Encouraging the Dreams of Children
reference: Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Powers Within, Chapter XVI Body, pp. 124-125 This episode is also available as a blog post at https://sriaurobindostudies.wordpress.com/2024/12/18/encouraging-the-dreams-of-children/
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0:00 We could say that it is almost a universal experience. A child expresses some sentiment, some idea about what he or she would like to do, something that soars beyond the mundane daily existence, something that makes things better, increases the beauty and harmony of life, cherishes life. And then the elders, parents, relatives, teachers, make it clear to the child that their dreams are not practical and they should instead focus on their studies and preparing for a career or job that will provide them a stable livelihood in their adult lives. Rare are those elders who can nourish and encourage the dreams of these children and who take steps to help them actually work toward achieving them.
0:54 An example that seems to frequently come up is the natural and spontaneous love for animals that children exhibit and their aversion to eating meat when they find out that meat is actually a slaughtered animal. Parents in meat eating societies often force the children to eat meat despite the child's aversion, and many is the time that a family dog benefited from the child's resistance as the meat seemingly disappeared down to the floor. Many children seem to have an innate sense of beauty, harmony, harmlessness, justice, truth, goodwill and basic harmony.
1:37 We could ask how it is that. Children. Have such dreams or aspirations? Where do they come from if they are not part of their daily external lives or education? It is clear when 1 looks closely. That they bring them from another domain of being those who understand these things. In depth speak of the development of the psychic being. Over many. Lifetimes, the maturity of the understanding. Without the intellectual. Words to. Express it comes with them into the new. Life. They have taken on. It is. Also in such a manner that we can understand how a young. Mozart five years old. Can be writing music and at age 6 performing before Royal Courts in Europe, speaking to a maturity and power of expression far beyond that of.
2:29 Toddlers generally, the mother notes quote. When one is very young, and, as I say, well born, that is, born with a conscious psychic being within, there is always in the dreams of the child a kind of aspiration which for its child's consciousness is a sort of ambition for something which would be beauty without ugliness, justice without injustice, goodness without limits, and a conscious constant success, a perpetual miracle. One dreams of miracles. When one is young, one wants all wickedness to disappear, everything to be always luminous, beautiful, happy.
3:16 One likes stories which end happily. This is what one should rely on when the body feels its miseries, its limitations. One must establish this dream in it of a strength which would have no limit, a beauty which would have no ugliness, and of marvelous capacities. One dreams of being able to rise into the air, of being wherever it is necessary to be, of setting things right when they go wrong, of healing the sick. Indeed, one has all sorts of dreams. When 1 is very young, usually parents or teachers pass their time throwing cold water on it, telling you, oh, it is a dream, it's not reality.
4:03 They should do the very opposite. Children should be taught. Yes, this is what you must try to realize. And not only is it possible, but it is certain if you come in contact with the part in you which is capable of doing this thing. This is what should guide your life, organize it, make you develop in the direction of the true reality which the Earl ordinary world calls illusion. End Quote Reference Srioro Bindo and the Mother Powers within, Chapter 16 Body, pages 124 to 125.
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