This little true thing in the child is the
divine Presence in the psychic - it is also there in plants and animals. In plants
it is not conscious, in animals it begins to be conscious, and in children it
is very conscious. I have known children who were much more conscious of their
psychic being at the age of five than at fourteen, and at fourteen than at twenty-five;
and above all, from the moment they go to school where they undergo that kind
of intensive mental training which draws their attention to the intellectual
part of their being, they lose almost always and almost completely this contact
with their psychic being.
If only you were an experienced observer, if
you could tell what goes on in a person, simply by looking into his eyes!...It
is said the eyes are the mirror of the soul; that is a popular way of speaking
but if the eyes do not express to you the psychic, it is because it is very far
behind, veiled by many things. Look carefully, then, into the eyes of little children,
and you will see a kind of light - some describe it as candid - but so true, so
true, which looks at the world with wonder. Well, this sense of wonder, it is
the wonder of the psychic which sees the truth but does not understand much
about the world, for it is too far from it. Children have this but as they
learn more, become more intelligent, more educated, this is effaced, and you
see all sorts of things in their eyes: thoughts, desires, passions, wickedness
- but this kind of little flame, so pure, is no longer there. And you may be
sure it is the mind that has got in there, and the psychic has gone very far
behind.
Even a child who does not have a sufficiently
developed brain to understand, if you simply pass on to him a vibration of protection
or affection or solicitude or consolation, you will see that he responds. But if
you take a boy of fourteen, for example, who is at school, who has ordinary
parents and has been ill-treated, his mind is very much in the forefront; there
is something hard in him, the psychic being has gone behind. Such boys do not
respond to the vibration. One would say they are made of wood or plaster.
************************
There is another quality which must be
cultivated in a child from a very young age: that is the feeling of uneasiness,
of a moral imbalance which it feels when it has done certain things, not
because it has been told not to do them, not because it fears punishment, but
spontaneously. For example, a child who hurts its comrade through mischief, if
it is in its normal, natural state, will experience uneasiness, a grief deep in
its being, because what it has done is contrary to its inner truth.
For in spite of all teachings, in spite of
all that thought can think, there is something in the depths which has a
feeling of a perfection, a greatness, a truth, and is painfully contradicted by
all the movements opposing this truth. If a child has not been spoilt by its
milieu, by deplorable examples around it, that is, if it is in the normal
state, spontaneously, without its being told anything, it will feel an
uneasiness when it has done something against the truth of its being. And it is
exactly upon this that later its effort for progress must be founded.
For, if you want to find one teaching, one
doctrine upon which to base your progress, you will never find anything - or to
be more exact, you will find something else, for in accordance with the
climate, the age, the civilisation, the teaching given is quite conflicting.
When one person says, “This is good”, another will say, “No, this is bad”, and
with the same logic, the same persuasive force. Consequently, it is not upon
this that one can build. Religion has always tried to establish a dogma, and it
will tell you that if you conform to the dogma you are in the truth and if you
don’t you are in the falsehood. But all this has never led to anything and has
only created confusion.
There is only one true guide, that is the
inner guide, who does not pass through the mental consciousness.
Naturally, if a child gets a disastrous
education, it will try ever harder to extinguish within itself this little true
thing, and sometimes it succeeds so well that it loses all contact with it, and
also the power of distinguishing between good and evil. That is why I insist
upon this, and I say that from their infancy children must be taught that there
is an inner reality - within themselves, within the earth, within the universe
- and that they, the earth and the universe exist only as a function of this
truth, and that if it did not exist the child would not last, even the short
time that it does, and that everything would dissolve even as it comes into
being. And because this is the real basis of the universe, naturally it is this
which will triumph; and all that opposes this cannot endure as long as this
does, because it is That, the eternal thing which is at the base of the
universe.
It is not a question, of course, of giving a
child philosophical explanations, but he could very well be given the feeling of
this kind of inner comfort, of satisfaction, and sometimes, of an intense joy
when he obeys this little very silent thing within him which will prevent him
from doing what is contrary to it. It is on an experience of this kind that teaching
may be based. The child must be given the impression that nothing can endure if
he does not have within himself this true satisfaction which alone is
permanent..
(CWM Volume 4,
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust 1978, Published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry)
