Guidance on Education

X has just written to me about the great number of novels that you read. I do not think that this kind of reading is good for you and if it is to study style, as you told me, an attentive study of one good book by a good author, done with care, teaches much more than this hasty and superficial reading.

25 October 1934

*

Page 27

---

I had two reasons for reading novels, to learn words and style.

In order to learn you must read With great care and carefully choose what you read.

25 October 1934

*

Do You think I should stop reading Gujarati literature?

It all depends on the effect this literature has on your imagination. If it fills your head with undesirable ideas and your Vital With desires, it is certainly better to stop reading this kind of book.

*

Mother, is it good to go to X's house to read the poems he has written in Gujarati?

It all depends on the effect it has on you. If you come away feeling more peaceful and content, it is all right. If, on the contrary, it makes you feel melancholy and dissatisfied it would be better not to go there. You can simply observe and see how it affects you and decide accordingly.

13 December 1934

*

When one reads a dirty book, an obscene novel, does not the vital enjoy it through the mind?

In the mind also there are perversions. It is a rather

Page 28

---

poor and unrefined vital which can take pleasure in such things!

In unformed minds what they read sinks in without any regard to its value and imprints itself as truth. It is advisable therefore to be careful about what one gives them to read and to see that only what is true and useful for their formation gets a place.

*

(A teacher suggested that books dealing with subjects like crime, violence and licentiousness should be withheld from the school children.)

It is not so much a question of subject matter but of vulgarity of mind and narrowness and selfish common sense in the conception of life, expressed in a form devoid of art, greatness or refinement, which must be carefully removed from the reading matter of children both big and small. All that lowers and degrades the consciousness must be excluded.

1 November 1959

*

(While choosing a text to study with a young Indian teacher who wanted to improve her French, a French teacher asked Mother for her opinion of La Peste by Albert Camus.)

Page 29

---

true compassion; but here in India it is not necessary. And it is not good to give an even darker picture of a life that is already dark enough in itself.

May 1960

Sweet Mother,

You have said that I do not think well. How can one develop one's thought?

You must read with much attention and concentration, not novels or dramas, but books that make you think. You must meditate on what you have read, reflect on a thought until you have understood it. Talk little, remain quiet and concentrated, and speak only when it is indispensable.

1 June 1960

*

I am reading a book on cars, but I read it hastily; I skip the descriptions of complicated mechanisms.

If you don't want to learn a thing thoroughly, conscientiously and in all its details, it is better not to take it up at all. It is a great mistake to think that a little superficial and incomplete knowledge of things can be of any use whatsoever; it is good for nothing except making people conceited, for they imagine they know and in fact know nothing.

*

Read carefully whatever you read, and read it again a second time if you have not understood it properly.

*

Page 30

---

In a French class for Indian teachers, several students wanted to read the works of contemporary authors, because the language in them is more up-to-date than in classical writings. What does Mother think?

What I know of modern authors has taken away any wish I might have had to read more of them.

Why step deliberately into the mire? What is to be gained by it? The knowledge that the Western world is wallowing in the mud? It is hardly necessary. Selected passages, carefully selected, seem to be the solution.

May 1963

*

Why do you read novels? It is a stupid occupation and a waste of time. It is certainly one of the reasons why your brain is still in a muddle and lacks clarity.

27 June 1963

I want to see what will happen to me if I stop reading completely.

It is difficult to keep one's mind always fixed on the same thing, and if it is not given enough work to occupy it, it begins to become restless. So I think it is better to choose one's books carefully rather than stop reading altogether.

*

A library should be an intellectual sanctuary where one comes to find light and progress.

*

Page 31

---

It is no use reading books of guidance if one is not determined to live What they teach.

Blessings.