Guidance on Education

Name: Guidance on Education
Author: The Mother

Advice to Students and Teachers

On Education

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The Mother

Compilations from books by Sri Aurobindo & The Mother Guidance on Education 255 pages 2012 Edition

English

On Education

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PART II

Conversations

In the conversations of 1951 to 1958 in this section, the Mother was speaking at the Ashram Playground to a large gathering of students and Ashram members, including school teachers; in those of 1961 to 1973, she was speaking in her room to a single individual or a small number of persons.

6 January 1951

The Mother reads to the class a statement she has recently written, then comments on it.

WHAT A CHILD SHOULD ALWAYS REMEMBER

The necessity of an absolute sincerity.

The certitude of Truth's final victory.

The possibility of constant progress with the will to achieve.

Why do I insist on absolute sincerity? Perhaps the younger children don't understand what sincerity is, but the older ones surely ought to know! You have all passed through childhood and you probably remember what you were taught, what you were told when you were young. Parents nearly always tell their children, "You must not lie, it is very bad to tell a lie." But the unfortunate thing is that they lie in your presence and then you wonder why they want you to do something which they don't do themselves.

But, apart from that, why do I insist on the fact that children should be told from a very early age that it is absolutely necessary to be sincere? I am not addressing those who were brought up here, but those who were brought up in an ordinary family, with ordinary ideas. Children are very often taught how to outsmart others, how to dissimulate so as to appear good in others' eyes. Some parents try to control children through fear, and that is the worst possible method of education, for it is an incentive to lying, deceit, hypocrisy and all the rest. But if you repeatedly explain to children

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something of this kind: If you are not absolutely sincere, not only with others but also with yourself, if at any time you try to cover up your imperfections and failings, you will never make any progress, you will always remain what you are throughout all your life, without ever making any progress. 80, even if you only want to grow out of this primitive unconscious state into a progressive consciousness, the most important thing, the one absolutely important thing is sincerity. If you have done something which you ought not to have done, you must admit it to yourself; if a less-than-admirable movement has occurred in yourself, you must look it in the face and tell yourself, "It was not good," or "It was disgusting," or even "It was wicked."

And don't think that there are people to whom this rule does not apply, for you cannot live in the physical world without having a share in the physical nature, and physical nature is essentially a mixture. You will see, when you become absolutely sincere, that there is nothing in yourself that is absolutely unmixed. But it is only when you look yourself in the face, in the light of your highest consciousness, that whatever you want to eliminate from your nature will disappear. Without this striving for absolute sincerity, the defect, the little shadow, will stay in a corner biding its time to come out.

I am not speaking of the vital, which is hypocritical, I am merely speaking of the mind. If you have a small, disagreeable sensation, a slight uneasiness, see how quickly the mind gives you a favourable explanation! It lays the blame on someone else or on the circumstances, it says that what you did was right and

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that you are not responsible, and so on. If you look carefully into yourself, you will see that it is like that and you will and it most amusing too! If a child starts examining himself carefully very early, observing himself honestly so as not to deceive himself or deceive others, it will become a habit and spare him much struggling later on.

Now I am addressing parents and teachers, for it is very important to teach children that it is absolutely useless to "look"as if they were good, to "look"as if they were obedient, to "look" as if they were studying well, etc. Very often, the course parents and teachers adopt with their children is to encourage them to "look as if". It often happens that if a child spontaneously confesses his mistake, he is given a scolding. This is one of the greatest mistakes of parents. You must have suffcient control over yourself never to scold a child, even if he has broken a very valuable and cherished object. You should simply ask him, "How did you do that?" "What happened?" For the child ought to see why it happened, so that he can be more careful next time. But that is all. In this way you will get the child to be sincere with you instead of trying to deceive you.

The greatest obstacle to the transformation of one's own character is hypocrisy. If you always keep this in mind when dealing with a child, you can do him a lot of good. Of course, you must not sermonise or lecture him, etc. You should simply make him understand that there is a nobility in the being, a great purity, a great love of beauty, which is so powerful that even the most wicked and criminal people are forced to acknowledge a truly beautiful or heroic or selfess act.

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For, in human beings, there is a presence, the most marvellous Presence on earth, and except in a few very rare cases which I need not mention here, this presence lies asleep in the heart but the physical heart but the psychic centre of all beings. And when this Splendour is manifested with enough purity, it will awaken in all beings the echo of this Presence.

8 January 1951

The Mother reads her statement "What a Child Should Always Remember". A member of the class asks:

You say that one should have "the certitude of Truth's final victory". But doesn't this certitude seem very different from, and often the very opposite of, what one teaches in ordinary life?

Yes. Generally it is believed that things always end badly in Nature. Everyone knows the story of those who have met a lamentable end after having enjoyed great success in their life; of those who had extraordinary capacities and who finally lost them; of a nation which for a long period was the model of a marvellous civilisation the civilisation vanishes and the nation is changed into something so deplorable that one can no longer recollect what it was. It seems that the story of the earth is a story of victories followed by defeats and not of defeats followed by victories.

But in fact, whenever it is a question of universal and divine things, what is needed is the universal vision and divine understanding of things in order to

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know how the truth expresses itself. There is a kind of general pessimism which says that even if things begin well they end badly, that it is weakness, hypocrisy, falsehood and wickedness which always seem to have the upper hand. That is why those who see the world in their own personal dimension have said that the world is bad and that we have only to finish with it and get out of it as soon as possible. Teachers have taught this but their teaching only proves that their vision is too narrow and in the dimension of their human individuality.

In truth, the movements of Nature are like those of the tides: they advance, they recede, advance and recede, in the universal life and even in terrestrial life, this means a progressive advance, though apparently it is cut up by withdrawals. But these withdrawals are only an appearance, as when one draws back to spring forward. You seem to be drawing back but it is simply in order to go much farther.

You will tell me that all this is very well, but how to give a child the certitude that the truth will triumph? For, when he learns history, when he observes Nature, he will see that things don't always end well.

Children must he taught to see the divine manifestation in the world and not the side which ends badly.

No, if the child thinks that the Divine is different from the world, its idea that everything ends badly will be quite justified.

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Children must be given the idea of divine justice.

But we know nothing about it, for this justice does not manifest in the world as it is today.

However, if one observes things a little deeply, one perceives that there is progress, that things become better and better, though apparently they do not improve. And for a consciousness seated a little higher, it is quite evident that all evil at least what we call evil all falsehood, all that is contrary to the Truth, all suffering, all opposition is the result of a disequilibrium. I believe that one who is habituated to seeing things from this higher plane sees immediately that it is like that. Consequently, the world cannot be founded upon a disequilibrium, for if so it would have long since disappeared. One feels that at the origin of the universe there must have been a supreme Equilibrium and, perhaps, as we said the other day, a progressive equilibrium, an equilibrium which is the exact opposite of all that we have been taught and all that we are accustomed to call "evil". There is no absolute evil, but an evil, a more or less partial disequilibrium.

This may be taught to a child in a very simple way; it may be shown with the help of material things that an object will fall if it is not balanced, that only things in equilibrium can keep their position and duration. 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 disbalance 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

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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

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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.

Can a child become conscious of this inner truth like an adult?

For a child this is very clear, for it is a perception without any complications of word or thought there is that which puts him at ease and that which makes him

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uneasy (it is not necessarily joy or sorrow which come only when the thing is very intense). And all this is much clearer in the child than in an adult, for the latter has always a mind which works and clouds his perception of the truth.

To give a child theories is absolutely useless, for as soon as his mind awakes he will find a thousand reasons for contradicting your theories, and he will be right.

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 frank 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

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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....

When I was a child if I did something had immediately I felt uneasy and I would decide never to do that again. Then my parents also used to tell me never again to do it. Why? because I had myself decided not to do it any more?

A child should never be scolded. I am accused of speaking ill of parents! but I have seen them at work, you see, and I know that ninety percent of parents snub a child who comes spontaneously to confess a mistake: "You are very naughty. Go away, I am busy" instead of listening to the child with patience and explaining to him where his fault lies, how he ought to have acted. And the child, who had come with good intentions,

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goes away quite hurt, with the feeling: "Why am I treated thus?" Then the child sees his parents are not perfect which is obviously true of them today he sees that they are wrong and says to himself: "Why does he scold me, he is like me!"

10 February 1951

I have learnt throughout my life that even a little child can give you a lesson. Not that he is less ignorant than you but he is like a mirror which reflects the image of what you are; he may tell you something which is not true but also may show you something that you did not know. You can hence profit a great deal by it if you receive the lesson without any undesirable reaction.

Every hour of my life I have learnt that one can learn something; but I have never felt bound by the opinion of others, for I consider that there is only one truth in the world which can know something, and this is the Supreme Truth. Then one is quite free. And it is this freedom that I want of you free from all attachment, all ignorance, all reaction; free from everything except a total surrender to the Divine. This is the way out from all responsibility towards the world. The Divine alone is responsible...

If one is to he indifferent to everything, why are prizes given to the children?

You do not expect a school boy to be a yogi, do you? I have just said that it needs thirty five years to attain that and to change one's character.

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You see, individual human authority, like the authority of a father of the family, of a teacher, of the head of a state, is a symbolic thing. They have no real authority but authority is given to them to enable them to fulfil a role in social life as it now is, that is to say, a social life founded upon falsehood and not at all on truth, for truth means unity and society is founded on division. There are people who work out their role, their function, their symbol more or less well no body is faultless, all is mixed in this world. But he Who takes his role seriously, tries to fill it as honestly as possible, may receive inspirations which enable him to play his part a little more truly than an ordinary man. If the teacher who gives marks kept in mind that he was the representative of the divine truth, if he constantly took sufficient trouble to be in tune with the divine Will as much as this is possible for him, well, that could be very useful; for the ordinary teacher acts according to his personal preferences what he does not like, what he likes, etc. and he belongs to the general falsehood, but if at the time of giving marks, the teacher tries sincerely to put himself in harmony with a truth deeper than his small narrow consciousness, he may serve as an intermediary of this truth and, as such, help his students to become conscious of this truth within themselves.

This is precisely one of the things that I wanted to tell you. Education is a sacerdocy, teaching is a sacerdocy, and to be at the head of a State is a sacerdocy. Then, if the person who fulfils this role aspires to fulfil it in the highest and the most true way, the general condition of the world can become much better. Unfortunately,

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most people never think about this at all, they fill their role somehow not to speak of the innumerable people who work only to earn money, but in this case their activity is altogether rotten, naturally. That was my very first basis in forming the Ashram: that the work done here be an offering to the Divine.

Instead of letting oneself go in the stream of one's nature, of one's mood, one must constantly keep in mind this kind of feeling that one is a representative of the Supreme Knowledge, the Supreme Truth, the Supreme Law, and that one must apply it in the most honest, the most sincere way one can; then one makes great progress oneself and can make others also progress. And besides, one will be respected, there will be no more indiscipline in the class, for there is in every human being something that recognises and bows down before true greatness; even the worst criminals are capable of admiring a noble and disinterested act. Therefore when children feel in a teacher, in a school master, this deep aspiration to act according to the truth, they listen to you with an obedience which you would not get if one day you were in a good mood and the next day you were not, which is disastrous for everybody.

12 March 1951

If, finally, progress consists in unlearning all that one has learned, what is the use of learning?

But it is as with gymnastics. You make all kinds of movements to form your body and make it strong, but

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that does not mean that you are going to spend all your life lifting weights and exercising on parallel bars! You may continue to do that as a pastime, as a profession, but surely it is not the supreme goal. For the mind it is the same thing. To have a mind capable of progressing, of adapting itself to a new life, of opening itself to higher forces, it must be put through all kinds of gymnastics. That is why children are sent to school, it is not in order that they may remember all that they learn who remembers what he has learnt? When they are obliged to teach others, later on, they have to relearn it all, they have forgotten everything. It comes back quickly, but they have forgotten it. But if they had never gone to school, if they had never learned and had to begin everything... well, when you begin to do parallel bars at forty five, it hurts, doesn't it? It is the same thing for the brain, it lacks plasticity. Do you know what the best gymnastics is? It is to have a daily conversation with a metaphysician because there is nothing concrete there, you cannot concentrate on something that has a form, an objective reality; indeed, everything is carried on exclusively with words in a field of abstraction, it is purely mental gymnastics. And if you can enter into the mental formation of a metaphysician and are able to understand and answer him, it is perfect gymnastics!

26 April 1951

If you want to do something well, whatever it may be, any kind of work, the least thing, play a game, write a

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book, do painting or music or run a race, anything at all, if you want to d0 it well, you must become what you are doing and not remain a small person looking at himself doing it; for if one looks at oneself acting, one is... one is Still in complicity with the ego. If, in oneself, one Succeeds in becoming what one does, it is a great progress. In the least little details, one must learn this. Take a very amusing instance: you want to fill a bottle from another bottle; you concentrate (you may try it as a discipline, as a gymnastic); well, as long as you are the bottle to be filled, the bottle from which one pours, and the movement of pouring, as long as you are only this, all goes well. But if unfortunately you think at a given moment: "Ah! it is getting on well, I am managing well", the next minute it spills over! It is the same for everything, for everything. That is why work is a good means of discipline, for if you want to do the work properly, you must become the work instead of being someone who works, otherwise you will never do it well. if you remain "someone who works" and, besides, if your thoughts go vagabonding, then you may be sure :hat if you are handling fragile things they will break, if you are cooking, you will burn something, or if you are playing a game, you will miss all the balls! It is here, in this, that work is a great discipline. For if truly you want to do it well, this is the only way of doing it.

Take someone who is writing a book, for instance. If he looks at himself writing the book, you can't imagine how dull the boo; will become; it smells immediately of the small human personality which is there and it loses all its value When a painter paints a picture,

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if he observes himself painting the picture, the picture will never be good, it will always be a kind of projection of the painter's personality; it will be without life, without force, without beauty. But if, all of a sudden, he becomes the thing he wants to express, if he becomes the brushes, the painting, the canvas, the subject, the image, the colours, the value, the whole thing, and is entirely inside it and lives it, he will make something magnificent. . . .

There we are. When you are at school, you must become the concentration which tries to catch what the teacher is saying, or the thought which enters you or the knowledge you are given. That is what you must be. You must not think of yourself but only of what you want to learn. And you will see that your capacities will immediately be doubled.

What gives most the feeling of inferiority, of limitation, smallness, impotence, is always this turning back upon oneself, this shutting oneself up in the bounds of a microscopic ego. One must widen oneself, open the doors. And the best way is to be able to concentrate upon what one is doing instead of concentrating upon oneself.

13 May 1953

If you said to yourself, my children, "We want to be as perfect instruments as possible to express the divine Will in the world", then for this instrument to be perfect, it must be cultivated, educated, trained. It must not be left like a shapeless piece of stone. When

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you want to build with a stone you chisel it; when you want to make a formless block into a beautiful diamond, you chisel it. Well, it is the same thing. When with your brain and body you want to make a beautiful instrument for the Divine, you must cultivate it, sharpen it, refine it, complete what is missing, perfect what is there.

For example, you go to your class. If you are not in a very good mood, you say, "Oh, how tedious it is going to be!" Supposing it is a professor who does not know how to entertain you (one can be a very good professor without knowing how to amuse you, for it is not always easy... there are days when one does not like to be amusing), one would like to be some where else rather than at the school. Still, you go to your class, in that way, you go because you have to go, for if you go about according to your whims, you will never have control over yourself, it will be your whims that will control you, it won't be you who will control yourself. You go to your class. But then, on your way there, instead of saying, "Oh, how bored I am going to be, oh, dear! it is not going to be at all interesting", etc., if you say, "There is not a minute in life, there is not a circumstance in one's existence that cannot bring an opportunity for progress; what then is the progress that I am going to make today?... I offer all my little person to the Divine. I want it to be a good instrument for Him to express Himself, that I may be ready one day for the transformation. What am I going to do today? I am going to that class, it is a subject that does not enthuse me; but if I do not know how to take interest in this work, it is perhaps because

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there is something lacking in me, because somewhere in my brain some cells are missing. But then, if that is so, I am going to try to find out; I am going to listen properly, concentrate properly and above all drive away from my mind this kind of frivolity, this outward levity which makes me feel bored when there's some thing I do not grasp. Why do I get bored?... Because I do not progress." When one does not progress, one gets bored old and young, everybody because we are here upon earth to progress. If we do not progress every minute, well, it is indeed boring, monotonous; it is not always pleasant, it is far from being fine. "So I am going to find out today what progress I can make in this class; there is something I do not know and which I can learn."

If you want to learn, you can learn at every moment. As for me I have learnt even by listening to little children's chatter. Every moment something may happen; someone may say a word to you, even an idiot may say a word that opens you to something enabling you to make some progress. And then, if you knew, how life becomes interesting! You can no longer get bored, that is gone, everything is interesting, every thing is wonderful because every minute you can learn, at each step make progress.... If you could go to the class in order to make progress, every day a new little progress even if it be the understanding why your professor bores you it would be wonderful, for all of a sudden he will no longer be boring to you, all of a sudden you will discover that he is very interesting! It is like that. If you look at life in this way, life becomes something wonderful. That is the only

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way of making it interesting, because life upon earth is made to be a field for progress and if we progress to the maximum we draw the maximum benefit from our life upon earth. And then one feels happy. When one does the best one can, one is happy.

When one is bored, Mother, does that mean one does not progress?

At that time, yes, certainly without a doubt; not only does one not progress, but one misses an opportunity for progressing. There was a concurrence of circumstances which seemed to you dull, boring, stupid and you were in their midst; well, if you get bored, it means that you yourself are as boring as the circumstances! And that is a clear proof that you are simply not in a state of progress. There is nothing more contrary to the very reason of existence than this passing wave of boredom. If you make a little effort within yourself at that time, if you tell yourself: "Wait a bit, what is it that I should learn? What does all that bring to me so that I may learn something? What progress should I make in overcoming myself? What is the weakness that I must overcome? What is the inertia that I must conquer?" If you say that to yourself, you will see the next minute you are no longer bored. You will immediately get interested and you will make progress!

10 June 1953

Sometimes, one tries to concentrate but one can't.

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If truly you can't, then you have only to spend your time in seeking within yourself for the reason why it is so! Then if the teacher asks you a question, you have to tell him: "I am sorry, I was not listening."

You don't like to learn?

Yes.

Then how can this happen?

But in some classes, I do not understand.

Then in some classes, you do not like to learn! You can say generally, "Yes, yes, I like to learn!" but if one really likes to learn, there isn't a class in which one could not learn. Surely, whatever the class, there is always something one does not know, one can always learn. You are not a living encyclopaedia! Even if you go over the same book again (this happens, I believe, in some classes), and you may say: "Oh! I have already gone through this book, this is boring", but that's simply because you do not want to learn: because certainly if you repeat the same book, it means that you have not learnt it properly the first time and you must take particular care to learn what you have not learnt. Even a book of grammar! I do not say that books of grammar are very exciting, but even a grammar book becomes interesting if you set out to learn it even the most abstract rules of grammar. You cannot imagine how amusing it is when you truly want to learn, when you want to understand Why it is so; instead of just committing to memory, learning by heart, if you want to understand: what are these words put there? For what

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idea, what real knowledge are they put there? What do they represent... Any rule whatsoever is simply a human mental formula of something that exists in itself. Take any rule at all, it shows simply that a few heads have made an effort to formulate in the way most clear to them,most condensed, something which exists in itself. So if one goes behind the words and begins searching for this something the thing existing in itself, which is there, behind the words how interesting it becomes! It is throbbing, thrilling! It is like passing through a jungle to discover a new country, like going on an exploration to the North Pole! So, if you do that with the laws of grammar, I assure you nothing in the world can bore you afterwards.

Understand instead of learning.

I admit this asks for a very great concentration. It demands a concentration capable of penetrating, digging a hole into the mental shell and passing through to the other side. And afterwards, it becomes worth the trouble.... You have been pushed against something cold, rigid, hard, unelastic. Then you concentrate, concentrate, concentrate sufficiently until... suddenly you are on the other side, and then you emerge into the light and you understand: "Ah! that's wonderful! Now I understand." A very tiny thing gives you a great joy.

You see it is possible not to get bored at school.

At school one has to finish a course in a year. One must hasten a little at times. Before one has been able to understand a question well, one has to go to the next chapter.

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There, my child, I fully agree with you, it is not quite right. But we shall try to change all that; because after all I don't see why one has to finish a book in a year. It is quite arbitrary. One should not leave a chapter until it has been fully grasped; only then take up the next one and so on. And if a chapter is finished, it is finished: and if it is not finished it is not finished.

The truth is that the teacher, instead of basing his course on a text-book, should take the trouble of preparing the course himself. He must know enough and take sufficient pains to prepare his course from day to day, and in this way he will close a subject only when I do not say when everyone has understood, for that is impossible but at least when those whom he considers the interesting elements of his class have understood. Then the next subject extends over two years instead of one or for a year and half instead of two, it matters little; because it is his own production, his own course written by him and he writes according to the need of his class. That is my conception of teaching. Now, it has indeed its difficulties. But that is the true way of working, because by taking a book and following it, particularly a book which may very well be not at all suited to the students... I do not say that a particular course could suit all, it is impossible to satisfy everybody. But there are those who want to make an effort; it is these that you must consider. Those who are lazy, somnolent or indolent well, you must leave them to their laziness or somnolence or indolence. If they want to sleep all their lives, let them sleep until something shakes them up sufficiently and awakens them! But what is interesting in a class is the section

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that wishes to learn, those who really want to learn and it is for them that the class should be taken. Don't you see, the present method of education is a kind of levelling; everyone must be at the same stage. So those who have their heads higher up have them cut off, and those who are too small are pushed up from below. But that doesn't do any good. One must be concerned only with those who come up, the others will take what they can. And indeed I do not see any necessity for everybody knowing the same thing for that is not normal. But those who want to know and who can know, those who must work, these should be given all possible means for working, must be pushed up as much as possible, must always be given new food. They are the hungry ones, they must be fed.... Ah! If I had the time I would take a class. That would interest me much, to show how it must be done. Only one cannot be every where at the same time!

There you are, my children, now it is very late. Good night.

24 June 1953

Sometimes there is a lot of work. One does not know what to do.

A lot of work... Truly a lot of work?

Many kinds of work. For example, in our studies, we have many subjects to read.

What do you do the whole day, from morning till

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evening? How much time do you devote to your toilet, to take your bath, to dress? Approximately, not exactly to a minute.

About three quarters of an hour.

How much time do you take for eating?

Fifteen minutes.

Every time? How many times per day? Four? All right. How much time do you spend in gossiping?... That you don't know!

I don't gossip.

You don't gossip! You are a marvel, indeed. I shall put you on a pedestal. You don't gossip?

Yes, I gossip, but when I have work, I don't gossip.

Yes. And how many hours per day do you need to work to be able to do your tasks?

In the morning sometimes I get up at half past four.

To do your homework? You are still half asleep, aren't you, at half past four? Are you quite awake?... No! Ah! And then, you start working immediately?

Yes, sometimes.

Because I am leading exactly towards that... When

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you work, if you are able to concentrate, you can do absolutely in ten minutes what would otherwise take you one hour. If you want to gain time, learn to concentrate. It is through attention that one can do things quickly and one does them much better. If you have a task that should take you half an hour I don't say if you have to write for half an hour of course but if you have to think and your mind is floating about, if you are thinking not only of what you are doing but also of what you have done and of what you will have to do and of your other subjects, all that makes you lose thrice as much time as you need to do your task. When you have too much to do, you must learn how to concentrate exclusively on what you are doing, with an intensity in your attention, and you can do in ten minutes what would otherwise take you one hour.

For a mathematical problem, sometimes the solution comes quickly, sometimes it takes too long.

Yes, it is exactly that: it depends on the degree of concentration. If you observe yourself, you will notice this quite well: when it does not come, it is because of a kind of haziness in the brain, something cloudy, like fog somewhere, and then you are there as in a dream. You push forward trying to find it, and it is as though you were pushing into cottonwool, you do not see clearly there; and so nothing comes. You may remain in that state for hours.

Concentration consists precisely in removing the cloud. You gather together all the elements of your intelligence and fix them on one point, and then you do

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not even try actively to find the thing. All that you do is to concentrate in such a way as to see only the problem but seeing not only its surface, seeing it in its depth, what it conceals. If you are able to gather together all your mental energies, bringing them to a point which is fixed on the enunciation of the problem, and you stay there, fixed, as though you were about to drill a hole in the wall, all of a sudden it Will come. And this is the only way. If you try: Is it this, is it that, is it this, is it that?... You will never find anything or else you will need hours. You must get your mental forces to a point with strength enough to pierce through the words and strike upon the thing that is behind. There is a thing to be found; swoop down upon it.

And it is always the days you are a little hazy that it becomes difficult. You are hazy: as though there is something you seem to catch and which escapes you.

Naturally, if it is materially impossible you do not have to deal with monsters! I believe your teachers are reasonable enough and if you go to them and say, "Well, I could not do it, I had no time, I did what I could, I did not have the time", they won't scold you. I don't think so. But here ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is a kind of half inertia of the mind which makes you think that you have too much work. If you observe yourself, you will find out that there is always something which pulls this way, something which pulls that way and then this kind of haziness as though you were living in cottonwool, in the clouds: nothing is clear.

The usefulness of work is nothing else but that: to crystallise this mental power. For, what you learn

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(unless you put it in practice by some work or deeper studies), half of what you learn, at least, will vanish, disappear with time. But it will leave behind one thing: the capacity of crystallising your thought, making something clear out of it, something precise, exact and organised. And that is the true usefulness of work: to organise your cerebral capacity. If you remain in your hazy movement in that kind of cloudy fluidity, you may labour for years, it will be quite useless to you; you will not come out of it more intelligent than when you entered it. But if you are able, even for half an hour, to concentrate your attention on things that seem to you of very little interest, like a rule of grammar, for example (the rules of grammar are some of the dry things I was speaking about, there are other things much more arid, but indeed the rules of grammar are sufficiently arid), if you take one of them and try to understand it not learn it by heart and apply mechanically what you have learnt by heart, that will be of no use but try to understand the thought behind the words: "Why was this rule formulated in this way?" and try to find out your own formula for the thing; that is so interesting. "Why has this gentleman who wrote this rule written it in this way? But I am studying, trying to understand why. Why has he put this word after that and that word after that other, and why has he stated the rule in this way? It is because he thought that it was the most complete and the most clear way of expressing the thing." And so that's the thing you must find. And when you find it, you suddenly exclaim: "That is what it means! It must be seen in this way, then it becomes very clear."

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I am going to explain it to you: when you have understood, it forms a little crystal in you, like a little shining point. And when you have put in many, many, many of these, then you will begin to be intelligent. That is the utility of work, not simply to stuff the head with a heap of things that take you nowhere.

16 September 1953

How can memory be enlarged?

Widen your consciousness and your memory will grow.

Consciousness is a much higher memory than the mechanical brain memory. I explained this to you one day, not so very long ago. I told you that the mechanical brain memory can forget can confuse and deform but if you are able to establish in you once again the state of consciousness in which you were at a given moment, you have exactly the same experience. And that is the only true memory. And this depends entirely on the development of your consciousness.

30 September 1953

Naturally, at the beginning there were no children here [at the Ashram] and children were not accepted, children were all refused. It was only after the War that children were taken. But I do not regret that they have been accepted. For I believe there is much more stuff for the future among children who know nothing than

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30 September 1953

among those grown-ups who believe they know everything... I do not know if you have much knowledge of sculpture. But to do sculpture, you have to take some clay, soak it with water; it must be finely powdered clay, and you soak it with water and make a paste. You have to keep it wet all the time and you make a statue or whatever you want out of that. When it is finished, you bake it so that it does not move. And after that indeed after that it cannot move anymore. If you want to change something, you must break it and make another. For otherwise, as it is, it is no longer pliable. It is hard and rigid like stone... Something like that happens in life. You must not attain something and then remain crystallised, fossilised, immobilised. For otherwise you have to break it, take it to pieces, or else you can do nothing with it any longer.

So long as one remains thus clay like, very soft, very malleable, not yet formed, not aware of being formed, something can be done. And as long as one remains a child... it is a blissful state. I was saying this yesterday, children have only one idea, to become grown-ups, and they do not know that when they are grown up, they will have lost three fourths of their worth which consists in being something which can still be developed, formed, something malleable, progressive, which need not be broken into bits so that it may progress. There are people who are compelled to take a whole turn around the mountain, in that way, from the foot to the top, and they take an entire lifetime to reach the top. There are others who know the road, the shortest cut that can be taken by which one can go straight to the top. And then, once up there, they are still full of

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youthfulness and energy and they can see the horizon and the next mountain. On the contrary, the others are conscious of having done a considerable work by turning round and round and spending their whole life to reach the summit. But as for you, my Children, it is being tried here to take you quite at the bottom and make you go up by the funicular railway right to the top, the shortest cut. And when you are on the top, you will have the vision of the spaces before you and you will be able to choose the mountain you Wish to climb.

Above all, do not be in a hurry not to be a child any more! One must be a child all one's life, as much as one can, as long as one can. Be happy, joyful, content to be a child and remain a child, plastic stuff for shaping. Voila.

7 October 1953

Sometimes, Mother, when children are interested in something, they don't want to go to bed, then what should he done? Just a few minutes earlier they said they were sleepy, and then they start playing and say they don't want to go to bed.

They shouldn't be allowed to play when they are sleepy. This is exactly the intrusion of vital movements. A child who doesn't live much with older people (it is bad for children to live much among older people), a child left to itself will sleep spontaneously whatever it may be doing, the moment it needs to sleep. Only, when children are used to living with older people, well, they catch all the habits of the grown ups. Specially

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when they are told: "Oh! you can't do this because you are young! When you are older, you can do it. You can't eat this because you are small, when you are bigger you will be able to eat it. At this particular time you must go to bed because you are young..."So, naturally, they have that idea that they must grow up at any cost or at least look grown up!

The first task of those who have a responsibility for instance, those who are in charge of educating other children, taking care of others, from rulers to teachers and monitors their first task is to learn how to identify themselves with the others, to feel as they do. Then one knows what one should do. One keeps one's inner light, keeps one's consciousness Where it ought to be, very high above, in the light, and at the same time gets identified, and so one feels what they are, what their reactions are, what their thoughts, and one holds that before the light one has: one succeeds in thinking out perfectly well what should be done for them. You will tell each one what he needs to hear, you will act with each one as is necessary to make him understand. And that is why it is a wonderful grace to have the responsibility for a certain number of people, for that obliges you to make the most essential progress.

2 June 1954

What are the causes for not being able to medirate?

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Because one has not learnt to do it.

Why, suddenly you take a fancy: today I am going to meditate. You have never done so before. You sit down and imagine you are going to begin meditating. But it is something to learn as one learns mathematics or the piano. It is not learnt just like that! It is not enough to sit with crossed arms and crossed legs in order to meditate. You must learn how to meditate. Everywhere all kinds of rules have been given about what should be done in order to be able to meditate.

If, when one was quite young and was taught, for instance, how to squat, if one was taught at the same time not to think or to remain very quiet or to concentrate or gather one's thoughts, or... all sorts of things one must learn to do, like meditating; if, when quite young and at the same time that you were taught to stand straight, for instance, and walk or sit or even eat you are taught many things but you are not aware of this, for they are taught when you are very small if you were taught to meditate also, then spontaneously, later, you could, the day you decide to do so, sit down and meditate. But you are not taught this. You are taught absolutely nothing of the kind.

Besides, usually you are taught very few things you are not taught even to sleep. People think that they have only to lie down in their bed and then they sleep. But this is not true! One must learn how to sleep as one must learn to eat, learn to do anything at all. And if one does not learn, well, one does it badly! Or one takes years and years to learn how to do it, and during all those years when it is badly done, all sorts of unpleasant things occur. And it is only after suffering

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much, making many mistakes, committing many stupidities, that, gradually, when one is old and has white hair, one begins to know how to do something. But if, when you were quite small, your parents or those who look after you, took the trouble to teach you how to do what you do, do it properly as it should be done, in the right way, then that would help you to avoid all all these mistakes you make through the years. And not only do you make mistakes, but nobody tells you they are mistakes! And so you are surprised that you fall ill, are tired, don't know how to do what you want to, and that you have never been taught. Some children are not taught anything, and so they need years and years and years to learn the simplest things, even the most elementary thing: to be clean.

It is true that most of the time parents do not teach this because they do not know it themselves! For they themselves did not have anyone to teach them. So they do not know... they have groped in the dark all their life to learn how to live. And so naturally they are not in a position to teach you how to live, for they do not know it themselves. If you are left to yourself, you understand, it needs years, years of experience to learn the simplest thing, and even then you must think about it. If you don't think about it, you will never learn.

To live in the right way is a very difficult art, and unless one begins to learn it when quite young and to make an effort, one never knows it very well. Simply the art of keeping one's body in good health, one's mind quiet and goodwill in one's heart things which are indispensable in order to live decently I don't say in comfort, I don't say remarkably, I only say decently.

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Well, I don't think there are many who take care to teach this to their children.

Is that all?

Sweet Mother, ought we to do some other work besides studies?

Some other work? That depends upon you. It depends upon each one and on what one wants. If you want to do sadhana, it is obvious that you must have at least partially an occupation which is not selfish, that is, which is not done for oneself alone. Studies are all very well very necessary, even quite indispensable, only it is a part of what I was speaking about just a while ago, that you must learn when you are young, for when you are grown-up it becomes much more difficult but there is an age when you can have the foundation of indispensable studies and when, if you want to begin to do sadhana, you must do something which does not have an exclusively personal motive. One must do something a little unselfish, for if one is exclusively occupied with oneself, one gets shut up in a sort of carapace and is not open to the universal forces. A small unselfish movement, a small action done with no egoistic aim opens a door upon something other than one's own small, very tiny person.

One is usually shut up in a shell and becomes aware of other shells only when there is a shock or friction. But the consciousness of the circulating Force, of the interdependence of beings this is a very rare thing. It is one of the indispensable stages of sadhana.

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Mother, can't one study for the Divine?

That means?

Can one study for the Divine and not for oneself, prepare oneself for the divine work?

Yes, if you study with the feeling that you must develop yourselves to become instruments. But truly, it is done in a very different spirit, isn't it? very different. To begin with, there are no longer subjects you like and those you don't, no longer any classes which bore you and those which don't, no longer any difficult things and things not difficult, no longer any teachers who are pleasant or any who are not all that disappears immediately. One enters a state in which, whatever happens one takes as an opportunity to learn to prepare oneself for the divine work, and everything becomes interesting. Naturally, if one is doing that, it is quite all right.

What you have said in the Bulletin, "educating the mind" this means that one educates oneself for that, lives and studies for the Divine. Then isn't this a work done for the Divine?

Yes, yes, yes. It is very good if it is done with that aim. But it must be with that aim. For instance, when one wants to understand the deep laws of life, wants to be ready to receive Whatever message is sent by the Divine, if one wants to be able to penetrate the secrets of the Manifestation, all this asks for a developed mind, so one studies with that will. But then one no longer

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needs to make a choice to study, for everything, no matter what, the least little circumstance in life, becomes a teacher who can teach you something, teach you how to think and act. Even I think I said this precisely even the reflections of an ignorant child can help you to understand something you didn't understand before. Your attitude is so different. It is always an attitude which is awaiting a discovery, an opportunity for progress, a rectification of a wrong movement, a step ahead, and so it is like a magnet that attracts from all around you opportunities to make this progress. The least things can teach you how to progress. As you have the consciousness and will to progress, everything becomes an opportunity, and you project this consciousness and will to progress upon all things.

And not only is this useful for you, but it is useful for all those around you with whom you have a contact.

Let us take simply a question about your class, shall we? the school class. Even as an undisciplined, disobedient and illwilled child can disorganise the class and this is why at times one is obliged to put him out, because simply by his presence he can completely disorganise the class so too, if there is a student who has the absolutely right attitude, the will to learn in everything, so that not a word is pronounced, not a gesture made, but it becomes for him an opportunity to learn something his presence can have the opposite effect and help the class to rise in education. If, consciously, he is in this state of intensity of aspiration to learn and correct himself, he communicates this to the others.... It is true that in the present state of things

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the bad example is much more contagious than the good one! It is much easier to follow the bad example than the good, but the good too is useful, and a class with a true student who is there only because he wants to learn and apply himself, who is deeply interested in every opportunity to learn this creates a solid atmosphere.

You can help.

24 November 1954

Sweet Mother, why do some children have the habit of always asking for things?

What things?

Material things, like sweets, everything they see...

Oh, because they are full of desires. They were probably formed with vibrations of desires, and as they have no control over themselves it is expressed freely. Older people are also full of desires, but usually they have a kind of... how do we call it?... they are a little shy of showing their desire or they feel a bit ashamed or perhaps are afraid they will be laughed at; so they don't show them. Well, they too are full of desires. Only children are more simple. When they want something they say so. They don't tell themselves that perhaps it would be wiser not to show this, because they don't yet have this kind of reasoning. But I think, generally speaking, with very few exceptions, that people live in perpetual desires. Only, they don't express them, and

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sometimes they are ashamed also to acknowledge it to themselves. But it is there, this need of having something... you know, one sees something pretty, it is immediately translated into a desire for possession; and this is one of the things... it is absolutely childish. It is childish and indeed it is ridiculous, because at least ninety times out of a hundred, when the one who had a desire for something possesses it, he doesn't even look at it any longer. It is very rarely that this thing continues to interest him once he has it, whatever the nature of the object.

Sweet Mother, how can we help a child to come out of this habit of always asking?

There are many ways. But first of all you must know whether you will not just stop him from freely expressing what he thinks and feels. Because this is what people usually do. They scold, even sometimes punish him; and so the child forms the habit of concealing his desires. But he is not cured of them. And you see, if he is always told, "No, you won't have that", then, simply, this state of mind gets settled in him: "Ah, when you are small, people don't give you anything! You must wait till you are big. When I am big I shall have all that I want." That's how it is. But this does not cure them. It is very difficult to bring up a child. There is a way which consists in giving him all he wants; and naturally, the next minute he will want something else, because that's the law, the law of desire: never to be satisfied. And so, if he is intelligent, one can tell him, "But you see, you insisted so much on having this and

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now you no longer care for it. You want something else." Yet if he was very clever he would answer, "Well, the best way of curing me is to give me what I ask for."

Some people cherish this idea all their life. When they are told that they should overcome their desires, they say, "The easiest way is to satisfy them." This kind of logic seems impeccable. But the fact is that it is not the object desired that has to be changed, it is the impulse of desire, the movement of desire. And for this a great deal of knowledge is needed, and this is difficult for a very young child.

It is difficult. Indeed, they don't have the capacity for reasoning; one can't explain things to them, because they don't understand the reasons. So you see, when it is like that the parents usually tell the child, "Keep quiet, you are a nuisance!" In this way they get out of the difficulty. But this is no solution. It is very difficult. It asks for a sustained effort and an unshakable patience. Some people are like that all their life; they are like babies throughout their existence and it is impossible to make them see reason. As soon as one tells them that they are not reasonable and that one can't all the time be giving them things to satisfy their desires, they simply think, "These people are unpleasant. This person is not nice." That's all.

In fact, perhaps one should begin by shifting the movement to things which it is better to have from the true point of View, and which it is more difficult to obtain. If one could turn this impulsion of desire towards a... For example, when a child is full of desires, if one could give him a desire of a higher kind instead

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of its being a desire for purely material objects, you understand, an altogether transitory satisfaction if one could awaken in him the desire to know, the desire to learn, the desire to become a remarkable person... in this way, begin with that. As these things are difficult to do, so, gradually, he will develop his will for these things. Or even, from the material point of View, the desire to do something difficult, as for example, construct a toy which it is difficult to make or give him a game of patience which requires a great deal of perseverance.

If one can orient them it requires much discernment, much patience, but it can be done and if one can orient them towards something like this, to succeed in very difficult games or to work out something which requires much care and attention, and can push them in some line like this so that it exercises a persevering will in them, then this can have results: turn their attention away from certain things and towards others. This needs constant care and it seems to be a way that's most I can't say the easiest, for it is certainly not easy but the most effective way. To say "No" does not cure and to say "Yes" does not cure either; and sometimes it becomes extremely difficult also, naturally.

I knew people, for example, whose children wanted to eat everything they saw. They were allowed to do it. So they fell very ill. After that, they felt disgusted. But this is a little risky, isn't it? There are children who fidget with everything. Now, one day, you see, one child got hold of a box of matches. Then, instead of telling him, "Don't touch it", they let him do it: he burnt himself.

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He never touched them again.

But it is a little dangerous, because some children are altogether unconscious and very bold in their desires: for example, those who like to walk on the edge of a wall or the top of a roof or have the desire to plunge into water when they see it or to dive into a river... you see, this becomes sometimes very difficult... or those who have the mania for crossing the street: each time they see a car coming... they try to cross it. So if they are allowed to do so, the experience may one day be fatal.

Well, I knew people who did this. I don't know if they succeeded much in it. As I said, the child was burnt, but this was a nuisance because it left scars. And then too, one who played quite unthinkingly on the railing of a staircase and fell and half-broke his head... you see, this has its consequences. But to say "No" to them too doesn't cure them, quite the contrary. And to tell them, "Especially don't take this, this will harm you" they don't believe it; they think it is just to get rid of their desire.

It is a very difficult problem. There was someone who had ideas like this, on freedom in education and who made theories to tell me that individual freedom should be respected to the extent of never making use of past experience for new people, and that we ought to leave them to make all their experiments themselves. This goes very far and they criticised me very much because I was trying to prevent accidents. So they told me, "You are absolutely wrong in preventing them." So I said, "But if someone dies?" "Well, it means he had to die. You have no right to intervene in their destiny

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and the freedom of their development. They want to commit stupidities, let them do stupid things. When they realise that these are stupidities, they won't do them." And there are cases in which one is sure never to do it again, because one has gone beyond the limit.

It is a very difficult problem, if one wants to make a theory of it. But each case is absolutely different and asks for a different procedure. And in fact, if one truly wanted to give the best education to a child, well, one would have to spend all his time on it. One could not do anything else, because, even considering that one should not watch over him visibly, in order to do the right thing at the right time, one should always observe him, even without his knowing it. One would not be able to do anything else.

So, probably, one needs to find a middle term between the two, between the two extremes: that of watching over him all the time and that of leaving him absolutely free to do what he likes, without even warning him against the accidents which are likely to occur. An adjustment to make every minute! Difficult.

15 December 1954

You see, the great thing here [at the Ashram] is that the principle of education is a principle of freedom, and to put it briefly, the whole life is organised on the maximum possible freedom in movement; that is, the rules, regulations, restrictions are reduced absolutely to the minimum. If you compare this with the way in which parents usually educate their children, with a constant

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"Don't do this", "You can't do that", "Do this", "Go and do that", and, you know, orders and rules, there is a considerable difference.

In schools and colleges everywhere there are infinitely more strict rules than what we have here. So, as one doesn't impose on you the absolute condition of making progress, you make it when it pleases you, you don't when it doesn't, and then you take things as easy as you can. There are some I do not say this absolutely there are some who try, but they try spontaneously. Of course from the spiritual point of View this is infinitely more valuable. The progress you will make because you feel within yourself the need to make it, because it is an impulsion that pushes you forward spontaneously, and not because it is something imposed on you like a rule this progress, from the spiritual point of View, is infinitely greater. All in you that tries to do things well, tries to do it spontaneously and sincerely; it is something that comes from within you, and not because you have been promised rewards if you do well and punishments if you do badly. Our system is not based on this.

It is possible that at a certain moment something comes along to give you the impression that your effort has been appreciated, but the effort was not made in View of that; that is, these promises are not made beforehand nor are they balanced by equivalent punishments. This is not the practice here. Usually things are such, arranged in such a way, that the satisfaction of having done well seems to be the best of rewards and one punishes himself when he does badly, in the sense that one feels miserable and unhappy and ill at

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ease, and this is indeed the most concrete punishment he has. And so, all these movements, from the point of view of the inner spiritual growth, have an infinitely greater value than when they are the result of an outer rule.

25 May 1955

How can the reason be developed?

Oh! by using it. Reason is developed like the muscles, like the will. All these things are developed by a rational use. Reason! everyone possesses reason, only he doesn't make use of it. Some people are very much afraid of reason because it contradicts their impulses. So they prefer not to listen to it. Then, naturally, if one makes it a habit not to listen to reason, instead of developing, it loses its light more and more.

To develop reason you must want to do it sincerely; if on one side you tell yourself, "I want to develop my reason", and on the other you don't listen to what the reason tells you to do, then you never come to anything, because naturally, if each time it tells you, "Don't do this" or "Do this", you do the opposite, it will lose the habit of saying anything at all.

31 August 1955

There are all kinds of different and even opposite theories [about the education of children]. Some people say, "Children must be left to have their own experience

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because it is through experience that they learn things best." Like that, as an idea, it is excellent; in practice it obviously requires some reservations, because if you let a child walk on the edge of a wall and he falls and breaks a leg or his head, the experience is a little hard; or if you let him play with a match-box and he burns out his eyes, you understand, it is paying very dearly for a little knowledge! I have discussed this with... I don't remember now who it was... an educationist, a man concerned with education, who had come from England, and had his ideas about the necessity of an absolute liberty. I made this remark to him; then he said, "But for the love of liberty one can sacrifice the life of many people." It is one opinion. (Mother laughs)

At the same time, the opposite excess of being there all the time and preventing a child from making his experiment, by telling him, "Don't do this, this will happen", "Don't do that, that will happen" then finally he will be all shrunk up into himself, and will have neither courage nor boldness in life, and this too is very bad.

In fact it comes to this:

One must never make rules.

Every minute one must endeavour to apply the highest truth one can perceive. It is much more difficult, but it's the only solution.

Whatever you may do, don't make rules beforehand, because once you have made a rule you follow it more or less blindly, and then you are sure, ninety-nine and a half times out of a hundred, to be mistaken.

There is only one way of acting truly, it is to try

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at each moment, each second, in each movement to express only the highest truth one can perceive, and at the same time know that this perception has to be progressive and that what seems to you the most true now will no longer be so tomorrow, and that a higher truth will have to be expressed more and more through you. This leaves no room any longer for sleeping in a comfortable tamas; one must be always awake I am not speaking of physical sleep one must be always awake, always conscious and always full of an enlightened receptivity and of goodwill. To want always the best, always the best, always the best, and never tell oneself, "Oh! it is tiring! Let me rest, let me relax! Ah, I am going to stop making an effort"; then one is sure to fall into a hole immediately and make a big stupid blunder.

21 September 1955

Sweet Mother, how can literature help us to progress?

It can help you to become more intelligent, to understand things better, to have a sense of literary forms, to cultivate your taste, to know how to choose between a good and a bad way of saying things, to enrich your spirit. It can help you in a hundred different ways.

There are many different kinds of progress. And if one wants to progress integrally, one must progress in all these different directions. Well, this one is an intellectual and artistic progress at the same time, in which both combine. One plays with ideas, is capable of understanding

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them, classifying them, organising them, and at the same time one plays with the form of these ideas, the way of expressing them, the way of saying, the way of presenting them and making them intelligible.

Sweet Mother, all that we read in literature stories, novels, etc. very often contains stuff which lowers our consciousness. It is not altogether possible to leave out the matter and read only from the point of view of the literary value.

You see, there is no excuse for reading any odd novels except when they are remarkably written and you want to learn the language if they are written either in your own language or in another one and you want to study this language, then you may read anything at all provided that it is well written. It's not what is said that's interesting, it's the way of saying it. And so the way to read it is exactly to be concerned only with the way it has been said, and not with what is said, which is uninteresting. Only, for instance, in a book, there are always descriptions; well, you see how these descriptions are made and how the author has Chosen the words to express things. And for ideas it is the same thing: how he has made his characters speak; you take no interest in what they say but in how they say it. If you take certain books like study books, to learn just how to write sentences well and express things as you should, because these books are very well written, what the story is has not much importance. But if you start reading books for what they narrate, then in that case

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you must be much stricter and not take things which darken your consciousness, because that's a waste of time; it's worse than a waste of time. So, things like vulgar stories which are written in a vulgar way, about these, you see, there's no longer any question. These things you should never touch....

Sweet Mother, how should one choose one's books?

It would be better to ask someone who knows. If you ask someone who, at least, has taste and some knowledge of literature, he won't make you read badly written books. Now, if you want to read something which helps you from the spiritual point of view, that's another matter, you must ask someone who has a spiritual realisation to help you.

You see, there are two very different lines; they can converge because everything can be made to converge; but as I said, there are two lines really very different. One is a perpetual choice, not only of what one reads but of What one does, of what one thinks, of all one's activities, of strictly doing only what can help you on the spiritual path; it does not necessarily have to be very narrow and limited, but it must be on a little higher plane than the ordinary life, and with a concentration of will and aspiration which does not allow any wandering on the path, going here and there uselessly. This is austere; it is difficult to take this up when one is very young, because one feels that the instrument that he is has not been sufficiently formed or is not rich enough to be allowed to remain what it is, without

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growing and progressing. So, generally speaking, except for a very small number, it comes later, after a certain development and some experience of life. The other path is that of as complete, as integral a development as possible of all human faculties, of all that one carries in himself, all one's possibilities, then, spreading out as widely as possible in all directions, in order to fill one's consciousness with all human possibilities, to know the world and life and men and their work as it now is, to create a vast and rich base for the future ascent.

Usually this is what we expect of children; except as I said, in absolutely rare, exceptional cases of children who have in them a psychic being which has already had all the experiences before incarnating this time, and no longer needs any more experiences, which only wants to realise the Divine and live Him. But these, you see, are one-in-a-million cases. Otherwise, till a certain age, so long as one is very young, it is good to develop oneself, to spread out as much as possible in all directions, to draw out all the potentialities one holds, and turn them into expressed, conscious, active things, so as to have a fairly solid foundation for the ascent. Otherwise it is a bit poor.

That is why you must learn, love to learn, always learn, not waste your time in... well, in filling yourself with useless things or doing useless things. You must do everything with this aim, to enrich your possibilities, develop those you have, acquire new ones, and become as complete, as perfect a human being as you can.

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13 June 1956

I think it was just today or perhaps yesterday, I was pleading for the right of everyone to remain in ignorance if it pleases him I am not speaking of ignorance from the spiritual point of view, the world of Ignorance in which we live, I am not speaking of that. I am speaking of ignorance according to the classical ideas of education. Well, I say that if there are people who don't want to learn and don't like to learn, they have the right not to learn.

The only thing it is our duty to tell them is this, "Now, you are of an age when your brain is in course of preparation. It is being formed. Each new thing you study makes one more little convolution in your brain. The more you study, the more you think, the more you reflect, the more you work, the more complex and complete does your brain become in its tiny convolutions. And as you are young, it is best done at this time. That is why it is common human practice to choose youth as the period of learning, for it is infinitely easier." And it is obvious that until the child becomes at least a little conscious of itself, it must be subjected to a certain rule, for it has not yet the capacity of choosing for itself.

That age is very variable; it depends on people, depends on each individual. But still, it is understood that in the seven-year period between the age of seven and fourteen, one begins to reach the age of reason. If one is helped, one can become a reasoning being between seven and fourteen.

Before seven there are geniuses there are always

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geniuses, everywhere but as a general rule the child is not conscious of itself and doesn't know why or how to do things. That is the time to cultivate its attention, teach it to concentrate on what it does, give it a small basis sufficient for it not to be entirely like a little animal, but to belong to the human race through an elementary intellectual development.

After that, there is a period of seven years during which it must be taught to choose to choose what it wants to be. If it chooses to have a rich, complex, well-developed brain, powerful in its functioning, well, it must be taught to work; for it is by work, by reflection, study, analysis and so on that the brain is formed. At fourteen you are ready or ought to be ready to know what you want to be.

And so I say: if at about that age some children declare categorically, "Intellectual growth does not interest me at all, I don't want to learn, I want to remain ignorant in the ordinary way of ignorance", I don't see by what right one could impose studies on them nor why it should be necessary to standardise them.

There are those who are at the bottom and others who are at another level. There are people who may have very remarkable capacities and yet have no taste for intellectual growth. One may warn them that if they don't work, don't study, when they are grown up, they will perhaps feel embarrassed in front of others. But if that does not matter to them and they want to live a non-intellectual life, I believe one has no right to compel them. That is my constant quarrel with the teachers of the school! They come and tell me: "If they don't work, when they are grown up they will be stupid and

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ignorant." I say: "But if it pleases them to be stupid and ignorant, what right have you to interfere?"

One can't make knowledge and intelligence compulsory. That's all.

Now, if you believe that by abstaining from all effort and all study, you will become geniuses, and supramental geniuses at that, don't have any illusions, it won't happen to you. For even if you touch a higher light, through an inner aspiration or by a divine grace, you will have nothing in there, in your brain, to be able to express it. So it will remain quite nebulous and won't in any way change your outer life. But if it pleases you to be like this, nobody has the right to compel you to be otherwise. You must wait till you are sufficiently conscious to be able to choose.

Of course, there are people who at fourteen are yet like children of five. But these there's little hope for them. Especially those who have lived here.

Here's something then which already changes your outlook on education completely.

Essentially, the only thing you should do assiduously is to teach them to know themselves and choose their own destiny, the path they will follow; to teach them to look at themselves, understand themselves and to will what they want to be. That is infinitely more important than teaching them what happened on earth in former times, or even how the earth is built, or even... indeed, all sorts of things which are quite a necessary grounding if you want to live the ordinary life in the world, for if you don't know them, anyone will immediately put you down intellectually: "Oh, he is an idiot, he knows nothing."

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But still, at any age, if you are studious and have the will to do it, you can also take up books and work; you don't need to go to school for that. There are enough books in the world to teach you things. There are even many more books than necessary. You can exhaust all subjects simply by going there to Medhananda's, to the Library. You will have enough to fill you up to here! (Gesture)

But what is very important is to know what you want. And for this a minimum of freedom is necessary. You must not be under a compulsion or an obligation. You must be able to do things whole heartedly. If you are lazy, well, you will know what it means to be lazy.... You know, in life idlers are obliged to work ten times more than others, for what they do they do badly, so they are obliged to do it again. But these are things one must learn by experience. They can't be instilled into you.

The mind, if not controlled, is something wavering and imprecise. If one doesn't have the habit of concentrating it upon something, it goes on wandering all the time. It goes on without a stop anywhere and wanders into a world of vagueness. And then, when one wants to fix one's attention, it hurts! There is a little effort there, like this: "Oh! how tiring it is, it hurts!" So one does not do it. And one lives in a kind of cloud. And your head is like a cloud; it's like that, most brains are like clouds: there is no precision, no exactitude, no Clarity, it is hazy vague and hazy. You have impressions rather than a knowledge of things. You live in an approximation, and you can keep within you all sorts of contradictory ideas made up mostly of impressions,

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sensations, feelings, emotions all sorts of things like that which have very little to do with thought and... which are just vague ramblings.

But if you want to succeed in having a precise, concrete, clear, definite thought on a certain subject, you must make an effort, gather yourself together, hold yourself firm, concentrate. And the first time you do it, it literally hurts, it is tiring! But if you don't make a habit of it, all your life you will be living in a state of irresolution. And when it comes to practical things, when you are faced with for, in spite of everything, one is always faced with a number of problems to solve, of a very practical kind, well, instead of being able to take up the elements of the problem, to put them all face to face, look at the question from every side, and rising above and seeing the solution, instead of that you will be tossed about in the swirls of something grey and uncertain, and it will be like so many spiders running around in your head but you won't succeed in catching the thing.

I am speaking of the simplest of problems, you know; I am not speaking of deciding the fate of the world or humanity, or even of a country nothing of the kind. I am speaking of the problems of your daily life, of every day. They become something quite woolly.

Well, it is to avoid this that you are told, when your brain is in course of being formed, "Instead of letting it be shaped by such habits and qualities, try to give it a little exactitude, precision, capacity of concentration, of choosing, deciding, putting things in order, try to use your reason."

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Of course, it is well understood that reason is not the supreme capacity of man and must be surpassed, but it is quite obvious that if you don't have it, you will live an altogether incoherent life, you won't even know how to behave rationally. The least thing will upset you completely and you won't even know why, and still less how to remedy it. While someone who has established within himself a state of active, clear reasoning, can face attacks of all kinds, emotional attacks of any trials whatever; for life is entirely made up of these things unpleasantness, vexations which are small but proportionate to the one who feels them, and so naturally felt by him as very big because they are proportionate to him. Well, reason can stand back a little, look at all that, smile and say, "Oh! no, one must not make a fuss over such a small thing."

If you do not have reason, you will be like a cork on a stormy sea. I don't know if the cork suffers from its condition, but it does not seem to me a very happy one.

There, then.

Now, after having said all this and its not just once I have told you this but several times I think, and I am ready to tell it to you again as many times as you like after having said this, I believe in leaving you entirely free to choose whether you want to be the cork on the stormy sea or whether you want to have a clear, precise perception and a sufficient knowledge of things to be able to walk to well, simply to where you want to go.

For there is a clarity that dispensable in order to be able even to follow the path one has chosen.

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I am not at all keen on your becoming scholars, far from it! For then one falls into the other extreme: one falls one's head with so many things that there is no longer any room for the higher light; but there is a minimum that is indispensable for not... well, for not being the cork.

Mother, some say that our general inadequacy in studies comes from the fact that too much stress is laid on games, physical education. Is this true?

Who said that? People who don't like physical education? Stiff old teachers who can't do exercises any longer? These? I am not asking for names!

Well, I don't think so.

You remember the first article Sri Aurobindo wrote in the Bulletin? He answers these people quite categorically.

I don't think it is that. I am quite sure it is not that, I believe, rather and I put all the blame on myself that you have been given a fantastic freedom, my children; oh! I don't think there is any other place in the world where children are so free. And, indeed, it is very difficult to know how to make use of a freedom like that.

However, it was worthwhile trying the experiment. You don't appreciate it because you don't know how it is when it is not like that; it seems quite natural to you. But it is very difficult to know how to organise one's own freedom oneself. Still, if you were to succeed in doing that, in giving yourself your own discipline and for higher reasons, not in order to pass exams, to

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make a career, please your teachers, win many prizes, or all the ordinary reasons children have: in order not to be scolded, not to be punished, for all that; we leave out all those reasons if you manage to impose a discipline upon yourself each one his own, there is no need to follow someone else's a discipline simply because you want to progress and draw the best out of yourself, then... Oh! you will be far superior to those Who follow the ordinary school disciplines. That is what I wanted to try. Mind you, I don't say I have failed; I still have great hope that you will know how to profit by this unique opportunity. But all the same, there is something you must find out: it is the necessity of an inner discipline. Without discipline you won't be able to get anywhere, without discipline you can't even live the normal life of a normal man. But instead of having the conventional discipline of ordinary societies or ordinary institutions, I would have liked and I still want you to have the discipline you set yourselves, for the love of perfection, your own perfection, the perfection of your being.

But without that... Note that if one didn't discipline the body, one would not even be able to stand on two legs, one would continue like a child on all fours. You could do nothing. You are obliged to discipline yourself; you could not live in society, you could not live at all, except all alone in the forest; and even then, I don't quite know. It is absolutely indispensable, I have told you this I don't know how often. And because I have a very marked aversion for conventional discipline, social and others, it does not mean that you must abstain from all discipline. I would like everyone

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to find his own, in the sincerity of his inner aspiration and the will to realise himself.

And so, the aim of all those who know, whether they are teachers, instructors or any others, the very purpose of those who know, is to inform you, to help you. When you are in a situation which seems difficult to you, you put your problem and, from their personal experience, they can tell you, "No, it is like this or it is like that, and you must do this, you must try that."So, instead of forcing you to absorb theories, principles and so-called laws, and a more or less abstract knowledge, they would be there to give you information about things, from the most material to the most spiritual, each one within his own province and ac- cording to his capacity.

It is quite obvious that if you are thrown into the world without the least technical knowledge, you may do the most dangerous things. Take a child who knows nothing, the first thing he will do if he has any matches, for instance, is to burn himself. So, in that field, from the purely material point of view, it is good that there are people who know and who can inform you; for otherwise, if each one had to learn from his own experience, he would spend several lives learning the most indispensable things. That is the usefulness, the true usefulness of teachers and instructors. They have learnt more or less by practice or through a special study, and they can teach you those things it is indispensable to know. That makes you save time, a lot of time. But that is their only usefulness: to be able to answer questions. And, in fact, you should have a brain which is lively enough to ask questions. I don't know, but you never

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have anything to ask me or it is so seldom. But that shows a terrible mental laziness!

At times I tell you, "Don't question, try to find out by yourselves certain inner things", that is understood; but when I am here and tell you, "Haven't you any questions to ask?" Silence... So, that proves that you have no mental curiosity. And I don't ask you necessarily to put questions on what I have just read; I am always ready to answer any question whatsoever, asked by anyone. Well, I must say we are not very rich in questions! It is not often that I have an opportunity of telling you something.

I hasten to tell you that if you ask me technical questions on the sciences, physics or whatever, I could very well answer, "I know nothing about it, study your books or ask your teachers"; but if you ask me questions in my field, I shall always answer you.

So, one last attempt: Has anyone here a question to ask me?

(Silence)

Wonderful! (Mother laughs) Well, that's all then.

14 November 1956

Mother, the problem [of controlling one's temper] comes up in our class.

Oh! oh! you get into a temper with your students? (Laughter)

To control and discipline them, what should one

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do if one has no self-control?

Then one can't! (Laughter)

But the way you describe it, this control will take a whole lifetime!

Oh! what a pity! (Laughter)

But how can you hope... Let us see, you have an indisciplined, disobedient, insolent pupil; well, that represents a certain vibration in the atmosphere which, besides, is unfortunately very contagious; but if you yourself do not have within you the opposite vibration, the Vibration of discipline, order, humility, of a quietude and peace which nothing can disturb, how do you expect to have any influence? You are going to tell him that this should not be done? Either that will make things worse or he will make fun of you! And if by chance you don't have any control yourself and become angry, then it's finished! You lose for ever all possibility of exercising any authority over your students.

Teachers who are not perfectly calm, who do not have an endurance that never fails, and a quietude which nothing can disturb, who have no self-respect those who are like that will get nowhere. One must be a saint and a hero to be a good teacher. One must be a great yogi to be a good teacher. One must have a perfect attitude to be able to exact a perfect attitude from the students. You cannot ask anyone to do what you don't do yourself. That is a rule. So look at the difference between what is and what ought to be, and you will be able to estimate the extent of your failure in class.

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That is all I can offer you.

And I may add, since there's the occasion for it: we ask many students here when they grow up and know something, to teach others. There are some, I believe, who understand Why; but there are also others who think it is because it is good to serve in some way or other and that teachers are needed and we are happy to have them. But I tell you for it is a fact that I have never asked anyone educated here to give lessons without seeing that this would be for him the best way of disciplining himself, of learning better what he is to teach and of reaching an inner perfection he would never have if he were not a teacher and had not this opportunity of disciplining himself, which is exceptionally severe. Those who succeed as teachers here I dont mean an outer, artificial and superficial success, but becoming truly good teachers this means that they are capable of making an inner progress of impersonalisation, of eliminating their egoism, controlling their movements, capable of a clear-sightedness, an understanding of others and a never-failing patience.

If you go through that discipline and succeed, well, you have not wasted your time here.

And I ask all those who accept to give lessons, to accept it in that spirit. It is all very well to be kind and do some service and be useful; that is good of course, a very good thing; but it is only one aspect and perhaps the least important aspect of the problem. The most important one is that it is a Grace given to you so that you can achieve self-control, an understanding of the subject and of others which you could never have acquired but for this opportunity.

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And if you have not benefited from this all these years you have been teaching others, it means that you have at the very least wasted half your time...

Mother, you have said that the student must be given full freedom. Now, some interpret this as meaning that there should he no fixed classes, for the student should he left free to do what he likes, to come to the class or not as he likes, etc. So in this case, there should not be fixed hours for each class. And in this case the organisation becomes very complicated how to arrange the classes?

Quite impossible! But when did I say that the students must be left free to come or not?...

Excuse me, you must not confuse things. I have said and I repeat that if a student feels quite alien to a subject, for example, if a student feels he has an ability for literature and poetry and has a distaste or at least an indifference for mathematics, if he tells me, "I prefer not to follow the mathematics course", I can't tell him, "No, it is absolutely necessary to go to it." But if a student has decided to follow a class, it is an absolutely elementary discipline that he follows it, goes to it regularly and behaves himself properly there; otherwise he is altogether unworthy of going to school. I have never encouraged anyone to roam about during class hours and to come one day and be absent the next, never, for, to begin with, if he can't submit to this quite elementary discipline, he will never acquire the least control over himself, he will always be the slave of all his impulses and all his fancies.

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If you don't want to study a certain branch of knowledge, that is all right, no one can compel you to do it; but if you decide to do something anything in life, if you decide to do a thing you must do it honestly, with discipline, regularity and method. And without whims. I have never approved of anyone being the plaything of his own impulses and fancies, never, and you will never be able to have that from me, for then one is no longer a human being, one is an animal.

12 December 1956

If at this moment you feel that what I am telling you is impossible to understand, this means that you are trying to understand it; and if you try to understand it, this means it is within your consciousness, otherwise you could not try to understand it..... But for the moment it is impossible to understand, for want of a few small cells in the brain, nothing else, it is very simple. And as these cells develop through attention, concentration and effort, when you have listened attentively ans made an effort tp understand, well, after a few hours or a few days or a few months, new convolitions will be formed in your brain, and all this will become quite natural. You will wounder how there could have been a time when you did not understand: "It is so simple!" But so long as these convolutions are not there, you may make an effort, you may even give yourself a headache, but you will not understand.

It is very encouraging because, fundamentally, the only thing necessary is to want it and to have the necessary

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patience. What is incomphrehensible for you today will be quite clear in a short time. And note that its is not necessary that you should givbe yourself a headache every day and at every minute by trying to understand!One very simple thing is enough: to listen as well as you can, to have a sort of will or aspiration or, you might ever say, desire to understand, and then that's all. You make a little opening in your consicousness to let the thing enter; and you aspiration makes this opening, like a tiny notch inside, a little hole somewhere in what is shut up, and then you let the thing enter, It will work. And it will build up in your brain the elements necesssary to express itself. you no longer need to think about it. You try to understand something else, you work, study, reflect, think about all sort of things; and then after a few months or perhaps a year, perhaps less, perhaps more you open the book once again and read the same sentence, and it seems as clear as crystal to you! Simplyb because what was necessary for understanding has been built up in your brain.

So never come to me saying, "I am no good at this subject, I shall never understand philosophy" or " I shall never be able to do mathematics" or.... It is ignorance, it is sheer ignorance. There is nothing you cannot understand if you give your brain the time to widen and perfect itself. And you can pass from one mental construction to another: and each subject of study means a lamnguage; from one language to another, and build up one thing after another within you, and contain all that and many more thins yet, very harmoniously, if you do this with carew and take your

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time over it. For each one of these branches of knowledge corresponds to an inner formation, and you can multiply these formations, and you can multiply thers formations indefinitely if you gibe the necessary time and care.

I do not believe at all in limits which cannot be crossed.

But I see very clearly people's mental formations and also a sort of laziness in face of the necessary effort. And this laziness and these limits are like diseases. But they are curable diseases unless you have a really defective cerebal structure and lack something; if something was "forgotten" when tou were formed, then it is moke difficult. It is much more difficult, but is is not impossible. There are people like that, really incomplete, who are like an ill-made object logically it would be better if they didn't continue to exist; but still (laughing) it is not the custom, it is not the ordinary human way of thinking. But if you are a normal Person, well, provided you take the trouble and know the method, your capacity for growth is almost unlimited.

There is a idea that everyone belongs to a certain type, that, for example, the pine will never become the oak and the palm never become wheat. This is obvious. But that is something else: it means that the truth of your being is not the truth of your neighbour. But in the truth of your being, according to your own formation, your progress is almost unlimited. It is limited only by your own conviction that it is limited and by your ignorance of the true process, otherwise...

There is nothing one cannot do, if one knows how to do it.

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13 March 1957

Your friend is not one who encourages you to come down to your lowest level, encourages you to do foolish things along with him or fall into bad ways with him or one who commends you for all the nasty things you do, that's quite clear. And yet, usually, very, very often, much too often, one makes friends with somebody with whom one doesn't feel uneasy when one has sunk lower. One considers as one's best friend somebody who encourages one in one's follies: one mixes with others to roam about instead of going to school, to go and steal fruit from gardens, to make fun of one's teachers and for all kinds of things like that. I am not making any personal remarks, but indeed I could quote some examples, unhappily far too many. And perhaps this is why I said, "They are not your true friends." But still, they are the most convenient friends, for they don't make you feel that you are in the wrong; while to one who comes and tells you, "Now then, instead of roaming about and doing nothing or doing stupid things, if you came to the class, dont you think it would be better!" usually one replies, "Don't bother me! You are not my friend."This is perhaps why I wrote this sentence. There you are. I repeat, I am not making any personal remarks, but still it is an opportunity to tell you something that unfortunately happens much too often.

There are children here who were full of promise, who were at the top of their class, who used to work seriously, from whom I expected much, and who have been completely ruined by this kind of friendship.

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Since we are speaking of this, I shall tell them today that I regret this very much and that I do not call such people friends but mortal enemies against whom one should protect oneself as one would against a contagious disease.

We don't like the company of someone who has a contagious disease, and avoid him carefully; generally he is segregated so that it does not spread. But the contagion of Vice and bad behaviour, the contagion of depravity, falsehood and what is base, is infinitely more dangerous than the contagion of any disease, and this is what must be very carefully avoided. You must consider as your best friend the one who tells you that he does not wish to participate in any bad or ugly act, the one who gives you courage to resist low temptations; he is a friend. He is the one you must associate with and not someone with whom you have fun and who strengthens your evil propensities. That's all.

Now, we won't labour the point and I hope that those I have in mind will understand what I have said.

Indeed, you should choose as friends only those who are wiser than yourself, those whose company ennobles you and helps you to master yourself, to progress, to act in a better way and see more clearly. And finally, the best friend one can have isn't he the Divine, to whom one can say everything, reveal everything? For there indeed is the source of all compassion, of all power to efface every error when it is not repeated, to open the road to true realisation; it is he who can understand all, heal all, and always help on the path, help you not to fail, not to falter, not to fall, but to walk straight to the goal. He is the true friend,

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the friend of good and bad days, the one who can understand, can heal, and who is always there when you need him. When you call him sincerely, he is always there to guide and uphold you and to love you in the true way.

8 May 1957

It is a good thing to begin to learn at an early age that to lead an efficient life and obtain from one's body the maximum it is able to give, reason must be the master of the house. And it is not a question of yoga or higher realisation, it is something which should be taught everywhere, in every school, every family, every home: man was made to be a mental being, and merely to be a man we are not speaking of anything else, we are speaking only of being a man life must be dominated by reason and not by vital impulses. This should be taught to all children from their infancy. If one is not dominated by reason, one is a brute lower than the animal; for animals don't have a mind or a reason to dominate them, but they obey the instinct of the species. There is an instinct of the species which is an extremely reasonable instinct that regulates all their activities for their own good, and automatically, without knowing it, they are subject to this instinct of the species which is altogether reasonable from the point of View of that species, of each species. And those animals which for some reason or other become free of it as I was saying just a while ago, those which live near man and begin to obey man instead of obeying

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the instinct of the species are perverted and lose the qualities of their species. But an animal left to its natural life and free from human influence is an extremely reasonable being from its own point of View: for it only does things which are in conformity with its nature and its own good. Naturally, it meets with disasters, for it is constantly at war with all the other species, but it does not itself act foolishly. Stupidities and perversion begin with conscious mind and the human species. It is the wrong use man makes of his mental capacity. Perversion begins with humanity. It is a distortion of the progress of Nature which mental consciousness represents. And, therefore, the first thing which should be taught to every human being as soon as he is able to think, is that he should obey reason which is a super-instinct of the species. Reason is the master of the nature of mankind. One must obey reason and absolutely refuse to be the slave of instincts. And here I am not talking to you about yoga, I am not talking about spiritual life, not at all; it has nothing to do with that. It is the basic wisdom of human life, purely human life: every human being who obeys anything other than reason is a kind of brute lower than the animal. That is all. And this should be taught everywhere; it is the basic education which should be given to children.

The reign of reason must come to an end only with the advent of the psychic law which manifests the divine Will.

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8 January 1958

In reality, you should take this reading [of Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine] as an opportunity to develop the philosophical mind in yourself and the capacity to arrange ideas in a logical order and establish an argument on a sound basis. You must take this like dumb-bell exercises for developing muscles: these are dumb-bell exercises for the mind to develop one's brain...

You see, all those who have done ordered and organised physical exercises, have the knowledge, for instance, of the various muscles which must be moved to obtain a particular movement, and the best way to move them and how to obtain the maximum result with the minimum loss of energy. Well, it is the same thing with thought. When you train yourself methodically, there comes a time when you can follow a train of reasoning quite objectively, as you would project a picture on a screen you can follow the logical deduction of one idea from another, and the normal, logical, organised movement, with the minimum loss of time, from a proposition to its conclusion. Once you have acquired the habit of doing that, just as you have the habit of methodically moving the muscles which must be moved to obtain a certain result, your thought becomes clear. Otherwise, movements of thought, intellectual movements, are vague, imprecise, elusive; all of a sudden something rises up, one doesn't know why, and something else comes to contradict it, one doesn't know why either. And if one tries to organise this clearly in order to become aware of the exact relation

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between ideas, the first few times one does it, one gets a fine headache! And one has the feeling of trying to find one's way in a very dark virgin forest. The speculative mind needs discipline for its development. If it is not disciplined methodically, one is always in a sort of a cloud. The vast majority of human beings can harbour the most contradictory ideas in their brains without being in the least troubled by them. Well, until you try to organise your mind clearly, you risk at the very least having no control over what you think. And very often, you must come down to action before you begin to realise the value of what you think! Or, if not as far as action, at least as far as the feelings: suddenly you become aware that you have feelings which are not very desirable; then you realise you have not controlled your way of thinking at all.

25 April 1958

There is an old age much more dangerous and much more real than the amassing of years: the incapacity to grow and progress. As soon as you stop advancing, as soon as you stop progressing, as soon as you cease to better yourself, cease to gain and grow, cease to transform yourself, you truly become old, that is to say, you go downhill towards disintegration. There are young people who are old and there are old people who are young. If you carry in you this flame for progress and transformation, if you are ready

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to leave everything behind so that you may advance with an alert step, if you are always open to a new progress, a new improvement, a new transformation, then you are eternally young. But if you sit back satisfied with what has been accomplished, if you have the feeling that you have reached your goal and you have nothing left to do but enjoy the fruit of your efforts, then already more than half your body is in the tomb: it is decrepitude and the true death. Everything that has been done is always nothing compared with what remains to be done. Do not look behind. Look ahead, always ahead and go forward always.

9 May 1958

The world has been so made at least up to now, let us hope that it will not be so for much longer that, spontaneously, a man who is not cultured, when he is brought into contact with ideas, always chooses wrong ideas. And a child who is not educated always chooses bad company. It is a thing I experience constantly and concretely. If you keep a child in a special atmosphere and if, from a very early age, you instil in him a special atmosphere, a special purity, he has a chance of not making a wrong choice. But a child who is taken from the world as it is and is placed in a society where there are good and bad elements will go straight to those who can spoil him, teach him wrong things, that is to say, towards the worst company.

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A man who has no intellectual culture, if you give him some mixed ideas, just at random, to choose from, he will always choose the stupid ones; because, as Sri Aurobindo has told us, this is a world of falsehood, of ignorance and an effort is needed, an aspiration; one must come in contact with one's inmost being a conscious and luminous contact if one is to distinguish the true from the false, the good influence from the bad. If you let yourself go, you sink into a hole.

Things are like that because what rules the world oh! let us put it in the past tense, so that it becomes true what ruled the world was falsehood and ignorance.

In fact, for the moment, it is still like that; one should have no illusions about it. But perhaps with a great effort and great vigilance we shall be able to make it otherwise...

23 July 1958

Whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and con- sciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing that's not what I

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mean. I mean learning to concentrate.

And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention. And from the spiritual point of View it is still more important. There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration but one must learn how to do it.

There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key.

You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it.

13 August 1958

Sweet Mother, why don't we profit as much as we should by our presence here in the Ashram?

Ah! That is very simple; it is because it is too easy!... When you have to go all round the world to find a teacher, when you have to give up everything to obtain only the first words of a teaching, then this teaching, this spiritual help becomes something very precious, like everything that is difficult to obtain, and you make a great effort to deserve it.

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Most of you came here when you were very small, at an age when there can be no question of the spiritual life or spiritual teaching it would be altogether premature. You have indeed lived in this atmosphere but without even being aware of it; you are accustomed to seeing me, hearing me; I speak to you as one does to all children, I have even played with you as one plays with. children; you only have to come and sit here and you hear me speak, you only have to ask me a question and I answer you, I have never refused to say anything to anybody it is so easy. It is enough to... live to sleep, to eat, to do exercises and study at school. You live here as you would live anywhere else. And so, you are used to it.

If I had made strict rules, if I had said, "I shall not tell you anything until you have truly made an effort to know it", then perhaps you might have made some effort, but that's not in keeping with my idea. I believe more in the power of the atmosphere and of example than of a rigorous teaching. I count more on something awakening in the being through contagion rather than by a methodical, disciplined effort.

Perhaps, after all, something is being prepared and one day it will spring up to the surface.

That is what I hope for.

One day you will tell yourself, " Just think! I have been here so long, I could have learnt so much, realised so much and I never even thought of it! Only like that, now and then." And then, on that day... well, on that day, just imagine, you are going to wake up all of a sudden to something you never noticed but which is deep within you and thirsts for the truth, thirsts for transformation

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and is ready to make the effort required to realise it. On that day you will go very fast, you will advance with giant strides... Perhaps, as I said, that day has come now after five years.?¹ I said, "I give you five years..." Now the five years have passed, so perhaps the day has come! Perhaps you will suddenly feel an irresistible need not to live in unconsciousness, in ignorance, in that state in which you do things without knowing why, feel things without understanding why, have contradictory wills, understand nothing about anything, live only by habit, routine, reactions you take life easy. And one day you are no longer satisfied with that.

It depends, for each one it is different. Most often it is the need to know, to understand; for some it is the need to do what must be done as it should be done; for others it is a vague feeling that behind this life, so unconscious, so futile, so empty of meaning, there is something to find which is worth being lived that there is a reality, a truth behind these falsehoods and illusions.

One suddenly feels that everything one does, everything one sees, has no meaning, no purpose, but that there is something which has a meaning; that essentially one is here on earth for something, that all this all these movements, all this agitation, all this wastage of force and energy all that must have a purpose, an aim, and that this uneasiness one feels within oneself, this lack of satisfaction, this need, this thirst for something must lead us somewhere else.

1. In July 1953, the Mother told the students, "In five years I shall take with you a study course of spiritual life."

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And one day, you ask yourself, "But then, why is one born? Why does one die? Why does one suffer? Why does one act?"

You no longer live like a little machine, hardly half conscious. You want to feel truly, to act truly, to know truly. Then, in ordinary life one searches for books, for people who know a little more than oneself, one begins to seek somebody who can solve these questions, lift the. veil of ignorance. Here it is very simple. You only have to... do the things one does every day, but to do them with a purpose.

You go to the Samadhi, look at Sri Aurobindo's picture, you come to receive a flower from me, sit down to a lesson; you do everything you do but... with one question within you: Why?

And then, if you ask the questions, you receive the answer.

Why? Because we don't want life as it is any longer, because we don't want falsehood and ignorance any longer, because we don't want suffering and unconsciousness any longer, because we don't want disorder and bad will any longer, because Sri Aurobindo has come to tell us: It is not necessary to leave the earth to find the Truth, it is not necessary to leave life to find one's soul, it is not necessary to give up the world or to have limited beliefs in order to enter into relation with the Divine. The Divine is everywhere, in everything, and if He is hidden... it is because we do not take the trouble to discover Him. We can, simply by a sincere aspiration, open a sealed door in us and find... that Something which will change the whole significance of life, reply to all our

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questions, solve all our problems and lead us to the perfection we aspire for without knowing it, to that Reality which alone can satisfy us and give us lasting joy, equilibrium, strength, life.

All this you have heard many a time.

You have heard it Oh! there are even some here who are so used to it that for them it seems to be the same thing as drinking a glass of water or opening a Window to let in the sunlight.

But since I promised you that in five years you Would be able to live these things, to have a concrete, real, convincing experience of them, well, that means you ought to be ready and that we are going to begin.

We have tried a little, but now we are going to try seriously!

The starting-point: to want it, truly want it, to need it. The next step: to think, above all, of that. A day comes, very quickly, when one is unable to think of anything else. .

That is the one thing which counts. And then...

One formulates one's aspiration, lets the true prayer spring up from one's heart, the prayer which expresses the sincerity of the need. And then... well, one will see what happens. Something will happen. Surely something will happen. For each one it will take a different form. That's all. I am glad you gave me this.

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17 September 1958

Mother, in our life here, what do we mean by the "development of the mind "? And how is it useful?

I believe I have already explained this to you once. I think I have even explained it in detail in the articles on education. It is quite similar to the results of physical education for the body.

We have limbs and muscles and nerves, indeed everything that constitutes the body; if we don't give them a special development, a special education, all these things do what they can to express the Power in the body, but it is a very clumsy and very incomplete expression. It is beyond question that a physical body which has been trained according to the most complete and rational methods of physical culture is capable of things it could never do otherwise. I think no one can deny that. Well, for the mind it is the same thing. You have a mental instrument with many possibilities, faculties, but they are latent and need a special education, a special training so that they can express the Light. It is certain that in ordinary life the brain is the seat of the outer expression of the mental consciousness; well, if this brain is not developed, if it is crude, there are innumerable things which cannot be expressed, because they do not have the instrument required to express themselves. It would be like a musical instrument with most of its notes missing, and that produces a rough approximation but not something precise.

Mental culture, intellectual education, changes the constitution of your brain, enlarges it considerably,

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and as a result the expression becomes more complete and more precise.

It is not necessary if you want to escape from life and go into inexpressible heights, but it is indispensable if you want to express your experience in outer life.

Mother, you said that if one develops these faculties of analysis, deduction and all that too much, they become obstacles to spiritual experiences, no?

If they are not controlled, mastered, yes. But not necessarily. Not necessarily. It might make the control a little more difficult, for naturally it is more difficult to master an individualised being than a crude one with a completer individualisation the ego becomes more crystallised and also self satisfied, doesn't it?... But granting that this difficulty has been overcome, well, in a highly developed individuality the result is infinitely superior to the one obtained in a crude and uneducated nature. I am not saying that the process of transformation or rather of consecration is not more difficult but once it is achieved the result is far superior.

This may very well be compared with musical instruments, one of which has a certain number of notes and the other ten times as many. Well, it is perhaps easier to play an instrument of four or five notes but the music that could be played on a complete keyboard is obviously far superior!

One could even compare this to an orchestra much more than to a simple instrument. A human being, a fully developed human individuality is very much like

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one of those stupendous orchestras which has hundreds and hundreds of players. It is obviously very difficult to control and conduct them but the result can be marvellous.

17 March 1961

What is the use of discussions? What is the best way to make other people understand what one feels to be true?

In general, those who like to discuss things are those who need the stimulant of contradiction to clarify their ideas.

It is obviously the sign of an elementary intellectual stage.

But if you can "attend" a discussion as an impartial spectator even while you are taking part in it and while the other person is talking with you -- you can always benefit from this opportunity to consider a question or a problem from several points of view; and by attempting to reconcile opposite views, you can widen your ideas and rise to a more comprehensive synthesis. As for the best way of proving to others what one feels to be true, one must live it there is no other way.

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6 March 1963

Indeed, in education, both tendencies should be encouraged side by side: the tendency to thirst for the marvellous, for what seems unrealisable, for something which fills you with the feeling of divinity; while at the same time encouraging exact, correct, sincere observation in the perception of the world as it is, the suppression of all imagination, a constant control, a highly practical and meticulous sense for exact details. Both should go side by side. Usually, you kill the one with the idea that this is necessary in order to foster the other this is completely wrong. Both can be simultaneous and there comes a time when one has enough knowledge to know that they are the two aspects of the same thing: insight, a higher discernment. But instead of a narrow, limited insight and discernment, the discernment becomes entirely sincere, correct, exact, but it is vast, it includes a whole domain that does not yet belong to the concrete manifestation.

From the point of View of education, this would be very important: to see the world as it is, exactly, unadorned, in the most down-to-earth and concrete manner; and to see the world as it can be, with the freest, highest Vision, the one most full of hope and aspiration and marvellous certitude as the two poles of discernment.

The most splendid, most marvellous, most powerful, most expressive, most total things we can imagine are nothing compared to what they can be; and at the same time our meticulous exactitude in the tiniest detail is never exact enough. And both must go together.

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When one knows this (downward gesture) and when one knows that (upward gesture), one is able to put the two together.

5 April 1967

(The Mother writes a note.) It is an answer to a question. Do you know what I told the teachers of the school? I have been asked another question. Here is the beginning of my reply:

"The division between 'ordinary life' and 'spiritual life' is an outdated antiquity."

Did you read his question? Read it again to me.

"We discussed the future. It seemed to me that nearly all the teachers were eager to do something so that the children could become more conscious of why they are here. At that point I said that in my opinion, to speak to the children of spiritual things often has the opposite result, and that these words lose all their value."

"Spiritual things" what does he mean by spiritual things?

Obviously, if the teachers recite them like a story...

Spiritual things... They are taught history or spiritual things, they are taught science or spiritual things. That is the stupidity. In history, the Spirit is there; in science, the Spirit is there the Truth is everywhere. And what

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is needed is not to teach it in a false way, but to teach it in a true way. They cannot get that into their heads.

He adds: "I have suggested that it might be better to meet and listen to the Mother's voice,¹for even if we don't understand everything, your voice would accomplish its own inner work, which we are not in a position to evaluate. About this, I would like to know what is the best way of bringing the child into relation with you. For all the suggestions, including mine, seemed arbitrary to me and without any real value.

"Mother, wouldn't it be better if the teachers were to concentrate solely on the subjects they are teaching, for you are taking care of the spiritual life?"

I shall give him this reply: There is no "spiritual life"! It is still the old idea, still the old idea of the sage, the sanyasin, the... who represents spiritual life, while all the others represent ordinary life and it is not true, it is not true, it is not true at all.

If they still need an opposition between two things for the poor mind doesn't work if you don't give it an opposition, if they need an opposition, let them take the opposition between Truth and Falsehood, it is a little better; I don't say it is perfect, but it is a little better. So, in all things, Falsehood and Truth are mixed everywhere: in the so-called "spiritual life", in sanyasins, in swamis, in those who think they represent the life divine on earth, all that there also, there is a

1. Tape-recordings of the Mother's classes during the 1950s.

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mixture of Falsehood and Truth.

It would be better not to make any division.

(Silence)

For the children, precisely because they are children, it would be best to instil in them the will to conquer the future, the will to always look ahead and to want to move on as swiftly as they can towards... what will be but they should not drag with them the burden, the millstone of the whole oppressive weight of the past. It is only when we are very high in consciousness and knowledge that it is good to look behind to find the points where this future begins to show itself. When we can look at the whole picture, when we have a very global vision, it becomes interesting to know that what will be realised later on has already been announced beforehand, in the same way that Sri Aurobindo said that the divine life will manifest on earth, because it is already involved in the depths of Matter; from this standpoint it is interesting to look back or to look down below-- not to know what happened, or to know what men have known: that is quite useless.

The children should be told: There are wonderful things to be manifested, prepare yourself to receive them. Then if they want something a little more concrete and easier to understand, you can tell them: Sri Aurobindo came to announce these things; when you are able to read him, you will understand. So this awakens the interest, the desire to learn.

I see very clearly the difficulty he is referring to:

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most people and in all the things that are written, or in the lectures they give use inflated speech, without, or rather a negative effect, that is ehat he is referring to.

Yes, that is why should do as I have said.

Ah! But not so long ago, most of the teachers were saying, "Oh! But we must do this, because it is done everywhere." (Smiling) They have already come a little distance. But there is much more to be covered.

But above all, what is most important is to eliminate these divisiobs. And every one of them, all of them have it in their mind: the division between leadinfg a spiritual life and leading an ordinary life, having a spritual consicousness and having an ordinary consciousness there is only one consciousness.

In most people it is three-Quarters asleep and distorted; in many it is still completely distorted. But what is needen, very simply, is not to leap from one consciousness into another, but to open one's consciousness into another, but to open one's consciousness (upward gesture) and to fill it with vibrations of Truth, to bring it in harmony with what must be here there it exixtx from all eternity but here, wjhat must be here: the "tomorrow" of the earth. If you weigh yourself down with a whole burden that you haev to drag behind you, if you drag behind you everything that you must abandon, youy will not be able to advance very fast.

Mind you, to know things from the earth's past can be very interesting and very useful, but it must not be something that birds you or tries you to the past.If

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it is used as a spring board, it is all right. But really, it is quite secondary.

(Silence)

It would be interesting to formulate or to elaborate a new method of teaching for children, to take them very young. It is easy when they are very young. We need people oh! we would need remarkable teachers who have, first, an ample enough documentation of what is known so as to be able to answer every question, and at the same time, at least the knowledge, if not the experience -- the experience would be better -- of the true intuitive intellectual attitude, and --naturally the capacity would be still more preferable at least the knowledge that the true way of knowing is mental silence, an attentive silence turned towards the truer Consciousness, and the capacity to receive What comes from there. The best would be to have this capacity; at least, it should be explained that it is the true thing a sort of demonstration and that it works not only from the point of View of what must be learned, of the whole domain of knowledge, but also of the whole domain of what should be done: the capacity to receive the exact indication of how to do it; and as you go on, it changes into a very clear perception of what must be done, and a precise indication of when it must be done. At least the children, as soon as they have the capacity to think it starts at the age of seven, but at about fourteen or fifteen it is very clear the children should be given little indications at the age of seven, a complete explanation at fourteen, of how to do it, and that it is the only way to be in relation with the deeper

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truth of things, and that all the rest is a more or less clumsy mental approximation to something that can be known directly.

The conclusion is that the teachers themselves should at least have a sincere beginning of discipline and experience, that it is not a question of accumulating books and retelling them like this. One can't be a teacher in this way; let the outside world be like that if it likes. We are not propagandists, we simply want to Show What can be done and try to prove that it must be done.

When you take the children very young, it is wonderful. There is so little to do: it is enough to be.

Never make a mistake.

Never lose your temper.

Always understand.

And to know and see clearly why there has been this movement, why there has been this impulse, what is the inner constitution of the child, what is the thing to be strengthened and brought forward this is the only thing to do; and to leave them, to leave them free to blossom; simply to give them the opportunity to see many things, to touch many things, to do as many things as possible. It is great fun. And above all, not to try to impose on them what you think you know.

Never scold them. Always understand, and if the child is ready, explain; if he is not ready for an explanation if you are ready yourself replace the false vibration by a true one. But this... this is to demand from the teachers a perfection which they rarely have.

But it would be very interesting to make a programme for the teachers and the true programme of

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study, from the very bottom which is so plastic and which receives impressions so deeply. If they were given a few drops of truth when they are very young, they would blossom quite naturally as the being grows. It would be beautiful work.

11 November 1967

A conversation with six teachers of the Centre of Education. Among them were X, who taught by the free-progress system, and Y who taught partly by the "old system". In the free-progress system the student chooses his own course of studies and is guided by the teacher. In the old system the student follows a set course of studies determined by the teacher, who instructs the students as a group.

This is what I think: in the free-progress system, there are no classes with all the students sitting down, with the teacher on his dais lecturing the whole time; there are students sitting down here and there, at their tables. They do the work they want to do and the teacher is simply there, anywhere, either in a room or in a special place; they go to him and ask him questions. This is howl understand it, quite...

X: That's exactly how it is, Mother.

So now, in order to continue the old system, all the students would have to go on sitting in a row, with the teacher sitting on his dais, that is, a completely ridiculous situation. I remember very well when I used

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to go to the Playground, I was glad when I could sit with every one around me and we were free.... But a table, a dais, the students tied to... I am speaking very materially, not at all from the psychological point of View; so if that changes, it will already be a great improvement.

Not all the students coming in, like that, almost in a line, and then sitting down, each one in his place, and then the teacher coming and sitting down.. .. Then, if they are well-mannered, all the students stand up (laughter), the teacher sits down and begins his lecture. The students think about anything whatever, all their thoughts wander off in every direction and they pay attention if they feel like it. Well, that is a waste of time, that's all.

That is very, very, very material and practical; it can change at once. The teacher can choose either a corner or a place or a little room I don't know What, it's all the same to me any place where the students can come and ask for his guidance, either in the room or in a room nearby. He can busy himself in an interesting way, preparing the answers he will give to his students, not thinking about something else.

That can be done at once, eh?

Now, it is not necessary that they should all call themselves by the same name. That is where... there is, in man, a kind of spirit of... ah! we can give it a polite name... well, a sheep-like spirit... All the time they need... they need someone to lead them.

The student should come to school not like some one going to his daily grind because he cannot avoid it, but because it would be possible for him to do some thing

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interesting. The teacher should not be in school, come to school with the idea that for half an hour or three-quarters of an hour he is going to recite some thing which he has more or less well prepared and which is boring even for him, and that therefore he cannot amuse the students, but instead to try to come into contact mentally and if possible more deeply with a number of little developing individualities who, we hope, have some curiosity about things, and in order to be able to satisfy this curiosity. So he himself must be aware, very modestly, that he does not know enough and that he has a lot to learn; but not to learn from books by trying to understand life.

X gives a long report on the organisation of the free- progress classes. The Mother asks several questions, including:

The school opens at a fixed time, doesn't it? The students must be there at that time. They can't come at just any time.

X: Yes, Mother.

Because "free progress" does not mean indiscipline....

X: No, no, that is understood.

The student should not arrive half an hour late just because he is free, because this kind of freedom is not freedom, it is simply disorderliness. Each one must have a very strict discipline for himself. But a child is

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not capable of self-discipline, he must be taught the habit of discipline. So he should get up at the same time, get ready at the same time and go to school at the same time. That is indispensable, otherwise it becomes an impossible muddle.

Y explains about the "fixed classes" of the old system, noting that in the secondary stage there are thirty teachers and one hundred and fifty students. The discussion turns to the teaching of language classes.

And so how many languages will there be for those one hundred and fifty students?

Y: In principle, three: English, French, and their mother-tongue.

Ah! But that makes a lot! There is Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, and then Tamil, Telugu. That makes five already.

Y: Sanskrit!

That is not... Everyone should learn that. Especially everyone who works here should learn that... not the Sanskrit of the scholars... all, all of them, wherever they may have been born.

X: In principle, Mother, that is what we are thinking of next year, to make all the children do Sanskrit, plus their mother-tongue.

Yes. Not Sanskrit from the point of view of scholarship,

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but Sanskrit, a Sanskrit how to put it? that opens the door to all the languages of India. I think that is indispensable. The ideal would be, in a few years, to have a rejuvenated Sanskrit as the representative language of India, that is, a Sanskrit spoken in such a way that Sanskrit is behind all the languages of India and it should be that. This was Sri Aurobindo's idea, when we spoke about it. Because now English is the language of the whole country, but that is abnormal. It is very helpful for relations with the rest of the world, but just as each country has its own language, there should... And so here, as soon as one begins to want a national language, everyone starts quarrelling. Each one wants it to be his own, and that is foolish. But no one could object to Sanskrit. It is a more ancient language than the others and it contains the sounds, the root-sounds of many words.

This is something I studied with Sri Aurobindo and it is obviously very interesting. Some of these roots can even be found in all the languages of the world sounds, root-sounds which are found in all those languages. Well, this, this thing, this is what ought to be learnt and this is what the national language should be. Every child born in India should know it, just as every Child born in France has to know French. He does not speak properly, he does not know it thoroughly, but he has to know French a little; and in all the countries of the world it is the same thing. He has to know the national language. And then, when he learns, he learns as many languages as he likes. At the moment, we are still embroiled in quarrels, and this is a very bad atmosphere in which to build anything. But I hope that a

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day will come when it will be possible. So I would like to have a simple Sanskrit taught here, as simple as possible, but not "simplified" -- simple by going back to its origin... all these sounds, the sounds that are the roots of the words which were formed afterwards. I don't know whether you have anyone here who could do that. In fact, I don't know whether there is anyone in India who could do it. Sri Aurobindo knew....

We would need someone who knows it rather well. Once I spoke to Z. He told me that he was preparing a simplified grammar I don't know what he has done for a language that could be universal throughout the country. I don't know. Perhaps, after all, Z is the best.

So, in the afternoon, which teachers do you have? You say about thirty...

And you have thirty teachers for approximately one hundred and fifty students in the secondary stage. And so what do they know when they come? Nothing? In the kindergarten they are supposed to teach them French, eh? They speak to them in French. But I don't know whether it is strict.

X: Not very strict, Mother.

Not very, eh?

U: It used to be strict before. Now most of the time they speak in Hindi.

When children are very small, very young, they tend to amuse themselves, they have... there is nothing crystallised

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inside and they find it very amusing to learn the various names that various languages give to the same thing. They still have... or they do not yet have any mental rigidity. They still have this flexibility which makes one aware that a thing exists in itself and that the name that is given to it is simply a convention. And so for them, I think that it is like this, that the name which is given is a convention. And so, many children find it amusing to say such and such a thing, for example "yes" or "no". Take these words, "yes" or "no", the sense of affirmation and negation. In French they say it like this, in German they say it like this, in English they say it like this, in Italian they say it like this, in Hindi they say it like this, in Sanskrit they say... This is a very amusing game. If you knew how to make him play, take an object and then say, "There, you see, this is..." Like that. Or a small living dog, or a small living bird, or a small living tree, and then you tell them, "You see, there are all these languages and..." It is quite blank in there, they can learn this very well, and very easily. It is a very amusing game.

After further discussion:

Here, I am curious. How is a language taught? Because a teacher who starts telling everyone the same thing... They come out of there and they have understood nothing! A language is precisely the thing that should have the most life, the most life! And in order for it to have some life, the students have to participate. They should not be ears listening and sitting on a bench! Otherwise, they come out of there and they have learnt

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nothing...

(To Y) But then your afternoon classes... how are you going to go about them? Like that? The children sitting on the bench and the teacher giving a lecture? My God, how boring it is! The teacher feels bored, he is the first one to feel bored, so naturally he passes on his boredom to his students.

There could be an organisation like this: you take a subject and the teacher asks questions here and there, to this one, "There what do you have to say about this? What do you know about this?" And so on, like that. And then, naturally, if the others are listening, they can benefit. A kind of organisation like that, with some life in it not a boring lecture where everyone falls asleep after five minutes. You ask questions, or else, if there is a blackboard, on the blackboard you write a large question in large letters so that everyone can read, and you say, "Who can answer?" You do that and then you ask questions, here and there, you question those who have asked.... And so when one of them answers, then you say, "Is there anyone who can add to what this one has said?" The teacher must have some life in him.

I understand that one class for each language, separate groups that is understood, in the afternoon. But for heaven's sake, none of that... sitting on a bench and, "When is it going to end?" They look at their watches... Not one teacher out of a hundred is amusing enough to amuse everyone. And to begin with, he is the first one to feel bored. For him, it is... not here, but outside, it is his livelihood, so...

You should have twenty, thirty students, forty students there.... How many at a time? Twenty? About

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twenty?

Y: Yes, Mother.

"Ah! We are going to have some fun. Let's see what we can do to have some fun. What game can we play?" And so, naturally, in this way you find, you invent. And he [the teacher] remains living himself, because he has to find something. And the students are there, like that.... When they have a little self-respect, they want to be able to say something, and that creates a living atmosphere. Wouldn't that be more amusing for you than doing... learning at home? If you are honest, you work in the evening for the class you are going to take the next day, you learn very carefully, you take notes and you write, and... You can prepare a subject, prepare, see, so that you are ready to answer every question. It is not always easy. But to prepare your subject well, that is good; to try to receive a little light and inspiration during the night, and then, on the next day to find a living way of living what you know. And not the students and the teacher... no! A group of living beings, some of whom know a little more than the others, that's all.

X: Mother, now there is one question, another important question. You have often told us that it is only in the inner silence that we can find the true answer to a question. What is the best way to make the children discover how this silence is established? Is this how consciousness is substituted for knowledge?

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(Long silence)

You see, in this system of classes where everyone is sitting down, the teacher is there and they have a limited time in which to do the work, it is not possible. It is only if you have absolute freedom that you can establish the silence when you need to be silent. But when all the students are in class and the teacher is in class... when the teacher is establishing the silence in himself, all the students... then it is not possible.

He can establish the silence at home, at night, the day before, to prepare himself for the next day, but you cannot... It cannot be an immediate rule. Naturally, when you are at the very top of the scale and you are used to keeping your mind absolutely silent, you cannot help it; but you have not reached that point, none of you. So it is better not to speak about it. So I think that during the... Especially with this system, classes with a fixed time, with a fixed number of students, with a fixed teacher, and a fixed subject... you must be active while you are there.

It must be... If the students want to practise meditation, concentration, to try to come into... it is to come into contact with the intuitive plane, it is instead of receiving a purely mental reply which is like that to receive a reply from above which is a little luminous and living. But that habit should be acquired at home.

Naturally, someone who has this habit, in the class when the teacher asks the question, writes this question on the blackboard, "Who can answer?" he can do this (Mother puts bot/a hands to her forehead), receive, oh! and then say... But when we reach that

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point, it will be a great progress.

Otherwise, they bring out of the storeroom everything they have learnt. It is not very interesting, but at least it gives them some mental gymnastics. And the class system is a democratic system, eh? This is because... you must be able in a limited time, in a limited space... you have to teach the greatest possible number of people, so that everyone can benefit. This is the democratic spirit, absolutely. So this requires, this requires a kind of... equalisation. Well... you put them all on the same level and that is deplorable. But in the present state of the world, we can say, "This is still something necessary." Only the Children of the rich would be able to afford... obviously, it is not pleasant to think of. No, there will be a primary class problem for the whole population... for Auroville. And that will be an interesting problem: how can we prepare the children, children taken from anywhere, who have no way of learning at home, whose parents are ignorant, who have no possibility of having any means to learn, nothing, nothing, nothing but the raw material, like that how can we teach them to live? That will be an interesting problem.

X: With what we have done for next year, Mother, we shall achieve total respect for the child's personality, you know. Total, at every moment he alone will count, not the group to which he belongs. Ah- solutely. And then, concerning the question I was asking you just now, the working conditions in the morning are rather different, since the work will he free. So, in these conditions, perhaps the children

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will be able to...

Yes, there, the morning work, like the work they do there, "Vers la Perfection"¹... They can very well do that: remain silent, concentrated for a moment, silence all that, everything that is noisy inside, like that, and wait. In the morning, they can do that. No, I mean, when you have an hour's class, or three-quarters of an hour's class with... all together with the teacher... you have to keep yourselves busy. It would be amusing if for three-quarters of an hour everyone could stay... (laughter).

One thing could be done once, at least once: you set a subject, like that, from the course of subjects, you set it and tell them, "For a quarter of an hour we shall remain silent, silent; no noise, no one should make any noise. We shall remain silent for a quarter of an hour. For a quarter of an hour try to remain completely silent, still and attentive, and then we shall see in a quarter of an hour what comes out of it." You can reduce it to five minutes to begin with, three minutes, two minutes, it doesn't matter. A quarter of an hour is a lot, but you should do... try that... see. Some of them will start to fidget. Very few children, perhaps, know how to keep still; or else they fall asleep but it doesn't matter if they fall asleep. You could try that at least once, see what happens: "Let's see! Who will answer my question after ten minutes' silence? And not ten minutes which you will spend trying to get hold of everything you may know mentally about the subject,

1. The name given by the Mother to a group of classes based on the Free Progress System.

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no, no ten minutes during which you Will be just like this, blank, still, silent, attentive... attentive and silent."

Now, if the teacher is a true teacher, during these ten minutes, he brings down from the domain of intuition the knowledge which he spreads over his class. And so you do some interesting work, and you will see the results. Then the teacher himself will begin to progress a little. You can try. Try, you will see!

X: We have tried that, Mother.

You see, for those who are sincere, sincere and very how to put it? very straight in their aspiration, there is a marvellous help, there is an absolutely living, active consciousness which is ready to... to respond to any attentive silence. You could do six years' work in six months, but there should... there should not be any pretension, there should not be anything which tries to imitate, there should be no wanting to put on airs. There should... you should be truly, absolutely honest, pure, sincere, conscious that... you exist only by what comes from above. Then... then... then you could advance with giant strides.

But don't do it daily, regularly, at a fixed time, because it becomes a habit and a bore. It should be... unexpected! Suddenly you say, "Ah! Supposing we did this"... when you feel a little like that yourself, a little ready. That would be very interesting. You ask a question, a question that is as intelligent as you can make it, not a dogmatic question, an academic question, no a question that has a little life in

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it. That would be interesting.

(Silence)

You will see, the more you strive to realise, you will discover in the nature the lower nature, that is, the lower mind, the lower Vital, the physical how much pretension, sham and ambition there is.... One can use any... The desire to put on airs: all that must be eliminated, absolutely, radically, and replaced by a sincere flame of aspiration, of aspiration for the purity which makes us live only for what the Supreme Consciousness demands of us, which makes us able to do only what it wants, which makes us do only what it wants, when it wants. Then we can be entirely different... It is a little far along the path, but we try to do that, always, this purification of the whole being which...

Then there is no more school, teachers, students, boredom; there is... life trying to transform itself. There: that is the ideal, this is where we have to go.

The Mother distributes flowers.

(To X) Here, this is for you.

(To Y) And this is for you. You you have a whole future before you. You must break the... You know, you are still bound up in old habits of thought. You have not taken sufficient advantage of the fact that you have lived here all the time, you are still too much like that....

So now, you must take that, break everything, break everything, break everything. Live only by the light that comes from above. Liberate, liberate your

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consciousness. This is important. It is good that you came. You are still very closed, like that, bound up in all the old habits and... and still, there is still some thing more, there is still the weight of atavism and all that.... It is the same for everyone, but, well, for the moment it is only... I am still liberating you. You are still like that... like that... like that... like that... your old habits of thought, your old habits of learning, your old habits not very old old habits of teaching. So all that: break it! Like that... when you go to class, every day, before you go to class, you should say a kind of prayer, make an invocation to the Supreme Consciousness, and ask it to help you to bring all this mass, this mass of living matter under its influence. Then it will become interesting, living. There you see.

Good-bye.

And now, for U, a rose.

(To U, a woman) Here. Now this, you see, this [flower] is more dynamic. You won't be able to see it, but it is more dynamic.

But women, women are in principle the executive power. You must never forget that. And in order to receive the inspiration, you can take support from a masculine consciousness if you feel the need for it. There is the Supreme Consciousness which is more certain, but still, if you need an intermediary... But for the execution, it is you who have the power to carry it out in all the details, with all the power of organisation. I am instilling this into our women Members of Parliament you know, there are women in Parliament, and I am teaching them that: do not be submissive to men. It is you who have the power of execution. This will have

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its effect.

(To X and Y) Oh! This is not to belittle... (Laughter). The inspiration comes... the execution is... There.

So I have given to you, I have given to you... (To V) You I haven't given to you. Over there!

Here. And this is for W.

There, my children. Good-bye.

(To X) And when you need something, you can always write. I don't say that I shall reply immediately, but like that (Mother puts her hand to her forehead), I reply immediately. You must learn that, eh? Like that (gesture of writing), it takes time. But, well, all the same, it is better to keep me informed.

8 February 1973

X: What is the best way of preparing ourselves, until we can establish a new system?

Naturally, it is to widen and illumine your consciousness but how to do it? Your own consciousness... to widen and illumine it. And if you could find, each one of you, your psychic and unite with it, all the problems would be solved.

The psychic being is the representative of the Divine in the human being. That's it, you see the Divine is not something remote and inaccessible. The Divine is in you but you are not fully conscious of it. Rather you have. .. it acts now as an influence rather than as a Presence. It should be a conscious Presence, you should be able at each moment to ask yourself what is... how...

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how the Divine sees. It is like that: first how the Divine sees, and then how the Divine wills, and then how the Divine acts. And it is not to go away into inaccessible regions, it is right here. Only, for the moment, all the old habits and the general unconsciousness put a kind of covering which prevents us from seeing and feeling. You must... you must lift, you must lift that up.

In fact, you must become conscious instruments... conscious... conscious of the Divine.

Usually this takes a whole lifetime, or sometimes, for some people it is several lifetimes. Here, in the present conditions, you can do it in a few months. For those who are... who have an ardent aspiration, in a few months they can do it.

(Long silence)

Did you feel anything?

Be completely sincere. Say whether you felt anything, or whether there was no difference for you. Completely sincere. Well? Nobody is answering. (Mother asks each person in turn and each gives his or her reaction.)

Z: Sweet Mother, may I ask you whether there was a special descent?

There is no descent. That is another wrong idea: there is no descent. It is something that is always there but which you do not feel. There is no descent: it is a completely wrong idea.

Do you know what the fourth dimension is? Do you know What it is?

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Z: We have heard about it....

Do you have the experience?

Z: No, Sweet Mother.

Ah! But in fact that is the best approach of modern science: the fourth dimension. The Divine, for us, is the fourth dimension... within the fourth dimension. It is everywhere, you see, everywhere, always. It does not come and go, it is there, always, everywhere. It is we, our stupidity which prevents us from feeling. There is no need to go away, not at all, not at all, not at all.

To be conscious of your psychic being, you must once be capable of feeling the fourth dimension, otherwise you cannot know what it is.

My God! For seventy years I have known what the fourth dimension is... more than seventy years!

(Silence)

Indispensable, indispensable! Life begins with that. Otherwise one is in falsehood, in a muddle and in confusion and in darkness. The mind, mind, mind, mind! Otherwise, to be conscious of your own consciousness, you have to mentalise it. It is dreadful, dreadful! There.

X: The new life, Mother, is not the continuation of the old, is it? It springs up from within.

Yes, yes.

X: There is nothing in common between...

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There is, there is, but you are not conscious of it. But you must, you must... It is the mind which prevents you from feeling it. You must be... You mentalise everything, everything... What you call consciousness is the thinking of things, that is what you call consciousness: the thinking of things. But it is not that at all, that is not consciousness. The consciousness must be capable of being totally lucid and without words.

(Silence)

There, everything becomes luminous and warm... strong! And peace, the true peace, which is not inertia and which is not immobility.

X. And Mother, can this be given as an aim to all the children?

All... no. They are not all of the same age, even when they are of the same age physically. There are children who... who are at an elementary stage. You should... If you were fully conscious of your psychic, you would know the children who have a developed psychic. There are children in whom the psychic is only embryonic. The age of the psychic is not the same, far from it. Normally the psychic takes several lives to form itself completely, and it is that which passes from one body to another and that is why we are not conscious of our past lives: it is because we are not conscious of our psychic. But sometimes, there is a moment when the psychic has participated in an event; it has become conscious, and that makes a memory. One sometimes has... one sometimes has a fragmentary recollection, the memory of a circumstance or an event, or of a

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thought or even an act, like that: this is because the psychic was conscious.

You see how it is, now I am nearing a hundred, it's only five years away now. I started making an effort to become conscious at five years old, my child. This is to let you know... And I go on, and it goes on.

14 February 1973

In connection with a question on the need for continuity in organising the work with young children, the Mother made the following remarks:

But there is one thing, one thing which is the main difficulty: it is the parents. When the children live with their parents I consider that it is hopeless, because the parents want their child to be educated as they were themselves, and they want them to get good jobs, to earn money all the things that are contrary to our aspiration.

The children who are with their parents... really, I don't know what to do. The parents have such a great influence on them that in the end they ask to go away to a school somewhere else.

And that, of all the difficulties all of them that is the greatest: the influence of the parents. And if we try to counteract that influence the parents will begin to detest us and it will be even worse than before, because they will say unpleasant things about us. There. That is my experience. In ninety-nine cases out of

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a hundred the children have taken a bad turn because of the parents.

This seems indispensable to me. We should write a circular letter saying: "Parents who want their children to be educated in the ordinary way and learn in order to get a good job, to earn their living and have brilliant careers, should not send them here." There.

We should... And that is very important.

You see, there are many, many parents who send their children here because it is less expensive than anywhere else. And that is worse than anything, worse than anything. We should... we should... we must absolutely tell them: "If you want your children to be educated in order to have a brilliant career, to earn money, do not send them here." There.

X: Mother, we shall write a circular letter and I shall read to you the text. We shall write something with Z and the others.

There were some children who were doing very well and were very happy. They went to their parents for the holidays and came back completely changed and spoiled. And then if we tell them that, it will be even worse because their parents will tell them, "Oh, these people are bad, they are turning you against us." So it must be... the parents must know that before they send them.

This has been my experience for so many, so many, so many years, so many years! The danger is not the children, it is not laziness, it is not even that the children are rebellious: the danger, the great danger is the

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parents.
Those who send their children here should do it knowingly, they should do it because it is unlike anywhere else. And there are many who won't come... And those who come only because it is less expensive, well, they will stop sending them.

When the teacher was about to leave, the Mother added:

I would like... I would like the attitude of our school to be made known to people before they send their children, because it is a pity when the children are happy and the parents are not; and that creates situations that are ridiculous and sometimes dangerous. This is very important, very important!

18 February 1973

X reads out the letter of a young teacher who was distressed that the young children in her class spontaneously preferred to play games involving violence and war. For the teacher, the Mother dictates:

Violence is necessary so long as men are dominated by their ego and its desires... Is that all right?

X: Yes, Mother.

But violence should be used only as a means of self defence if one is attacked. The ideal towards which humanity is moving and which we want to realise, is a state of luminous understanding in which the needs of each one and of the overall harmony are taken into

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account.

X: Yes, Mother.

The future will have no need of violence, for it will be ruled by the divine Consciousness in which everything harmonises with and completes everything else.

Is that enough?

X: Yes. I shall read out what you have just said, Mother. (X reads out the note.)

Is that all right?

X: Yes, Mother. Quite all right.

So, in a general way, when these things come up, when the children are engaged in this kind of activity, Z was asking: "Should we intervene, or wait until the movement dies down and disappears?"

You should... you should question the children and ask them in an off-hand way, "Oh, you have enemies? Who are these enemies?"... That is what you should say.... You should make them talk a little... It is because they see that... There is a strength and a beauty in the army which children feel strongly. But that should be preserved. Only, armies should be used not to attack and capture but to defend and...

X: Protect.

and protect. That's it.

First she must understand properly: for the moment, we are in a condition where weapons are still

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necessary. We have to understand that this is a passing condition, not final, but that we must move towards that.

Peace -- peace, harmony should be the natural result of a change of consciousness.

X: And so, she has a second question, Mother. She says I remind you that she has children aged eight to ten she says: "As this is the age when the mental approach is beginning to appear in several children, how can we make use of this mental movement and enrich it without hampering the inner spontaneity?"

That depends so much on the case, and the child!

You see, there is this idea of non-violence about India, which has replaced material violence by moral violence but that is far worse!

You should make them understand this... You can say this, explain to the children that to replace physical violence, material violence, by moral violence, is no better.

Lying down in front of a train to prevent it from passing is a moral violence which can create more disturbances than physical violence. You... can you hear me?

But it depends on the child, it depends on the case. You must not give any names, say what this or that person has said. We must make them understand ideas and reactions.

You should... That is a good example: you should make them understand that lying down in front of a

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train to prevent it from passing is as great a violence... even greater than attacking it with weapons. You understand, there are many, many things that could be said. It depends on the case.

I myself encouraged fencing a great deal because it gives a skill, a control of one's movements and a discipline in violence. At one time I encouraged fencing a great deal, and then too, I learned to shoot. I used to shoot with a pistol, I used to shoot with a rifle because that gives you a steadiness and skill and a sure-sightedness that is excellent, and it obliges you to stay calm in the midst of danger. I don't see why all these things... One must not be hopelessly non-violent that makes characters that are... soft!

If she sees children. . . What was it? They were making swords?

X. Yes, Mother, they made swords out of meccano.

She should have taken the opportunity to tell them,

"Oh, you should learn fencing!"

And a pistol too?

X: Yes, Mother.

And tell them... teach them to shoot... make it into an art, into an art and into a training of calm and self controlled skill. One should never... never raise a hue and cry.... That will not do at all, at all, at all. I am not at all in favour of that. The methods of self-defence should be mastered, and for that they must be practised.

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At this point X mentioned archery as it is practised in Flanders in the North of France, but for lack of a precise explanation, the Mother thought that he was referring to toy bows and arrows.

They will start killing birds...

X: But we do not have the facilities here, Mother, for archery, and that is the difficulty.

They would start damaging things. I am not very... Of course if there is... But when they have thoroughly grasped that it should be a means of self defence, not anything else...

No, we would have accidents. I don't think that it is prudent. You can teach them fencing and shooting if they show that they are interested, that is, like that, like what I am writing to Z.... If she sees a child doing that, she must not... (Mother raises her arms as if in horror). She should tell him, she must know how to explain to him, "It gives you control over your muscles, it obliges you to be strong and calm and self-controlled." On the contrary, it is an opportunity to give them a very good lesson. But you must be able to understand yourself, and above all, above all, make them understand... make them understand that moral violence is just as bad as physical violence. It can even be worse; that is, at least physical violence obliges you to become strong, self-controlled, whereas moral violence... You can be like this (Mother demonstrates an apparent calm) and yet have a terrible moral violence.

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24 February 1973

X: For this evening I would like to read you a letter from Z which follows on from what you said the other day in reply to her question: "... We have noticed that in some children there is a very strong vital movement which follows the physical gesture. For others, it is just a game. There is even one boy who marches up and down the veranda, announcing that he is going to be a soldier in 'Mother's Army'. Have you any precise indication to give us about these various cases?

"As for moral violence, I do not understand very well which elements in the nature may indicate the possibility of it. Is it, for example, the tendency in a child to sulk, to revolt against everything that checks his fancies, or something else? What must be done to turn this in the right direction so that it can in the end be transformed?"

I think that you should not give any importance to these little movements in the children that only encourages them. You must not take any notice, don't look as if you attach any importance to them. That is a much better way of getting rid of them than by giving them importance. You must not... you must not pay any attention to all these little movements of self importance. Don't look as if you have even noticed that removes all their psychological support. If a child sulks, you don't take any notice. That robs his sulking of all effect. You understand?

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X: Yes, Mother.

You must not give any importance to these little movements in the children... above all, no importance.

X: Because if they notice that you attach importance to them, they are tempted to do it again.

But Of course!

Children instinctively want to attract attention to themselves. Like the boy who pretends to be a soldier on the terrace... and things like that. You must not give it any importance, you must let them be. Don't scold them, above all, don't scold them... and don't take any notice. Children are weak creatures, and so they think that by making themselves awkward they will attract attention to themselves. They must see that it doesn't work.

X: And we shouldn't scold them, should we?

Oh, especially not that! Above all, don't scold them, don't scold them. The teacher becomes just as bad as the student. When he scolds he gives the impression that... he loses his temper. That means that he is on the same level as the student. One must know how to keep smiling... always.

X: That is very important.

Very, very, very important.

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