Mother, 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?
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. …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. … 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 black-board, “Who can answer?” —he can do this (Mother puts both hands to her forehead), receive, oh! and then say… But when we reach that 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.
The Mother
