness is a sort of ambition, for something which would be beauty
without ugliness, justice without injustice, goodness without limits, and a
conscious, constant success, a perpetual miracle. One dreams of miracles when
one is young, one wants all wickedness to disappear, everything to be always
luminous, beautiful, happy, one likes stories which end happily. This is what
one should rely on. When the body feels its miseries, its limitations, one must
establish this dream in it - of a strength which would have no limit, a beauty
which would have no ugliness, and of marvellous capacities: one dreams of being
able to rise into the air, of being wherever it is necessary to be, of setting
things right when they go wrong, of healing the sick; indeed, one has all sorts
of dreams when one is very young.... Usually parents or teachers pass their
time throwing cold water on it, telling you, “Oh! it’s a dream, it is not a
reality.” They should do the very opposite! Children should be taught, “Yes,
this is what you must try to realise and not only is it possible but it is
certain if you come in contact with the part in you which is capable of doing
this thing. This is what should guide your life, organise it, make you develop
in the direction of the true reality which the ordinary world calls illusion.”
This is what it should be, instead of making
children ordinary, with that dull, vulgar common sense which becomes an
inveterate habit and, when something is going well, immediately brings up in
the being the idea: “Oh, that won’t last!”, when somebody is kind, the
impression, “Oh, he will change!”, when one is capable of doing something, “Oh,
tomorrow I won’t be able to do it so well.” This is like an acid, a destructive
acid in the being, which takes away hope, certitude, confidence in future
possibilities.
When a child is full of enthusiasm, never
throw cold water on it, never tell him, “You know, life is not like that!” You
should always encourage him, tell him, “Yes, at present things are not always
like that, they seem ugly, but behind this there is a beauty that is trying to
realise itself. This is what you should love and draw towards you, this is what
you should make the object of your dreams, of your ambitions.”
And if you do this when you are very small,
you have much less difficulty than if later on you have to undo, undo all the
bad effects of a bad education, undo that kind of dull and vulgar common sense
which means that you expect nothing good from life, which makes it insipid,
boring, and contradicts all the hopes, all the so-called illusions of beauty.
On the contrary, you must tell a child—or yourself if you are no longer quite a
baby - “Everything in me that seems
unreal, impossible, illusory, that is what is true, that is what I must
cultivate.”When you have these aspirations: “Oh, not to be always limited by
some incapacity, all the time held back by some bad will!”, you must cultivate
within you this certitude that that is what is essentially true and that is
what must be realised.
Then faith awakens in the cells of the body.
And you will see that you find a response in your body itself. The body itself will
feel that if its inner will helps, fortifies, directs, leads, well, all its
limitations will gradually disappear.
And so, when the first experience comes,
which sometimes begins when one is very young, the first contact with the inner
joy, the inner beauty, the inner light, the first contact with that, which
suddenly makes you feel, “Oh! that is what I want,” you must cultivate it,
never forget it, hold it constantly before you, tell yourself, “I have felt it
once, so I can feel it again. This has been real for me, even for the space of
a second, and that is what I am going to revive in myself”.... And encourage
the body to seek it - to seek it, with the confidence that it carries that
possibility within itself and that if it calls for it, it will come back, it
will be realised again.
This is what should be done when one is
young. This is what should be done every time one has the opportunity to
recollect oneself, commune with oneself, seek oneself.
(CWM Volume
9, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1978, Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram,
Puducherry)
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