Yesterday evening, I received a big file from Y. on “prenatal education”…. She says that during the first months of its life, the child needs to touch its mother’s skin, and that this (Mother shows the photo of a naked Negress carrying her naked child on her back) is the ideal way to carry children!?
I read it yesterday, because she had spoken so much of this prenatal education, saying the child is fully educated by the age of three, so I wanted to know what she proposed. But there isn’t a single thing in it, she doesn’t say what should be done.
Just at the last page.
Yes, there is something there.
The Child of the Future
He has never met with a burst of impatience.
He has never heard an angry voice.
He has never seen anyone lamenting.
He has never heard said “me” or “mine.”
Nothing has ever pulled him out of oneness.
No one has ever told him, “Come!” or violated his physical rights.
No one has ever told him, “You must!” and violated his psychic rights.
He has always been treated as a soul in evolution.
The universe is his mother and the future his school.
A child to whom you must never say, “Come”…. That’s not easy in the language if you can’t tell him, “Come”!
No one ever tells him, “You must.”
Ah, yes, that’s fine.
Where is she going to find parents to do that!
Yes, it’s the parents who should be educated!
Yes, to begin with.
Just in this last page there is a hint of what that education might be, but it’s the negative side, what must not be. That’s all. But the positive side isn’t there.
She had already spoken to me once about prenatal education, so I thought it must have some meaning, but here …
Of course, we know from experience you can give the form that you imagine; in the broad lines, you can give the character you imagine; all that is quite correct. So to begin with, it’s the mother who should be educated, not the child. Then, through a very strict control of your own reactions, you can prevent certain wrong impulses from mixing into the child’s making. But all that isn’t new, it’s been known for a long time since it’s what I practiced when I was expecting a child. So I know it.
But once again, it’s the mother who must be educated, before she has a child, that’s what matters.
As for me, I understood that you could already give the child ideas, aspirations, tendencies (I didn’t know how that was possible), but she doesn’t say anything leading to that.
There’s only one thing, she says somewhere that during the first few weeks, for the child the separation is painful, and so the physical contact is necessary—the touch—the contact with the skin to give the child the taste of life and the understanding of physical life.1 That’s possible. But nowadays doctors say, “The last thing you should do is touch your child—put it in a cradle. You should not touch it because that will deform it.” It runs quite counter to her theories. Of course, she may be right to a certain extent, it’s possible. But anyway, it’s a very small detail, it’s nothing. I expected a lot and have been somewhat disappointed.
But what this Burmese man has said is fine—that’s much more interesting: this idea that it’s high time human nature changed. That’s good. Because in ordinary life, ordinary people tell you, “I can’t help it, that’s the way I am!” It’s the answer you always get.
(silence)
To do things properly, we would need a small “educational booklet” for the children of the future. A “preconceptional booklet” to prepare the father and mother (especially the mother, that’s the most important). Then a booklet for the first three years of life: the qualities required, the attitude to be taken…. At any rate, the father and mother should first know the possibility (at least the possibility) of a child being more than a mere animal man.
Then, conception should take place entirely outside of desire. That’s another very difficult condition to be fulfilled.
And the mother, throughout the gestation, should be in an atmosphere absolutely protected from all degrading influences: an ideally beautiful place, a wonderful climate where everything is harmonious, and a wholly spontaneous, free and harmonious and beautiful life sheltered from all vulgarities of life. And the mother herself should have the ideal of the new child. It should be done not as a mechanical but as a conscious, willed thing in an absolutely “creative” atmosphere, we might say.
All these are very difficult conditions to fulfil.2
"The sense of touch alone is fully developed (in the newborn). That allows it to remain in intimate contact with its mother and prolong the time of gestation, which is a period of intense development in the security of oneness. The least separation may cause an irreparable trauma, that 'fall on the head' which is the usual but abnormal condition of the newborn in civilized peoples. This is well-known to primitive peoples, where the mother keeps the naked child on her naked skin and never parts with it.... Until the other senses are specialized, it is chiefly through the surface of the skin that the child receives its education.... If one wants it to incarnate really, to be friends with matter, its body to become as intimate as its soul, one must invent for it a yoga of caresses and play." (It is worth noting that an attempt to put these alluring and specious theories into practice was to have catastrophic results, as we shall see later in the Agenda: the main effect of the said "caresses" is to attract into the child's body vital forces of a dark order, and "genii of sex" rather than anything else, are likely to be incarnated.) ↩
This is how Mother replied to the disciple who had sent her her study on the formation of the new child: "I have read your work with keen interest—it deals with an important aspect of the problem. But a public presentation is impossible. Seeing and reading this, too many young girls would imagine they are destined to give birth to the 'solar child'—that would be a disaster." Then Mother added: "In order to realize this work, one must have gone beyond all desire; and unfortunately, this is not generally the case as yet. Whereas ambition and vanity are rather widespread maladies." ↩
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