February 11, 2023
Alina (0:00:00):
Namaste and good evening everyone. Welcome back to our continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. Today we will continue,….Excuse me.. Am I audible?
[Sraddhalu] Yes, you're audible.
[Alina] I felt I'm frozen. Just one second. I'm sorry. I don't know why I have an alarm. Just one moment. Sorry… So today we will continue this series on raising and educating the children. We have last time discussed on the topic of early childhood and the instincts of nature. Today we will take up some more questions that we received in the chat box and then we will continue to the early growth phase. You may post your question in the chat box during our conversation or you can send an email to our address integralstudies.in at gmail.com.
I will take first, Sushuma, she is asking, “Can you please talk about the need or lack thereof of having more than one child?”
Sraddhalu (0:02:14):
Yes, last time we had discussed in some detail, the last two times, the instinct of motherhood. And this question comes up because sometimes a mother feels very strongly, intensely, the need to have another child. And I have seen a few cases where even a third child and sometimes after a few years again the instinct comes, one more child. And it is interesting to observe where this comes from and what is the underlying principle behind. Especially when we look at this from the spiritual point of view, it gives us an insight relevant to the spiritual goals of life.
The question also includes the case where someone does not have the instinct to have a child, the lack of the instinct. So I'll start with this aspect. In most cases, the lack of instinct would be traced back to some hormonal imbalance. When the hormonal balance is corrected, you will find the instinct tends to come back in all women. Or, the hormonal balance itself could be traced back to severe malnutrition or deficiency of some kind where the body does not have the energy or the capacity to give birth to another because of its own insufficiency which will reflect through the hormones, through the instincts and come forward as a lack of the instinct. The moment this is corrected and the health brought back to a certain level of normalcy, the instinct will tend to come back.
The nature of the instinct is so deep it is not easy to ignore it. It is not easy to push it out. Of course in the modern context all of our foods are heavily laced with hormone disruptors, endocrine disruptors. Some of these are actually inserted deliberately by certain interests which want to reduce the world's population. And so the general trend is seen, and this is all a recent phenomenon, especially the last 10 years, where suddenly young women say we don't feel like having children. And it's as if the instinct is gone, just evaporated instantly. But these can be traced back to hormones. Or if you observe, for example, that in one part of the body there is an instinct, but in another part there is a complete revulsion and a conflict between these two, then you know that there is an interference from such external interferences.
In rare cases because of the nature of the consciousness, because there is a higher goal, higher sense of purpose, complete redirection of the energies into some other creative activity, such as you are raising a business instead of raising a child, you will find that the energy of the instinct is sufficiently diverted in a healthy form where you are giving birth, you are giving new life, not necessarily to a biological human form, but to some new creative possibility, that the biological instinct to give birth will not be present because it has been channeled into its own, say, psychological or higher fulfillment.
(0:06:03):
This brings us to the deeper sense of the instinct itself. You will find generally when this instinct comes up, the person will have an existing, the woman will have an existing excess of energy, excess of vitality and particularly a quality which we may call an excess of creative energy. And it is this which is at the base of the instinct to want to reproduce yourself, literally project out of you a part of you that becomes an independent person. If you go back to the deeper truth behind this, and Sri Aurobindo refers to this in one of his writings, he says that the instinct to replicate oneself, and this happens in men also, it takes a different form, the feel is different. But the instinct to replicate oneself can be had or sublimated to three different, to further levels beyond the biological.
So, in the biology, it is seen even in the amoeba or a single celled bacterium or any other cell, where you will find the cell in the microscope suddenly starts moving as if shivering or becoming restless and then oscillates until one part of it moves more and as if breaks out. And this part now literally from a circular shape, this part now forms a smaller unit emerging from the circular shape until they break away and separate and then the second grows to be the same size as the other. This can happen so rapidly that it is surprising; sometimes it feels as if in a few seconds or a few minutes. Of course, there is a prior preparation before that can take place.
But exactly the same instinct, rooted from a single cell all the way to the larger organism in the biology, it feels as if a part of my body wants to project out or seeks to push out and form itself into a separate. Now, in the very description you will see it is not so much in the body but in the life force, this whole movement of pushing out and the compulsion is a life force instinct, but rooted in the body, in the biology. So finally all traces back to the life force in biology and therefore reduce the life force, the instinct weakens, intensify it and the instinct is stronger. So some people have a strong instinct, some people have a weak instinct, but it's the same instinct. Only the intensities change. But this on the biological level, if you notice now, the same life force, because it is life force, not essentially the body tissue, can also turn and influence the mind. And in the mind, there is a need to as if push or project itself or amplify and put out a part of itself, a copy or an imprint or an influence which replicates and continues beyond this little individuality. And more often than not in men this is the form it takes and then from the mind it, still in the life force, but from the mind, the life force that band, whereas in the woman more often than not it is the biology to life force band and sometimes in some it will be all three.
But this psychological experience is exactly at the origin the same. And so in men it is not so much my body wants to push but my mind or my energy, my consciousness, my sense of continuity in the future, my identity as it continues needs to push out. But it's still instinctive. You could raise this beyond the instinct now in a psychological domain where the same energy now instead of producing a replica of myself as a form that is independent in human body, projects to create a replica of my vision, my conception (the same word), my aspiration or a perception or an inspiration of something I believe, I feel, I can create which is uniquely mine, which is me in another form- not human body, but a company or a product or a project or a painting or a piece of music or many things. And you will see the same energy is now turned into higher grade and projected, pushed out into expression. And this would be a psychological, let's say sublimation of the energy.
And if for some reason that creative possibility is not sufficiently capable of being expressed, it might then, the energy might tend to drop back into the instinctive forms. Now we would use the phrase lower instinctive forms, but the lower does not mean it is any less important. It is just lower in the gradations of consciousness, but it could be just as important or as fulfilling. It's not to be treated as something inferior from a spiritual point of view. It is just a different band in which it is being expressed.
(0:11:18):
Equally, the same impulse which is to put out, remember all energy finally is at its origin spiritual energy. Degraded in densities or qualities or the clarity or plasticity, loss of the oneness would bring it to lower gradations of energy. But all energy finally is one energy at its origin. And therefore, the same impulse here in the energy of life force would have its equivalent in the spiritual energy. And it is to this that Sri Aurobindo refers when he says that the form that it takes is to as if put out something of oneself, one's own capacity, one's own learned knowledge, experience, growth, evolution into imprinting, sharing, infusing, nourishing others. So you see what was discussed earlier as a purely psychological form, now acquires a different meaning. It's no more I am extending myself into this, let's say, project, form, creation, painting, but it has a larger multiplication into something which has a selfless or a cosmic purpose, an evolutionary spiritual purpose, not merely creative, although creativity is wonderful, this goes more than that. And that's when you can say it would have a spiritual character.
And so it is natural for one who grows sufficiently in consciousness, and at some point one feels this should be shared by all. And at that point you have this idea of as if wanting to extend, share this influence, project it. It could be done completely in silence. You may sit in a cave and project it into the world and it may have an influence or not and you may see it or not, feel it or not, it doesn't matter. It still fulfills itself. Or it may be through some kind of interaction, teaching, sharing, nurturing, nourishing, as happens in many cases of spiritual teachers that we can see in history.
And so there we have a very interesting phrase in Sanskrit. We use this phrase called Manasa Putra, manasa is mind, putra is child. So the mind child of the spiritual teacher often associated with somebody who can hold the same values in the lineage at a certain development standard of development. So the Manasa Putra of somebody would be someone who literally embodies their consciousness or literally represents them in a new form, new body, even some new variation in the teaching and yet the inspiration, the continuity is felt as if that one has infused his influence or inspiration into another. And so for the spiritual teacher there is a deep fulfillment in being able to do that and then to see the work continue even though their part of the work is completed. And they may come back in a new form, either participating in this or other does not matter. But they have given birth spiritually. Interesting!
I have shared before here something which Swami Vedabharati in the lineage of Swami Rama had shared with me in a private conversation. He said, ‘you know, it has not been my good fortune to have been given a disciple who was able to receive all that I am able to transmit’ and it was with some regret. He knows what is being lost because he has it and he knows that there is no one in whom he is able to transmit. It's a loss and you will see the sense is almost the same although of a different grade in the mother who feels she wants to give birth but now who will continue this consciousness, myself, there is nothing, I feel empty, barren, that's the way a woman feels typically when there is insufficiency of that expression; the same thing, different grade all together, but this there is no one to continue, this knowledge, this experience, this body of experience lost as if, the same sense of barrenness. It's interesting he did not nominate a successor. He did nominate many teachers who continued to teach as he has taught them and all that, but a successor would be a different thing, somebody who would embody all that he had received spiritually and so on.
So I am just showing here the deeper sense of to procreate and we can really use that word on so many levels now and how one could in fact raise that impulse to other levels. From a spiritual point of view and from a spiritual practitioner, this understanding, this experience and even this capacity to redirect the energy at different levels is extremely valuable. You may still choose to have a biological child, you may also if you have enough energy have psychological expressions and creations, you may also extend into a psychological parenthood and spiritual parenthood, if you have all that energy, isn't it?
We see of course the example for us, the most prominent obvious example would be the Mother’s. And she did have a child and she did have all the other levels in which she could create and finally she created an entire new world which is something so far beyond anything one could conceive literally and at the age of 90 she started Auroville, which is a whole new township intended to hold a new world in its scope and all of that with the full intensity, the full power of the axis of the spiritual force. I think this completes in sufficient details Sushma's question. We can go to the next.
Alina (0:17:24):
Ah, we have a very interesting letter received from ‘blue lotus mom’, “Wow, such beautiful series. My daughter born early 34 weeks, my water broke early; I was induced, given steroids to open her lungs. I had to challenge the hospital that I can give birth without epidural. After she was born, we had chance to bond for a bit, but was taken to NICU right after birth. I walk to NICU, since I could bear to part with her. She was in NICU for nine days. She was put feeding pipe to her stomach. After lots of tests on the 10th day, she was home. I had intense guilt she couldn't latch. Quit my work at nine months, stayed at home for four years and a half. And as a baby, she had extreme high fevers, had febrile seizure once, had to fight with the system in the US not to be unvaccinated. By the time we realized she had two months vaccine and four months, one vaccine. Now in kindergarten, developmentally she's progressing slower than her peers in having social interactions. She sings Ocean Oneness poem by Sri Aurobindo. It feels like she's psychically so evolved. So the question is, do certain souls have a hard time adjusting to this physical body. Why did she choose me as a mother? Sometimes it was too much effort for her since she came from me. It is, it also feels like this is first time on earth. That is why she has hard time to fit in this society. I feel this intuitively. Does this make meaning? It would be wonderful if you could elaborate on these points.”
Sraddhalu (0:19:43):
It's a very interesting long question but I deliberately left all the details of the whole story because straight away even as you listen to the narration, you can feel why in answer to the question why your daughter chose you. Precisely because you were willing to give everything. You were willing even to lose your own comfort for her to be able to give her the best. The answer is seen in how hard you worked to help her, to protect her, to nourish her, to give her the best, how well you understand her and feel her intuitively in the affinity, how deeply you love her. In all this the answer is seen, why she chose you.
Then of course there are the other aspects to the question, which is it that certain souls have a hard time adjusting to the physical body?
Yes. Especially when a soul is very mature, very developed, and the body consciousness is unable to bear either the intensity or the fullness, amplitude we will say, the size, as a way of saying, of the consciousness, the body, human biology at the time of birth is still not sufficiently developed to be able to receive the full impact. And so the soul has to project a small part of itself and then over time infuse more and more. And since we have discussed this before, I don't go into detail. And then if the values of the soul consciousness are so different from the existing surrounding society, there is again a hard time of adjusting. If at that point there is a mother or one of the parents who shares those values, that is a huge support and a huge protection, huge help. And so again this answers the question why she chose you.
There is also the problem which happens, like here you see a series, a chain of problems. All of these perhaps could be traced back to the early steroids which were given and which might have led to or that itself were had to be given because of some other problems. At the very early stage of the development, if there was insufficient ability for the substance to bear the pressure of the soul's infusion, it could lead to biological life force problems or there was some other issue involved. It could be a hereditary content, it could be a karmic content, it could be an environmental influence, poison or others, things we have discussed before. Any of these reasons and we don't need to go too much into the analysis of it, it's irrelevant.
The point is there was a chain of difficulties. Not only from the mother's side there was full support, from the soul's side also there was persistence against all odds. And this is where you can see that the soul is conscious in its intention, wants to fulfil, wants to stay. Otherwise if the soul feels, ‘hmm, this is too damaged, there is no point continuing’, it could have withdrawn. But here the soul says, no, in spite of all this, or even all this is accepted as a necessary struggle to pass through, for the work to be done. And with the full support of the mother in this case, hopefully both parents, one can go very far, including what you may describe here as certain aspects of developmental stages being slower than her peers, does not matter.
You see what happens in kindergarten, let's say two and a half years old, you are admitted into the kindergarten at a certain age. Now, I don't know how it is in other countries, but let's say you are admitted for the purpose of argument on January 1st. So a child which was born on December 31st, being admitted on January 1st is already one year old or two years and almost three years old. Whereas a child who was born on January 2nd will be one year almost younger than the child who is born 31st December because of this cut-off date. Which means literally one child has 30% more development in time, just in time, more than the other and so comparing with other children actually is irrelevant.
What you should see rather is that there is this steady growth and the growth is going well. The pace of growth internally, not in comparison to others, is reasonably clear and there are no major hiccups. And this you will simply see, you notice, you observe. And even if it's slower than others by age, you know it's moving in the right direction and eventually the inner push of the soul's purpose and your support from outside will be enough to override everything. Even if biologically there are all the signs of weakness, eventually it will overcome and completely erase all weaknesses and build the body to be strong enough. Not only we have seen this in many cases in history, but also experienced this within our own peer group, age group, in one's own body. So one can say with great conviction that you need not worry about that. Unless there is a serious defect which requires then typically a biological intervention, genetic intervention. Even there, you see, eventually if the push is strong enough, one can overcome almost everything.
(0:28:35):
The other observation that ‘Blue Lotus Mom’ makes is that, she feels that this is her first time on earth. I would have liked to maybe ask a few questions to just verify certain trends but there are two possibilities: One is the first time on earth as distinct from the first time in a human body. So I don't know which one you mean. But there was a case, for example, in the ashram or in someone connected with the ashram that the child had some tendencies and the Mother said it's the first human birth and it was the first time the transition from the animal to the human. But equally there is something else which is the first time earth birth that means you have been elsewhere and grown elsewhere and elsewhere could be either a physical other planet or even in the subtle worlds in a kind of a developmental phase and then taken an earth birth, which is also possible. And these things do happen. And in which case it could be also a very highly evolved soul, but struggling with the human condition and human biology.
But it could also be a soul which is entering the human stage of consciousness first. But it does not mean that you are not evolved. The inner evolution of the psychic being could be very high. It's only the mind content as possible in the human body has not been worked upon before or did not have the support. But the other aspects of psychic maturity can be intense more than others who have been born already for many incarnations. So, both of these are possible based on her description. You do feel that she is psychically very evolved, perhaps even more conscious and mature in a certain way. I would simply say, observe and you have a wonderful opportunity to help a conscious being, a conscious soul in a passage which at first may be difficult, but having crossed the difficult phase, such a soul could grow so much and contribute so much and share so much. And you have the privilege of participating and in the process also in your own growth as you share with her.
I think broadly this would cover the observations that she has made. I want to also highlight this, the way the mother chose to let go of her work, extended her home schooling, teaching, caring. These choices come almost spontaneously when you feel that total dedication to the child's growth. And from somebody from outside it may seem like a great sacrifice, but when you are in it and the fulfillment and the joy and the support that nature provides for that, you feel it the most important thing and the most easy to do. Later of course, many years or decades down, you look back and you'll say, I don't realize, I didn't realize how much effort it took, but at that time it was as if supported and so easy. And especially when you have the spiritual help and a deep spiritual life, the help that comes from above gives you all that you need, including the strength, the patience, the persistence, and all those things. I think this is enough for the… we can go to the next question.
Alina (0:28:54):
Nini is writing, “My second son was a very chubby child and very tall for his age. One of my neighbor passed the remark that how come he's so healthy and you are so thin. Can you imagine from that day onwards, he had loose motions and he had to be hospitalized. He lost half of his weight and became very weak. This is a perfect example of bad energy related case.”
Sraddhalu (0:29:25):
Yes, we had discussed this last time and I'd given an example of how some bodies we use that phrase evil eye; but it's a bit strong to use that phrase, it's not always evil. It could just be somebody energetically connecting, projecting or peeking even sometimes, unconsciously. And that leads to the problem in the health of the child and this is a very good example of that. It's so obvious in this case because of the comment and then immediately after the comment, the chain starts. There may be cases where there's no comment, the person simply looks at the child and says, ‘oh, how sweet’, and the thought, the feeling transmits or something within reaches out and draws.
A mother will feel immediately. I have seen for example children, some adults, they play with the child and they literally as if drawing something of the child's purity, innocence, freshness, energy, something. And the mother will instantly, the child will feel it and will pull away, the mother will feel it and pull the child away. If you are conscious, a lot of these things can be avoided. But in this case, perhaps it was a well-meaning neighbor, not always conscious, the comment made represented a quality of consciousness, an intrusion and it starts the chain.
Question is what can you do to protect? We touched upon this last time, but the first thing you need to do is become conscious; and at that moment you can actually push out consciously any such influence. In the traditional, let's say, knowledge passed down the generations, we have also sometimes ceremonies, rituals to ward off the evil eye or take out the evil eye. In my maternal language they will say Dhrishtha, that is the sight but wrong sight, taking it out and there is a process that I have seen my mother do and Panditji's sister do. When he would come back from a long tour, before he entered the house, his sister would bring a plate in which they would put a lemon and some other things. There was some water and a flame and first of all it's like an aarti done in celebration or of a great success or as appreciation but at the same time they would, taking it out, it's as if you are extracting the evil or the negative energy into the lemon and sprinkling water on the hands and feet to wash off anything and it is taken and then kept out, sometimes certain things are burnt as a way of releasing and then only he was allowed to come into the house. So I saw them do that, of course they did it because it was a ritual traditionally, but there was some significance to it. And I have had also experience of when that is done, how it can, one does feel a shift.
I am not suggesting you should do that all the time, but understand that there are such methods, they exist. You don't need to formally follow a protocol. As a mother, if you feel this, one of the simplest ways you can do, because water is a good extractor, you take your hands, wet your hands and then gently over the child as if wiping off or washing off in the aura, if you can feel the energy, you can literally feel the bundle of energy that is in and draw it out as if sweep it out and generally head to toe and then you push it out but then throw it away in a way that is fixed outside and cannot come back. Because these are elastic substances. So you throw it away, fix it into something, it could be anything, something in the soil, something in water, which is a large pool or into the plants, whatever. But something which is neutral and can just absorb, like the lightning rod which takes to earth and the earth can take anything. Spontaneously, such things are also done by mothers when they feel something, they may not follow a specific ritual but there is this thing of as if wanting to wash off, ward off, take a shower etc. These things do work, they do help and that's why I am pointing it out without attaching too much to a specific form of it. We catch the principle.
(0:33:58):
There are two questions in the chat box. Shanta is asking, “Is lack of instinct and obstruction to spiritual growth?”– No, not at all. Why should it be? In fact, one would say not having any strong instincts can be a great freedom, because you are free to do pretty much what you would like.
My point though was, often the strength or the intensity of the instinct is a measure of the intensity or strength of the vital energies. When your energies are strong, the instincts are felt stronger. When the energies are weak, the instinct is there, but it's weaker, it doesn't bother you. It's even convenient to have your energies weak, because then you're not bothered by these instincts, which would be perfect for a more ascetic approach to life. But if you aim at the integral yoga, remember the Shakti Chatushthaya, the third limb, I think, of the Integral Yoga, where you want to amplify all the powers of your nature and raise them to their divine potential. The moment you start doing this, naturally everything gets amplified in their working, including the instincts.
Which is why this comes later, the earlier part of the stages, limbs of the yoga involve the purification, stabilization, the equality as a foundation and so on. If that has been done, then the amplification can be done without any difficulty. Even though the instinctive tendencies may feel a heightening, they are not compelling; they are there, they don't bother you, you don't bother with them. And eventually, when they dissolve, they are sublimated into their higher equivalent as we discussed. But at some stage one would want to amplify all the energies in order to be a fit instrument for that aspect of the divine working through us, isn't it? Work rather on the first few stages, limbs of the yoga and then as this comes or as this grows parallelly with them, you will not have much difficulty.
But some people naturally are drawn to the aspect of amplification of energies first without the other base being so strong, you will tend to have problems and then you know what you need to do to correct for it. But by itself that's not an obstruction. It is only rather a symptom of something else and so you need to look at the full picture.
Somebody else named ‘nobody’ is writing: “What about someone with no hormonal issues? Just does not wish to have children as it is a massive responsibility to raise another soul and would rather raise one's soul and spiritual life?”
–Yes, why not? There is no problem with that also. But generally what would happen, I would say, if you don't have any stronger instincts, generally it would also be a reflection, as I said, of the strength of vitality. Observe that. You will have to at some point intensify and strengthen your vitality, do it the right way and you will not have difficulties. So there are two paths people take. Some who start with a strong vitality, with strong pulls and pushes, and work to purify and then build it, redirect it to a higher consciousness. The others who start with a weaker vitality, build the other aspects and perhaps even the purification of the base and then build on the intensification, eventually both get to the same from different roots. So I would simply say be conscious and then use what is required.
(0:37:36):
Rampal is asking, “What about someone with autism? They may not be receptive.”, and Manali is saying, “The doctors instantly gave them a nebulizer and inhaler.”
–I don't understand whether they are related to the same question but autism has been linked, and I should not say this, because it's very likely the video gets censored because of the powers that be. But autism has been linked to in published evidence to the things which were inserted in the child at the young age and you understand what I mean. In certain communities where that is not done, there is no case of autism. And if you see the track record over the last hundred years, as that thing increased, the cases of autism in proportion have also increased. So all this calls for reviewing many of the practices which are too deeply rooted in interests in the medicinal framework, the pharmaceutical framework, that we are not allowed to question them. And that's why I have spoken of this before.
When you need to do it, space them out, go for the minimum, space them out and allow the early developmental stage to stay as long as possible before such interventions could happen which might disrupt the rhythms of the biology. But if for some reason there is such a situation of some kind of autism, recognize that the problem, what we call problem in autism, is that the consciousness is introverted in a degree that is so rich inside that the outside is almost boring. And this happens because you're introverted. Your inner life is so interesting. I don't know if I have something which might be a borderline Asperger's or something like that. I frankly don't care because these are all labels to patterns of behavior.
What I found was, for me in certain cases, sometimes I would be so deeply in thought and I'm doing something, I'm doing some work, visualizing, constructing a certain invention or a design or a computer code or something and somebody talks to me and it's an interruption. ‘Ah, stop bothering me’. –That's the instinct. Let me stay in my world. It's so beautiful. If I disengage and look around, not so interesting. There's so much more I can do so rapidly, so richly. There are a few cases I've seen interviews with people who were on the autistic border and then on the other side off and on. And this child describes how in childhood, he would be staring and he would see how a beam of light would be reflecting and following the reflection in this complex chain has a very rich experience and he was lost in that. This is so much more interesting than engaging through the senses in this very superficial and shallow reality.
Of course all this needs to be corrected because finally you must go beyond the shallowness and to the depth but if one has such thing recognise its a rich inner life and you must assist the child’s natural turn to the outer sensory engagement and learn to bridge these two worlds. First, by respecting that inner life and then linking it to the outer and then providing the link points which are natural to the child's interests and then amplifying and developing. It can be done easily. It just needs a deeper understanding and some skill in guiding this process. What you will end up though is in the inner life, a child who is, let's say, more conscious of ideas and thoughts or rich inner experience will also naturally develop a greater maturity of the inner life. And then engaging with the outer world, you will find the same maturity could easily come out. It also really… the cause for this also is because either from the external intervention or some other external difficulty, the external richness or the expression of the richness was prevented. And therefore the turn in to satisfy the richness.
I take an example, suppose you were a fully grown mature thinking human being and now you entered into a human child body to take birth again without losing this mental development, well you have to be in the fetal stage for whatever number of months what do you do? There's not much you can do, you do open your eyes, you can move your mouth, but how much more can you do? So there are very interesting videos of children doing very complex things and yawning, looking around and making faces, smiling, pretty much what this shows is there is a rich inner life going on. You are daydreaming of some kind and you have to spend a few months in that and then from the time you are born, you are out, again how much can your senses support and your brain support for the rich experience. So you have a habit of being more introverted, which nature will assist in turning outward. But if that assistance is blocked, which is what happens from those things, then you have a difficulty making that transition, which can be assisted now by your parents and other environmental support.
(0:43:03):
Okay, so Manali's question, “How do we save our children from hereditary diseases, especially asthma? Children are facing problems of asthma from early childhood. Doctors only gave inhalers and nebulizers.”
Asthma is really a reaction of the body to some kind of poison or habit of reaction to the contact with the poison. So, if at early stage the poison is exposed and the body has learnt to now fear this, then the reaction starts. You will see the tendency of asthma is really to constrict, to block out a poison. It can also happen from a psychological cause where while breathing, there was a strong negative experience and now the negative experience triggers the closure of the breathing. So poison at a psychological level rather than the biological level, but finally all of these are habit and an instinctive habit of self-protection. Recognize what it requires, assist in eliminating those poisons. So much now in certain cities the level of, you see the error, the trick the pharma, government, media plays, they will tell you particulate matter in the air is now so high.
Particulate matter is not the problem, poisons are the problem and they tell you nothing about the poisons. You can have very low particulate matter and still the air can be poisonous. You can have high particulate matter as when for example someone is doing a havan, huge particulate matter and they say that is pollution. No it's not. This is not poisonous air. So recognize the distinction with poison. Find out what the poisons are. Sometimes these poisons could also be from the cloth used in the house, in the sofa set on which the child is sitting which is coated with a chemical which is a fire retardant which is a endocrine disrupter and hormone disrupter and a poison. It's so terrible. The clothes you put on them, the foods they eat and so on.
But all of these can be corrected. There was for a long time in the ashram somebody was using a particular leaf which is given and I know of many cases where the asthma late into age 10, 11, 12 they had to take that leaf three days with complete abstinence of food before taking the leaf and you lost all sense of salty taste and you have to struggle with thirst but you're not supposed to drink water for three hours after taking that leaf and after three days all symptoms of the asthma went. I know because I tried this with a few people who had a problem and 80% of the cases it was a complete cure, just like that in three days. So there are such solutions also which exist. Do find out and try it out. But always go back to root causes.
(0:45:58):
So Revati is asking about introducing her child to inner cultivation practices such as meditation. A lot depends on the age of the child and how you introduce corresponding to various ages. But I will take this up in greater detail at a future discussion. So I won't touch upon it now.
We can come back to the question, the overall theme, which was based on Nitin's original question, which was how to raise a child when you know that you know nothing and you are yourself starting on a conscious evolution.
Over the last two sessions, and this is the third now, we have covered quite a bit of this in the episode 148, it was on pregnancy and childbirth. In the previous episode, it was the early childhood, where we discussed the instinct within you that nature has infused, which naturally guides you. And we discussed the various forms in which that instinct works and the need to protect from influences and the human body itself is a symbol of the divine potential and therefore we need to approach it differently. So we will continue from that part of the discussion. For those who have not yet seen those two, do watch this. This will make much more sense because we build upon things already discussed.
In the discussion now, we will touch upon the early growth and I am highlighting the word growth. Whereas the last time it was early childhood. What is it that makes for the growth? What can you do to assist the growth or amplify the growth and especially the word early here represents, let us say, the first three years, generally. But what we will discuss as principles might extend much longer, it may go into 6 years, 10 years, 12 years even or even for lifetimes because they would be such essential principles. But I am going to focus with examples on the first few years generally and once you understand the principle you can extend it naturally.
The first thing you notice, continuing from last time, in the mother there is a deep rooted instinct and we have seen how much we can trust that instinct. You see the natural form it takes in relation to her child is to want to hold her child. So there is the contact of the touch. Then there is the urge to hug, the contact to protect, surround, embrace, infuse. Then there is the communication. As the child begins to open eyes, you make contact with eyes. The child begins to move, you make contact with touch, the child listens to sounds, makes sounds, you respond and there is a whole communication which builds on this. As the child grows further and the communication can become more complex, you want to show look at this, look at that, see this is interesting, here is something different and you enjoy the child appreciating the differences of experience, the novelty and the surprise. And then as that further develops, you are ready to start explaining because the child is curious and you are fulfilling the curiosity now with explanations.
So here is already a whole sequence. If you look very carefully, everything is already set in this. So, very deeply embedded within you is the urge to play with the child in an interaction and then increasingly as he grows older, in an exchange. And it's just a degree, it's a stage in the development of the interaction. I once had this very interesting discussion from Kirit Joshi. He is one of those very brilliant educators. He shared how at some point he was, of course, mother had given him the role to be registrar of the school, but at some point, I think it was just before he was registrar, she had given him certain classes to take and then she sent him to take classes with very little children, kindergarten stage almost. And he said here was this brilliant intellect who could have done so much in teaching and yet he was sent to this. And as he was narrating he said, so I began to play with them, hide and seek, throw ball, catch ball and then he described a few things and then he looked at me and then it was almost like a transmission. Ah yes, these are the games that the psychic being appreciates. He did not speak words.
I still recall because later I was thinking how did I know this? He did not say it but I knew what he meant. And you notice this is very interesting in the child's most interesting games at the very young age. It's a kind of hide and seek. So you see parents or relatives do this with the child. They'll cover this face and then suddenly open, “woo, woohoo, Surprise! now I'm hidden now. You can't see me, surprise!” and the child interestingly also has similar games of hiding and then looking, hiding, peeking over the shoulder, who is this person? Oh, I don't want to meet but I'm curious And as if pretending that if I don't look at you, you can't look at me. But when I look at you just like that, I'm seeing you, but you can't see me still. So if you know how to play the game, you pretend not to see the child, allow him the comfort of staring at you without feeling shy. And then after a while, the shyness goes away and the child will be on his own, either be comfortable or begin to engage with you, at which point you can respond.
(0:52:01):
So there is a very subtle game here, which interestingly, if you look at the nature of the psychic being entering life, is really at the core of the whole life experience, isn't it? That you take birth in a totally new personality, nobody knows you. You meet faces with totally new personalities, you don't know them and yet when you meet them you do know them; but who are you really?, perhaps we met before and it's a game of hide-and-seek. Knowledge itself, growth of knowledge is hide-and-seek. Everything was hidden and now you discover knowledge and the joy of the discovery. This represents itself in slightly older children in the actual game of physically hiding and physically seeking and the physically finding.
You see the three qualities or three kinds of joy here. The joy of hiding. How well can we hide? What are the places we could hide that no one would think of? Just the joy of looking for a place. You've never looked at the world like this in terms of hiding places. On the other side, everyone is hidden, but everyone is waiting to be found and the joy of looking, anticipating where do you think they could have hidden? That's too obvious, I won't even try there, I'll go to the less obvious; the seeking is the second kind of joy and oh, not here, there's anticipation and then disappointment, anticipation, disappointment anticipation, surprise! -joy, but even in the disappointment there's a joy, interesting. So the joy of hiding, the joy of seeking and the joy of discovering, all three kinds of joys and afterwards when the game is over, the joy of being together, we had a great game, it was so much fun and this is typically the nature of the psychic experience in life, in the journey of life, across lives, isn't it?
Or even within a single life, so and so was, as children we say, my best friend, now my best enemy, but a year down we are again best friends. But in more complex human emotional layers, it gets messy, but at the core of it, which is the psychic experience, it's actually the same thing. Much more layered, to the surface personality sometimes painful but to the inner being,– ah, another color, another hidden layer, another joy of discovery etc. This is one game, hide and seek.
The other game- throw ball and catch ball. And you see children love to play this. You have this large ball, soft, it cannot hurt, doesn't have much momentum, very light, you throw it. And when it comes to the child, the act of catching is very joyous. The act of dropping, not being able to catch, the act of chasing when it's gone, not too much struggle, just catching. And then what happens when the child throws at you? On one level he is imitating you, but when he throws, he is giving something, which comes to you, and when you receive, he has a joy, what he gave reached you. When you throw, you may not be conscious, what are you doing it for? Out of love, so there is an element of love that you give as you throw, and as that bounces and comes into the hands of the child, he feels it.
So the physical object of the ball, for example, is just a vehicle for transferring, relationship, love. Values of the psychic being shared, transferred, played, built, more complex constructions of it in variations. As the child grows older, from simple ball it becomes more and more complex. But at the heart of it you will see these two, really essentially psychic games. And you will notice in the mother, the instinct automatically will go towards these kinds of interactions. It will give her great joy, it will give the child great joy. And in the mother, the child having great joy is her great joy. So it's a self-fulfilling loop, a feedback loop.
(0:56:14):
As the child grows older, this same principle now, which was hide and seek, throw and catch, now takes a new and more abstract, more complex layer which is through the narration of stories. Now this is very powerful. You may actually extend it all the way into adulthood because we are all still children. But I am going to describe at the early stages particularly the effect it can have. When a mother is caring for her child, nourishing her child, actually feeding, massaging, whatever form it may take. In her consciousness there's an intention. You're massaging the legs, automatically your intention goes, they should become healthy, they should become strong. You're visualizing, intending in an image or in a just formless intent, which is infused with the substance, with the oil or with the dry massage, whatever you are applying, isn't it? It's actually being infused into the tissue and the child is very receptive. The same receptivity which allowed the evil eye negative suggestion to come in, allows also the positive suggestion to go very deep.
As you grow older, the same thing you are conveying in a slightly different way. I am going to show two forms of it. One in which in the traditions in India you will see and I would believe pretty much everywhere else where the traditions are strong, let's say. The lullaby, a song that is sung to the child is describing things, relationships, possibilities, conceptions of the future and so on. So as you think, as you imagine while massaging, now you are translating those images into visions, stories, narratives with song or with a story narrated. In India, some of the lullabies which are traditionally communicated would be very beautiful, inspiring, idealistic. Some of them have deep spiritual symbol.
I remember one which my mother used to sing and it is in the mother tongue but she would say something like, I don't even know the meaning of some of those words because that vocabulary was beyond but the sense was you are so precious and so, I would say, fortunate because you have given me the chance to be a mother when God himself is thirsting, hungry for experiencing someone who is a mother. Very interesting idea. Very deep. It goes very deep into the consciousness. You as a child have a mother, God doesn't have a mother. He is yearning to have a mother, to have the experience of someone who nurtures as a mother. Fascinating and deeply moving to the child, ‘Oh this is so special, this is so valuable’ and it bonds the relationship. relationship and she is thanking the child for giving her that experience of motherhood and there is a beautiful song and it goes deep into the subconscious, because as the children listen to the voice there is a sense of being cared for, nurtured, protected and you sink into sleep with that and it goes deep into the subconscious. It sets the mood also because of the tone and the intention which is infused through the song.
So the songs, especially the lullabies, if they bring in deeper soul values can go very deep in shaping and forming the overall turn of the personality. I'm giving this phrase deeply formative values. They form you, the values form you, shape you and they bond deeply in the heart. They raise their love in the heart to their highest refinement. And interestingly you will find there is a tendency for this even while the child is in the womb. The mother wants to turn to her child and share something and depending on what is her mood she may actually express it in thought or in words or in song which then grows through post birth and all the way into adult life taking different forms. But it's the same principle, the same intention of what is infused. And it doesn't matter whether you can sing well. You will end up singing well because it's a song that comes from the heart and from the love. So I wish and I had wanted at one point to try if we could have compiled some of these highly elevating, inspiring lullabies which have belonged in our tradition, which are pretty much all gone to be replaced by film songs. Some of them can be genuinely sweet and fine, but not always the best for the soul values, but still something.
(1:01:27):
The same thing becomes more mental from the lullaby which is more emotional and heart connected, becomes more mental in the narration of stories. If you go into a lineage or a family which is more turned to heroism and courage, as in the Kshatriya lineages, they will tell you stories of heroism and greatness of courage, of self-sacrifice for a high ideal. And the child is as if said, see this, this is such a great ideal and it forms. Or in a different lineage which is more knowledge oriented it will be, oh what a great knowledge and how worthy one becomes and those stories. Or some skill or some achievement or exercise of expressing in form, in matter or an experience of self-giving, of love, of service, of devotion, of the experience of sacredness and all these stories of various kinds can be narrated and which go very deep. Sometimes they are so formative that the child will at a certain time in when they go through difficulties they will catch the example of the story and say, I will be like that, and it gives you the strength.
So you have heard it's one of the painful stories for children, how this young child Prahlad goes through struggles because his father is against the divine and is an Asura who criticizes the divine, puts him through great struggle and distress. But he holds in his faith firm. So the child going through a difficulty in life, holds firm in faith like Prahlad and draws from that example. This actually goes straight down to one of the principles we have already touched upon of how children learn. First, they are driven by an insatiable curiosity and second, hero worship. And the stories create these examples of hero worship that you draw on by identification or the deeper truth is, as you listen to them, it evokes something within you which was already there and it resonates. But now externally a link forms and from within the resonance is drawn out and now it becomes active in your surface personality.
So in a more materialistic societies, materialistic science based teaching, they'll say, you taught. The truth is you evoked what was already there, because you could give a spectrum of 10 different values of stories, which one does the child most resonate with, the ones which are most ready and waiting to emerge, isn't it? So it was not so much what you said, but the opportunities you created for that experience to come forward, and then that thing came and now settled in the surface. And so all these would be very powerful shaping because also there is an infusion from your side of an intent which assists in supporting. You recall I think we mentioned this last time, the example Mother gave of those children who had the face, literally the appearance of the person, the paintings that the mother was looking at during pregnancy. You are literally shaping, not just biologically but also psychologically and perhaps even certain tendencies of the spiritual consciousness.
This is important because you will see Sri Aurobindo highlights how within us, in one of his letters he says the psychic being is already the bhakta and the yogi. Every child is a born bhakta, devotee and a yogi. And the problem he says, is the outward turn given by education or past habits which block this. And so the initial phase of the yoga literally has to dissolve these false formations to allow the inner psychic bhakta and the yogi to come forward and influence the outer and lead the outer personality. So what we have in the education as well as in the cinema, media, false values often now carried by the parents, because they don't know better, they are repeating what they received in the false education. All these are pushing the child to turn outward and not to refer to this which is already the bhakta and the yogi. And this strong outward turn which prevents you even from turning within to introspect and feel what's right or what you already know covers quickly and then eventually so thickly that you are completely lost.
(1:06:16):
And therefore, any attempt or anything which nourishes, supports and draws out from within and teaches the child to refer to what is already known within, would counter, neutralize that. But such a child would also struggle more because now your society is so superficial and you are going by different values, you will have difficulty in adjusting. But that is worth it. You would rather not be a well-adjusted child living in a society that is sick. You have adjusted to sickness, not worth it. Because eventually you will have to unlearn. And that is far more difficult at a later life. It's better to learn from the beginning in a true way and then continue to grow even though there is a difficulty of adjustment. And if enough of us can begin to do that and work together, then between us, we form little islands where we live those deeper and higher values.
That's what the Mother tried here in the ashram. When the children came with the parents, she wanted to assist in creating this new humanity in a space where they were not damaged or distorted or malformed by a sick society. Even here she had to struggle because the parents came with those false values. So for a long time, she would encourage the children to be kept free of the parental influence and she said you don't know how much damage these parents are doing to the values she was trying to inculcate. So even she arranged for boardings and parents said they couldn't stay, she said fine and the people heading the boardings were selected for those values. It's fascinating to see the people she selected and then what happens later. There is a sharp difference. But notice the values she chose for those people, how she picked them and the rest becomes quite easy to recognize.
So lullabies, narration of stories; build on the psychic games that we described earlier. Again what form they take is irrelevant, catch the principle and you can even develop new forms. In all this, in the automatic identification that a mother has with the child, there is the sense of growth she feels as the child grows. Catch this point. You grow because you felt the child grow. If the child did not grow or the child is hurt, you will feel the hurt and the lack of growth.
If you are sensitive, if you are in tune with your own inner deeper ranges, this is easy. The problem is when parents don't have that. They have already been cut off, blocked off and they are following artificial, fake, external values. Then they look at the child's growth and measure it in external and fake values and this warps further the distortion. So consciously let go of all preconceptions, align yourself more deeply and align with the child's sense of growth and feel the growth and participate in the growth. You are both children growing together. That will be your approach. You don't try to teach or push too much. You assist in the child’s growth but you don’t impose.
And you notice another thing inherent in the healthy instinct of nature is to encourage the child by giving feedback. And always it is positive feedback. Let me give an extreme opposite perspective and you'll understand the difference. Let's say the child speaks, and as I said up to a certain age you can't say ‘r’, your tongue and the nervous system is not sufficiently developed. You can’t say ‘r’, ‘r’ requires this moving of the tongue. So the child says, la, La, ya, some variation, and the child says, la, ‘leyally good’, and the mother says, “what is this? you cant even speak properly? Stand up. And stay standing for the next 5 minutes until you learn to speak properly.” This is what they do in elder schools, right? You punish them. Okay, now it takes a more sophisticated form. You got three points less because you didn't pronounce correctly. It's the same form of punishment. Some places, (if) you didn't pronounce properly, you go at the back, you are no good. They'll say openly, “you will not be successful in life because you could not pronounce the sound ‘r’.
You see I'm taking the same behavior that is normally used in school as a way of motivating the children negatively. You apply this at that early age and you see how ridiculous it is. Instead the instinct in the mother, the healthy instinct, is to reflect what the child is: “Yes, yes, he is leally good.” The child hears this, distinguishes from the vary and recognizes a gap and makes the correction. You're giving feedback positively, always encouraging, you never say no, you never say bad except in something which was dangerous and the child catches immediately. So I remember a child wanting to approach and touch an electric plug and the mother quickly comes and the stress on the mother's face, the child notices, ‘ah, this is danger’, it won't do it again. You don't need to punish, you don't need to shout, you don't need to scold.
If the child is still curious, why is this? And that depends on the temperament. The child may say, but why are you preventing me? This is so interesting now. This becomes more interesting because you are saying it is dangerous. What is the dangerous thing? Then you need to nourish that interest differently. Then you need to explain, you need to indicate. And that won't happen at the early stage of the growth. So not the stage we're talking at; that will happen later when the mind begins to come active, then it wants to question, why. Early stage, the child blindly accepts. Danger! ah, that's it. No repetition. Never again it will happen. You don't need to shout or scold. Just the sense of your body language is enough to convey. Especially if the bond has been built with affection and in the way we have described in a healthy way, you don't need anything else.
And so keeping this in mind, be very careful not to infuse false values, false desires. And the whole problem really boils down to what is it? How do you know what is false? And you can't know when you're living the false values, isn't it? You can only know when you live something deeper against which that is felt as false. But observe others, learn from them what not to do. That's one of the best ways to learn. One of the commonest things we do, children may have preferences, likes, dislikes, but they do not have at that age at least strong desires. They may have strong likes, strong dislikes, but they are not strong desires in themselves. And so observe the tendencies. You could, because the child is now soaking up your consciousness, you could be an example of a strong desire which the child catches now and internalizes. So, this example that I heard recently from a mother who said, the father would tell this 3 year old child, let's go and have ice cream. Now that's the father's desire nature. The child says ‘yes, yes, yes’. She knows nothing what is ice cream. She's catching the same mood and associating that and replicating that energy of the craving desire. Interesting! Notice, observe and you will be able to correct it.
(1:14:02):
So coming back to Nitin's question about, ‘you are yourself starting, you know that you know nothing’, – well, start with this you know nothing here on the surface but deep down within you, you already know what's right, against which what is wrong will feel wrong. Trust that. Observe others, learn from them. Especially do not accept blindly the example coming through the media, through textbooks today which are highly corrupting also as influences. Be careful. In the instincts of the child at this age also you have certain aversions to food. One of the commonest aversions, and you are taught this, children don't like vegetables, they don't like green leaves. Not true. The problem is they can smell the chemicals which have been sprayed on those vegetables and it is to that that they have an aversion. And especially with green leaves which are heavily sprayed to prevent them from being eaten by pests, the child's nose can smell those pesticides and when the food comes, it pains literally, the body pains with that smell and then obviously there is a shrinking.
So it is not an aversion to the food, it is an aversion to the poison in the food. If you can, make a correction. And you will find most of these problems will go away. But you can of course, which is what happens, force the children. In so doing, you are also compelling, first of all a revolt, which is one side, the other is compelling and overriding of the instinct. They learn to distrust. Or even, as happens with the manufactured foods, processed foods, they put chemicals and perfumes which attract the smell, which masks the poisonous smell or which numbs the smell sensors so that you don't smell the bad poison. And this is typically the case with baby food.
So with the baby food there is an attractive component which is even addictive. Now the child takes that and now there is a complete bypass and a complete shutdown of the food instinct. The child doesn't know when he is full. Cannot know, because the instinct of fullness has been blocked by the chemicals. Now you will see this happening, for example, in older humans. They will give food for old people. I don't want to name a brand name but what they give is a protein powder drinks or things like that which are good because there is a protein concentration and they may have a lack of protein, which are flavored, which is also fine; but into that they will put monosodium glutamate or some other which mask, modify the smell, buds, they are enhancers for something, suppressors for other things and the justification given because old people don't feel hungry, so this would allow them to continue to eat more and not stop too soon. Which as an argument might still pass at that age because they are intelligent enough to know if they are informed.
But at a young age of the child's body where the instincts are still in formation, this is going to be extremely harmful. I will go so far as to say avoid processed packaged foods like plague, including the sweets and toffees and chocolates. Avoid them. Specially things made for babies, avoid. Unless there is a major problem that you cannot nourish and so you have to provide external supplements. Well, we don't look at that. Those are exceptional cases. But in a normal case, do not provide any such. Stay with what is pure, what is natural, what is organic. I know how difficult it is, but I'm going to say what is the ideal and we have to each one find where we compromise to what extent. But the ideal would be stay with that.
The result will be the child will learn the way the animal learns. By smelling the leaves, by smelling the vegetables because they are sensitive, they feel what is the nourishment and the body knows what is needed, how much is needed, when to stop and when it is sick or unbalanced in nutrition, what is it that it is craving? Because nature has designed all these precisely to convey through the smell sensors, color and taste sensors, visual also, what they contain nutritionally. So, for example, they will say beta carotene, which is in the carrots, orangish color. You drink a lot of carrot juice, your skin will become orangish. You drink a lot of tomato juice, your skin will become reddish. And they will identify what are the elements which make the tomato red, but they correspond to specific vitamins, minerals, combinations, whatever. From the color, from the taste, from the smell and then much finer gradations within the smell, which are almost at the level of pheromones, so not consciously touched but known and it is by such means that the cat or the dog naturally knows what plant to chew when it is sick, then it will vomit, get well and be cured but never eat that plant again until it is sick at which point it goes straight for that plant. How does it know it was never taught? Well the smell teaches you. Allow that sensitivity to grow in the child from the beginning if possible.
(1:19:38):
Again I am saying I know how difficult it is, understand the principle, find the balance as you can. Effectively you notice the first few years, inevitably, without a choice, you are home schooling the child. As they grow older there is a balance of how much home schooling, how much group schooling, I am avoiding the word public schooling because that has a different meaning. Group schooling – where other children come and you interact with other children. Now in a farming community this would happen automatically. In fact it is almost normal in such communities closely spaced, that today I am going to be very busy with this work so I will leave my child with my neighbor and they play. They learn to build relationships, they learn to be nice or not nice and then consequences and build healthy interactions momentarily, short durations and then bit by bit more and more until there is a need for more formal interactions at which point they will be craving it and then you know that they need it.
If you don't do that, when they need it, they don't have a solid reference, they don't know what is normal, they don't know what is healthy; they don't know how to relate to others and you can go quite far in your age. I have seen adults 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s who never learnt what it's like to have a healthy relationship with others and it's as if they have to go back, start from first foundations. Unfortunately today, because we have what we call nuclear families, one child, you never learn it, because you don't have another sibling with whom to interact. It was very different when you used to have two, three, four, sometimes five children and you always were a family, so you learnt all this.
You learnt also to manage the hierarchies of age and development and all that and peer learning, peer help, peer growth, all those things, which can still be done in a shared space; more difficult though. In China because of the one child policy, it led to a very difficult situation. Every child literally ended up being king in the house, queen. So for the parents, they are totally doting on this one child. The child has never known what it's known to be denied, what it is known to share with another or to compete. And there's a tendency because of that to have an unhealthy self-centered world experience. This can be corrected only by activities with other children where you feel the other children as your own family. Now this is difficult. Within your own family it is easy because you feel, you know we have the same parents, we have the similar environment, you know even the signals of the smell from the pheromones, you recognise sibling.
When you go into a different space, they come momentarily, you interact and you've suddenly been thrown into school from one day to the next. Now you're such and such age, you've just been admitted bang, eight hours with the other kids or three hours, whatever, it's too much. It has to be more graded interactions and you will have to find ways to build those interactions. If you have shared values among parents that would be an easy way to start. And then the transition for longer and longer durations, the child will seek it and crave it and you know now he is ready, you can allow it to happen. Observe simply and the child will show you, teach you when. So homeschooling is going to continue much longer though. Only the time you will spend and the kind of content of interaction will change, where the first two years or three years even were entirely homeschooling and then more formal other interactions took place, now that time goes less.
At a certain age, let's say even after the age of 10, 11, 12, your actual interaction because they are spending almost the whole day outside in school, your interaction may be just one hour, but that one hour will be the most precious in terms of what is possible to transmit. What would you do? So all these perhaps we will look at at a later age in the development, but understand the principle: You still will be the first teacher for the child, just as parents in the school become second parent, well second teacher. You are the first teacher, first parent, responsibility is with you as parents, both father and mother. T
he grandparents here can play a critical role because they have the free time, they have the maturity and they have the need. They need almost, remember what we discussed earlier about the manasa putra giving birth to your own rich experience to transmit. Well at this point it's purely on the level of the intellectual and if there is a spiritual dimension to give the best that we have, the best that we can give for the grandchildren and somehow the grandchildren are more valuable than even your own children. And you will see instinctively it is there in all the grandparents to be with the grandchildren and give themselves and there is a deep satisfaction in seeing them grow and literally losing yourself into them as you withdraw. Fascinating how nature does it. You leave behind your best when you've completed and you're satisfied in the completion and in the withdrawal. Observe this.
Unfortunately again with nuclear families, grandparents are now in old people's homes. Children don't have anyone to nourish them because parents are out working all the time and the link is broken. Perhaps there are ways to do it in fact but it would need a societal effort. I don't know how it will restart but at some point it will have to come back to this. Observe, learn, do what is required. The only problem I will see in this arrangement is if the grandparents are damaged just as you as parents could be damaged and they transmit damaged values then it is better to keep them out. But you'll have to observe, you'll have to know and make corrections where required. It is better not to have a grandparent giving damaged values. It is better not to have the grandparent than to have a grandparent who is giving damaged values. Find out, observe, because grandparents cannot change easily. That is the reality we have to accept.
(1:26:23):
Now with this, I think we have to pause soon, we have reached our time limit. I want to point to one example with which I would close with. In the rhythm of our evolution, nature has slowly pushed. But in time you see in the womb the fetus goes through all the stages of evolution,– from a single cell, cluster of cells, taking the shape of something like a tadpole and then something like a shape of a fish, something like the shape of a frog or a tortoise and then a four-footed animal literally four limbs are like that like a four-footed animal and then shaping again, becoming almost like a monkey and then from there becoming the human form. There's actually a tail which forms at that point and then is reabsorbed as if as the rest of the body grows around it. Fascinating!
And it touches upon a deep truth. What it shows is that in coming to this stage where we are, 9 months being the human gestation period in which all this is happening, literally the entire period of evolution going back a few billion years has been compressed into 9 months. It took a few billion years, let's say, to come to that point. But is that ended? Obviously not. Things which now are happening after birth, Nature is gradually pushing before birth. The only problem is the biology is struggling to catch up. Especially now because Nature is preparing a huge leap, there's an enormous acceleration of all the evolutionary processes everywhere in everyone and we are struggling to keep up. This I want to point to.
So in a very short while we notice earlier children used to be born eyes closed, bald, fist closed and briefly opening the eyes, hardly opening the hands, mostly sleeping. Increasingly the number of children who are born with already grown hair, hands already moving and eyes opening at birth or just after birth and looking and making direct contact with the parents, the number of such children is increasing, where earlier it was a rare exception, now the numbers are increasing. Meaning within the womb there has been an acceleration and developmental stages after womb have been pushed back into the womb. As I said, there's a problem with that, because the head also wont want to become bigger if the brain grows in number of neurons and interconnections and that's the canal path is too narrow. That's the practical limit. That's why nature has to push out the child and do the rest of the growth after; now the head can grow much more rapidly.
If you understand this, you will also recognize a peculiar distortion in parents today which is to want to push their children to grow faster. It's unhealthy, it is damaging, but you understand where it comes from. So Nature is even allowing or using that unhealthy push. Nature is pushing, parents feel the push and want to push, but it's happening in a distorted way. But there is a deeper truth to it. If you push too hard, it is damaging, but if you align with the natural rhythm of nature and her growth, then you can support the acceleration without the damage.
I want to show here a very interesting video. I'll take a quick moment to look at this. And here we go. This is a child which is just born 20 minutes after birth It is in Brazil. I don't know how well it's coming on the video, but you see the child is walking, wanting to walk with an urge to walk and the nurse is simply supporting. Now you would say, ‘no, because the nurse is supporting, he is walking’, and this is what the science will say, ‘Oh, they have an instinct for the first two months to move their legs’. Watch now. She puts him back and immediately he wants to get up and starts pushing forward; gets up and wants to walk. He decides, he supports himself on the nurse's arm. He supports himself on the nurse's arm to as if, get up and starts pushing with his legs to want to walk.
Now, not all children do that. And if your child doesn't do that, it's not a problem. It's not a developmental issue. I'm just showing the impulse of nature to want to push, to accelerate. And I'm seeing this more and more in children, a tendency to want to somehow do it faster, grow up faster. And it's not coming from the parents, it's coming from something within. Not all children, not equally. So don't worry if your child doesn't have it, it's not a problem. But when it has, you must know how to support and not harmfully. You will find literature, medical advice given to you, do not hold a child while walking. Do not hold the hands up to get him to walk. You are preventing him from learning to use his arms to balance. You are preventing him from learning instinctively the nature of the balance and that would be the mistake. If you say, oh I am going to make my child walk faster than that child, I'll hold him, you've interfered.
But when the child is trying to get up, wants to hold the chair to get up, you can give an arm as a chair support and he holds and gets up. You don't do anything else. You're just providing the support that he's asking for. If you lift him and hold him, like as the nurse did, that's different again. She didn't hold and make him walk. She put her arm, the child held the arm and walked and pushed her arm. Difference between the two. Observe carefully.
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This has to be the shift in our attitude. If the child has an accelerated learning, you provide the support, you don't push. Understand the difference. Support the natural instinct and effort, observe carefully, minimum intervention; it should not be your passion and your ambition which is driving. It should be the child's interest, curiosity and initiative that you support to the extent he needs, not more. Do not expect or push for more. And then nature will take care of it. The child will find his own way.
So, I wanted to highlight this aspect of the accelerated evolution and with that now I will broaden the discussion to the rest of us as adults whether you have children or not. This accelerated push that we feel that is happening everywhere in nature is happening whatever your age. You may be in your 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s, it does not matter. That push is still there. Observe within you the natural turn of your curiosity. If you've been damaged by the wrong education, your curiosity will be stunted with, I want to know but at this age what shall I do? Or I want to know and I must ask someone and if they don't answer my questions, what shall I do? Look up the Internet, if you don’t know how to look up the Internet, start experimenting, start exploring, find out how to look up the internet. My point is, you be the newborn child as you are, whatever your age. What you felt in that little child wanting, trying to walk, 20 minutes after birth, is what is also within you, far more developed, far more rich and only the layers of your false formation prevent, weaken or reduce the intensity or the flexibility of its growth. Consciously let go those barriers.
I am going to make it sound a little perhaps dramatic, I will say forget all the social norms, do what works for your growth. Experience the growth, build on the growth, be a newborn child, explore and grow. Fresh from inside out and anything that comes as opposition or resistance or questions, ‘how can I?’,–you know this is not mine, false teaching, false habit, drop. Of course, I can! Biology is the only limitation in terms of energy and fragility or balance depending on age and depending on how your body is. I have seen a case in the Ashram. There's this lady, she was in the mid 90s. Every day, she would take a public bus or tempo, travel down from her house to come to the Ashram, walk all alone to the Samadhi, move around, do her things. Her only problem was one day she fell and I think she broke a bone or injured herself and she was bedridden and she could not fully recover from that to that degree of independence. But if she had not fallen, she could have gone on quite a bit more.
So you have to look at that practical aspect and that's an aspect purely at the level of the biology. It is not a psychological limitation. Feel the youth within you because the psychic is eternal, it is young eternally. You will take a new birth in a new body and be that fresh child which you already are within in the psychic being. Become conscious and live that youth of the newborn baby and every day take a small step and a small step and a small step and perhaps the Divine Mother will support you with her arm and you will cling on her arm and move your legs and walk a little bit every day, isn't it?
At least, let's take the first step to that and the support will be there and the evidence will be in the experience and every day can be one more step in our journey consciously, rapidly, youthfully. We can hold this as our aspiration as we concentrate for a moment.
<silence>
Namaste.