It would be interesting to formualte or to work out a new method of teaching children; to take them very small, very small, it is easy. One will need people (Oh, one will need very remarkable professors), who have first, a sufficient documentation of what they know, to be able to answer all questions; and, at the same time, at least the knowledge if not the experience (the experience would be better) of the true intellectual and intuitive attitude (and naturally, the capacity would be still preferable), but in any case, the knowledge that the true way of knowledge is through the mental silence – a silence that is wide-awake, turned towards the most true Consciousness, and the capacity to receive what comes from there. The best would be to have this capacity; in any case, it should be explained that this is the true thing, a kind of demonstration, that it works not only from the point of view of what should be learned, of the whole field of knowledge, but also of the entire field of all that should be done, the capacity to receive the exact indication of how to do it; and as one advances, changes into a very clear perception of what should be done, and a precise indication of when it should be done. At the very least, the children, as soon as they have the capacity to think (it begins at 7 years but towards 14 years it is very clear) should be given small indications at 7 and a complete explanation at 14, of how to do it, and that it is the unique method to enter into relation with the profound truth of things, that all the rest is a mental approximation, more or less inapt of something that can be known directly.
The conclusion is that the professors must themselves have at least a sincere beginning of discipline and experience; it is not a matter of collecting books and retelling them like that: one cannot be a professor, like this. The whole world is like this, one has only to let the outside world be as it is if it gives it pleasure. We here are not propagandists; we simply want to show what can be done, and try to prove that it must be done.
When one has very small children, it is marvellous. There, there are so few things to do: it is sufficient to be.
Never to deceive oneself.
Never to be angry.
Always to be understanding.
And to understand and see clearly why there was this movement, why this impulsion, what is the interior constitution of the child, what one should fortify and put in front. There is only this to be done and then to leave them, to leave them free to blossom, to give them only the occasion to see many things, to touch many things, to do as many things as possible. It is very amusing. And above all, never to try and impose on them what one believes one knows.
Never to scold. Always to understand, and if the child is capable, to explain; if he is incapable for an explanation (if one is oneself capable of it) to replace the false vibvration with a true one…. But this… this is to ask of the teachers a perfection which they rarely have.
But it would be very interesting to make a programme for the professors and the true programme of studies, right from below, which is so plastic and which receives impressions so deeply. If one could give them some drops of truth when they are very young, it would blossom out naturally as the being grew. It would be a beautiful work.
The Mother
