All that you can do is be loving, be nourishing, be warm, be accepting. The child brings an unknown
potential, and there is no way to figure out what he is going to be. So no procedure can be
suggested: ”This way you should help the child.” And each child is unique so there cannot be a
general discipline for every child.
People like this Miss Judith Martin are suggesting measures for every child, as if children are
produced on an assembly line in a factory. No two children are the same. How can you suggest,
how can you have even the nerve to suggest a generalized program, that this should be done?
But Miss Judith Martin .... I don’t know how many times she has become ”Miss.” I think at least a
dozen times certainly, because no husband can survive her; either he will escape or commit suicide,
but he will have to do something to make her Miss again. And she must be now very old.
Perhaps finally when she became famous and the most well-known authority on child-rearing,
nobody dared to marry her again, because such a woman, who has no compassion on children
– do you think she will have some compassion on husbands? She will train them exactly the way
animals are trained in a circus. She will make them dance to her tune; and her being a world-famous
authority, what can the poor husband do except dance?
This kind of person has existed down the ages around the world everywhere. They have
prescriptions, recipes, disciplines for everybody, not only for their contemporaries but for all future
generations, as to what is right. They are so idiotic – although they are known as great sages who
have given you religions, disciplines, moralities, ethics, codes of conduct: great law-givers. But I
say again to you, these people are idiots. Only an idiot can think in a generalized way when human
beings are concerned.
There is no average human being; you will never come across the average man. And all these
authorities are concerned with the average man, who does not exist! The average man is just like
God – omnipresent, yet you cannot find him anywhere. God is so omnipresent that ....
I have heard about one nun ... the whole nunnery became concerned about her. Is she sick or
something? – because she was taking her bath with her clothes on! And the doors were closed in
the bathroom. And when they asked, ”What is the matter? – why don’t you undress when the doors
are closed and nobody is there?” she said, ”Nobody? God is omnipresent. Yes, there is none of
you, but God is there, and to undress before God does not look right.”
They all must have thought her a crackpot, but she really, literally had accepted the idea of the
omnipresence of God.
Exactly like omnipresent God is the average man: he exists nowhere and is supposed to exist
everywhere. And all the principles are addressed to the average man.
You ask me how to help the child in the right way.
The right way is not to help the child at all. If you have real courage then please don’t help the child.
Love him, nourish him.
Let him do what he wants to do.
Let him go where he wants to go.
Your mind will be tempted again and again to interfere, and with good excuses. The mind is very
clever in rationalizing: ”If you don’t interfere there may be danger; the child may fall into the well
if you don’t stop him.” But I say to you, it is better to let him fall into the well than to help him and
destroy him.
It is a very rare possibility that the child falls into the well – and then too, it does not mean death; he
can be taken out of the well. And if you are really so concerned, the well can be covered; but don’t
help the child, and don’t interfere with the child. The well can be removed, but don’t interfere with
the child.
Your real concern should be to remove all dangers but don’t interfere with the child; let him go on his
way.
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