Theos-Talk Archives (July 2004 Message tt00307)

>From a one time reading of this text,
it is fairly obvious that it was
written by C.W. Leadbeater.

And I find the text online at:

http://tinyurl.com/3usg3

Daniel
http://hpb.cc


--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Anand Gholap" <AnandGholap@A...> 
wrote:
> Dear Friends,
> I want your opinion about following writing. Source and author of 
the book I have intentionally kept secrete and it will be revealed in 
future. Let me know your objective opinion of the writing and 
comments.
> Thanking you.
> Fraternally,
> Anand Gholap
> ------------------------------
> 
> It cannot be denied that from the theosophical standpoint the 
subject of our relation to children is an exceedingly important and 
practical one. Realizing, as we must, the purpose for which the ego [ 
relatively permanent self, not the personality ] descends into 
incarnation, and knowing to how great an extent its attainment of 
that purpose depends upon the training given to its various vehicles 
during their childhood and growth, we cannot but feel, if we think at 
all, that a tremendous responsibility attaches to all of us who are 
in any way connected with children, whether as parents, elder 
relatives, or teachers. It is well, therefore, that we should 
consider what hints Theosophy can give us as to the way in which we 
can best discharge this responsibility.
> 
> It may seem presumptuous that a bachelor should venture to offer 
suggestions to parents upon a subject so especially their own; so I 
ought, perhaps, to preface such remarks as I wish to make by saying 
that, though I have none of my own, I have always been fond of 
children, and in very close relation with them through almost the 
whole of my life - for many years as a Sunday school teacher, then as 
a clergyman, school-manager and choir trainer, and as headmaster of a 
large boys' school. So that I am, at any rate, speaking from long, 
practical experience, and not merely vaguely theorizing.
> 
> Before making suggestions, however, I should like to draw attention 
to the present condition of our relation to children in the midst of 
European civilization. Our children regard grown-up people (in the 
mass) with scarcely veiled hostility, or, at the best, with a kind of 
armed neutrality, and always with deep distrust, as foreigners whose 
motives are incomprehensible to them, and whose actions are 
perpetually interfering in the most unwarrantable and apparently 
malicious manner with their right to enjoy themselves in their own 
way. I should strongly advise every parent to read Kenneth Grahame's 
The Golden Age; it puts the children's point of view better than any 
other book which I know.
> 
> Many a man, or woman, thinks of children only as noisy, dirty, 
greedy, clumsy, selfish and generally objectionable; and he never 
realizes that there may be a good deal of selfishness in this point 
of view of his, and that if any part of his indictment is true, the 
fault has been not so much in the children themselves as in the 
unreasonable way in which they have been brought up; furthermore, 
that in any case his duty is not to widen the chasm between them and 
himself by adopting an attitude of dislike and distrust, but rather 
to endeavour to improve the position of affairs by judicious kindness 
and hearty, patient friendliness and sympathy.
> 
> Surely there is something wrong about such unsatisfactory 
relations; surely some improvement might be brought about in this 
unfortunate condition of mutual hostility and mistrust. Of course, 
there are honourable exceptions - there are children who trust their 
teachers and teachers who trust their students, and I myself have 
never found any difficulty in winning the confidence of the juveniles 
by treating them properly; but in a sadly large number of instances 
the case is as I have described it.
> 
> In Oriental Countries
> That it need not be so is shown not only by the exceptions 
mentioned above, but by the condition of affairs which we find 
existing in some oriental lands. I have not yet had the pleasure of 
visiting Japan, but I hear from those who have been there and have 
made some study of this question, that there is no country in the 
world where children are so well and so sensibly treated - where 
their relations with their elders are so completely satisfactory. 
Harshness, it is said, is entirely unknown, yet the children in no 
way presume upon the gentleness of the older people. In India and 
Ceylon also, on the whole, the relations of children and adults are 
certainly more rational than they usually are in England, though I 
have occasionally seen instances of undue severity there which show 
that those countries have not yet attained quite so high a level as 
Japan in this respect.
> 
> No doubt this is partly due to the difference of race. The oriental 
child usually has not the irrepressible animal spirits and the 
intense physical activity of his English representative, nor has he 
his pronounced aversion to mental exertion. Strange and 
incomprehensible as it would sound to the ears of a British 
schoolboy, the Indian child is really eager to learn, and is always 
willing to do any amount of work out of school-hours in order that he 
may make more rapid progress. It is no injustice to the average 
English boy to say that he regards play as the most important part of 
his life, and that he looks upon lessons as distinctly a bore to be 
avoided as far as possible, or perhaps as a kind of game which he has 
to play against the teacher. If the latter can force him to learn 
anything, that counts as a score to the side of authority: but if he 
can anyhow escape without learning a lesson, then he in turn has 
scored a point. In the East, such a child as this is the exception 
and not the rule; the majority of them are really anxious to learn, 
and co-operate intelligently with their teacher instead of offering 
him ceaseless though passive resistance.
> 
> Perhaps if I describe a little incident which I have more than once 
witnessed in Ceylon, it will help my readers to understand how 
different the position of children really is in an oriental race. 
Readers of The Arabian Nights will remember how it constantly happens 
that when some king or great man is sitting in judgement, a casual 
passer-by - perhaps a porter or beggar - breaks in and offers his 
opinion on the matter in hand, and is politely listened to, instead 
of being summarily arrested or ejected for such a breach of the 
proprieties.
> 
> Impossible as this seems to us, it was undoubtedly absolutely true 
to life, and on a smaller scale the same sort of thing occurs today, 
as I myself have seen. It came in the course of my work to travel 
about among the villages of Ceylon, trying to induce their residents 
to appreciate the advantages of education, and to found schools in 
which their children could be systematically taught their own 
religion instead of being left either to the rather haphazard 
instruction of the monks at the pansalas, or to the proselytizing 
efforts of the Christian missionaries.
> 
> When I arrived at a village I called upon the headman, and asked 
him to convoke the inhabitants to hear what I had to say; and after 
the address the chief people of the place usually held a sort of 
council, to decide where and how their school should be built and how 
they could best set about the work. Such a council was generally held 
in the verandah of the headman's house or under a great tree close 
by, with the whole village in attendance around the debaters.
> 
> More than once on such occasions I have seen a small boy of ten or 
twelve stand up respectfully before the great people of his little 
world, and suggest, deferentially, that if the school were erected in 
the place proposed it would make it exceedingly inconvenient for such 
and such children to attend; and in every case the small boy was 
treated precisely as an adult would have been, the local grandees 
listening courteously and patiently, and allowing their due weight to 
the juvenile's arguments. What would happen if in England an 
agricultural labourer's child publicly offered a suggestion to the 
county magnates gathered in solemn assembly, one hardly dares to 
imagine; probably that child's suppression would be summary and 
unpleasant; but as a matter of fact the situation is absolutely 
unthinkable under our present conditions - more is the pity!
> 
> Better Understanding Needed
> But how, it may be asked, is it proposed that this position of 
mutual mistrust and misunderstanding should be improved? Well, it is 
evident that in cases where this breach already exists, it can be 
bridged over only by unwearying kindness, and by gradual, patient but 
constant efforts to promote a better understanding by steadily 
showing unselfish affection and sympathy; in fact by habitually 
putting ourselves in the child's place and trying to realize exactly 
how all these matters appear to him. If we, who are adults, had not 
so entirely forgotten our own childish days, we should make far 
greater allowances for the children of today, and should understand 
and deal with them much better.
> 
> This is, however, very emphatically one of the cases in which the 
old proverb holds good, which tells us that prevention is better than 
cure. If we will but take a little trouble to begin in the right way 
with our children from the very first, we shall easily be able to 
avoid the undesirable state of affairs which we have been describing. 
And this is exactly where Theosophy has many a valuable hint to offer 
to those who are in earnest in wishing to do their duty by the young 
ones committed to their charge.
> 
> Of course, the absolute nature of this duty of parents and teachers 
towards children must first be recognized. We cannot too strongly or 
too repeatedly insist that parentage is an exceedingly heavy 
responsibility of a religious nature, however lightly and 
thoughtlessly it may often be undertaken. Those who bring a child 
into the world make themselves directly responsible to the law of 
karma for the opportunities of evolution which they ought to give to 
that ego, and heavy indeed will be their penalty if by their 
carelessness or selfishness they put hindrances in his path, or fail 
to render him all the help and guidance which he has a right to 
expect from them. Yet how often the modern parent entirely ignores 
this obvious responsibility; how often a child is to him nothing but 
a cause of fatuous vanity or an object of thoughtless neglect!
> 
> The Child and Reincarnation
> Now, if we want to understand our duty towards the child we must 
first consider how he came to be what he is - that is to say, we must 
trace him back in thought to his previous incarnation. Fifteen 
hundred years ago or so your child was perhaps a Roman citizen, 
perhaps a philosopher of Alexandria, perhaps an early Briton; but 
whatever may have been his outward circumstances, he had a definite 
disposition of his own - a character containing various more or less 
developed qualities, some good and some bad.
> 
> In due course of time that life of his came to an end; but remember 
that whether that end came slowly by disease or old age, or swiftly 
by some accident or violence, its advent made no sudden change of any 
sort in his character. A curious delusion seems to prevail in many 
quarters that the mere fact of death will at once turn a demon into a 
saint - that, whatever a man's life may have been, the moment he dies 
he becomes practically an angel of goodness. No idea could possibly 
be further from the truth, as those whose work lies in trying to help 
the departed know full well. The casting off of a man's physical body 
no more alters his disposition than does the casting off of his 
overcoat; he is precisely the same man the day after his death as he 
was the day before, with the same vices and the same virtues.
> 
> True, now that he is functioning only on the astral plane he has 
not the same opportunities of displaying them; but though they may 
manifest themselves in the astral life in quite a different manner, 
they are none the less still there, and the conditions and duration 
of that life are their result. On that plane he must stay until the 
energy poured forth by his lower desires and emotions during physical 
life has worn itself out - until the astral body which he has made 
for himself disintegrates; for only then can he leave it for the 
higher and more peaceful realm of the heaven-world. But though those 
particular passions are for the time worn out and non-existent for 
him, the germs of the qualities in him, which made it possible for 
them to exist in his nature, are still there. They are latent and 
ineffective, certainly, because desire of that type requires astral 
matter for its manifestation; they are what Madame Blavatsky once 
called 'privations of matter', but they are quite ready to come into 
renewed activity, if stimulated, when the man again finds himself 
under conditions where they can act.
> 
> An analogy may perhaps, if not pushed too far, be of use in helping 
us to grasp this idea. If a small bell be made to ring continuously 
in an airtight vessel, and the air be then gradually withdrawn, the 
sound will grow fainter and fainter, until it becomes inaudible. The 
bell is still ringing as vigorously as ever, yet its vibration is no 
longer manifest to our ears, because the medium by means of which 
alone it can produce any effect upon them is absent. Admit the air 
into the vessel, and immediately you hear the sound of the bell once 
more just as before.
> 
> Similarly, there are certain qualities in man's nature which need 
astral matter for their manifestation, just as sound needs either air 
or some denser matter for its vehicle; and when, in the process of 
his withdrawal into himself after what we call death, he leaves the 
astral plane for the mental, those qualities can no longer find 
expression, and must therefore perforce remain latent. But when, 
centuries later, on his downward course into reincarnation he re-
enters the astral plane, these qualities which have remained latent 
for so long manifest themselves once more and become the tendencies 
of the next personality.
> 
> In the same way there are qualities of the mind which need for 
their expression the matter of the lower mental levels; and when, 
after his long rest in the heaven-world the consciousness of the man 
withdraws into the true ego upon the higher mental levels, these 
qualities also pass into latency.
> 
> But when the ego is about to reincarnate, it has to reverse this 
process of withdrawal - to pass downward through the very same planes 
through which it came on its upward journey. When the time of its 
outflow comes, it puts itself down first on to the lower levels of 
its own plane, and seeks to express itself there as far as is 
possible in that less perfect and less plastic matter.
> 
> In order that it may so express itself and function upon that plane 
it must clothe itself in the matter of the plane, just as an entity 
at a spiritualistic séance, when it wishes to move physical
objects, 
materializes a temporary physical hand with which to do it, or, at 
any rate, employs physical forces of some kind to produce its 
results. It is not at all necessary that such a hand should be 
materialized sufficiently to be visible to our dull, ordinary sight. 
But to produce a physical result there must be materialization to a 
certain extent - as far as etheric matter, at any rate.
> 
> Thus the ego aggregates around itself matter of the lower mental 
levels - the matter which will afterwards become its mind-body. But 
this matter is not selected at random; on the contrary, out of all 
the varied and inexhaustible store around him he attracts to himself 
just such a combination as is perfectly fitted to give expression to 
his latent mental qualities. In precisely the same way, when he makes 
the further descent on to the astral plane, the matter of that plane 
which is by natural law attracted to him to serve as his vehicle in 
that world, is exactly that which will give expression to the desires 
which were his at the conclusion of his last birth. In point of fact, 
he resumes his life on each plane just where he left it last time.
> 
> Observe that those are not as yet in any way qualities in action; 
they are simply the germs of qualities, and for the moment their only 
influence is to secure for themselves a possible field of 
manifestation, by providing suitable matter for their expression in 
the various vehicles of the child. Whether they develop once more in 
this life into the same definite tendencies as in the last one, will 
depend very largely upon the encouragement or otherwise given to them 
by the surroundings of the child during its early years. Any one of 
them, good or bad, may be very readily stimulated into activity by 
encouragement, or on the other hand may be, as it were, starved out 
for lack of that encouragement. If stimulated, it becomes a more 
powerful factor in the man's life this time than it was in his 
previous existence; if starved out, it remains all through the life 
merely as an unfructified germ, and does not make its appearance in 
the succeeding incarnation at all.
> 
> This then is the condition of the child when first he comes under 
his parent's care. He cannot be said to have as yet a definite mind-
body or a definite astral body, but he has around and within him the 
matter out of which these are to be built.
> 
> He possesses tendencies of all sorts, some of them good and some of 
them evil, and it is in accordance with the development of these 
tendencies that that building will be regulated. And this development 
in turn depends almost entirely upon the influences brought to bear 
upon him from outside during the first few years of his existence.
> 
> Shaping the Child's Future
> It is simply impossible to exaggerate the plasticity of these 
unformed vehicles. We know that the physical body of a child, if only 
its training be begun at a sufficiently early age, may be modified to 
a very considerable extent. An acrobat, for example, will take a boy 
of five or six years old, whose bones and muscles are not yet as 
hardened and firmly set as ours are, and will gradually accustom his 
limbs and body to take readily and with comfort all sorts of 
positions, which would be absolutely impossible for most of us even 
with any amount of training. Yet our own bodies at the same age 
differed in no essential respect from that boy's, and if they had 
been put through the same exercises they would have become as supple 
and elastic as his, though now that they are definitely set no 
efforts that we could make, however long continued, could give them 
the same easy flexibility.
> 
> Now if the physical body of a child is thus plastic and readily 
impressible, his astral and mental vehicles are far more so. They 
thrill in response to every vibration which they encounter, and are 
eagerly receptive with regard to all influences, whether good or 
evil, which emanate from those around them. And they resemble the 
physical body also in this other characteristic - that though in 
early youth they are so susceptible and so easily moulded, they very 
soon set and stiffen and acquire definite habits, which when once 
firmly established can be altered only with great difficulty.
> 
> When we realize this, we see at once the extreme importance of the 
surroundings in which a child passes his earliest years, and the 
heavy responsibility which rests upon every parent to see that the 
conditions of the child's development are as good as they can be 
made. The little creature is as clay in our hands, to mould almost as 
we will; moment by moment the germs of good or evil quality brought 
over from the last birth are awakening into activity; moment by 
moment are being built up those vehicles which will condition the 
whole of his after-life; and it rests with us to awaken the germ of 
good, to starve out the germ of evil. To a far larger extent than is 
ever realized by even the fondest parents, the child's future is 
under their control.
> 
> Think of all the friends whom you know so well, and try to imagine 
what splendid specimens of humanity they would be if all their good 
qualities were enormously intensified, and all the less estimable 
features absolutely weeded out of their characters.
> 
> That is the result which it is in your power to produce in your 
child if you do your full duty by him; such a specimen of humanity 
you may make him if you will but take the trouble.
> 
> Strengthen the Good
> But how? you will say; by precept? by education? Yes, truly, much 
may be done in that way when the time comes; but another and far 
greater power than that is in your hands - a power which you may 
begin to wield from the very moment of the child's birth, and even 
before that; and that is the power of the influence of your own life. 
To some extent this is recognized, for most civilized people are 
careful of their words and actions in the presence of a child, and it 
would be an unusually depraved parent who would allow his children to 
hear him use violent language, or to see him give way to a fit of 
passion; but what a man does not realize is that if he wishes to 
avoid doing the most serious harm to his little ones, he must learn 
to control not only his words and deeds, but also his thoughts. It is 
true that you cannot immediately see the pernicious effect of an evil 
thought or desire upon the mind of your child, but none the less it 
is there, and it is more real and more terrible, more insidious and 
more far-reaching, than the harm which is obvious to the physical eye.
> 
> If a parent allows himself to cherish feelings of anger or 
jealousy, of envy or avarice, of selfishness or pride, even though he 
may never give them outward expression, the vibrations which he 
thereby causes in his own desire-body are assuredly acting all the 
while upon the plastic astral body of his child, tuning its 
vibrations to the same key, awakening into activity any germs of 
these sins that may have been brought over from his past life, and 
setting up in him also the same set of evil habits, which when they 
have once become definitely formed will be exceedingly difficult to 
correct. And this is exactly what is being done in the case of most 
of the children whom we see around us.
> 
> As it presents itself to a clairvoyant, the aura of a child is very 
often a most beautiful object - pure and bright in its colour, free, 
as yet, from the stains of sensuality and avarice and from the dull 
cloud of ill will and selfishness which so frequently darkens all the 
life of the adult. In it are to be seen lying latent all the germs 
and tendencies of which we have spoken - some of them evil, some of 
them good, and thus the possibilities of the child's future life lie 
plain before the eye of the watcher.
> 
> But how sad it is to see the change which almost invariably comes 
over that lovely child-aura as the years pass on - to note how 
persistently the evil tendencies are fostered and strengthened by his 
environment, and how entirely the good ones are neglected! and so 
incarnation after incarnation is almost wasted, and a life which, 
with just a little more care and self-restraint on the part of the 
parents and teachers, might have borne rich fruit of spiritual 
development, comes practically to nothing, and at its close leaves 
scarce any harvest to be garnered into the ego of which it has been 
so very one-sided an expression.
> 
> When one watches the criminal carelessness with which those who are 
responsible for the bringing up of children allow them to be 
perpetually surrounded by all kinds of evil and worldly thoughts, one 
ceases to marvel at the extraordinary slowness of human evolution, 
and the almost imperceptible progress which is all that the ego has 
to show for life after life spent in the toil and struggle of this 
lower world. Yet with so little more trouble so vast an improvement 
might be introduced!
> 
> It needs no astral vision to see what a change would come over this 
weary old world if the majority, or even any large proportion of the 
next generation, were subjected to the process suggested above - if 
all their evil qualities were steadily so allowed to atrophy for lack 
of nourishment, while all the good in them assiduously cultivated and 
developed to the fullest possible extent. One has only to think what 
they in turn would do for their children to realize that in two or 
three generations all the conditions of life would be different, and 
a true golden age would have begun. For the world at large that age 
may still be distant, but surely we who are members of the 
Theosophical Society ought each to be doing our best to hasten its 
advent: and though the influence of our example may not extend very 
far, it is at least within our power to see that our own children 
have for their development every advantage which we can give them.
> 
> The very greatest care, then, ought to be taken as to the 
surroundings of children. People who will persist in thinking coarse 
and unloving thoughts should at least learn that while they are doing 
so they are unfit to come near the young, lest they infect them with 
a contagion more virulent than fever. Much care is needed, for 
example, in the selection of the nurses to whom children must 
sometimes be committed; though it is surely obvious that the less 
they are left in the hands of servants the better. Nurses often 
develop the strongest affection for their charges, and treat them as 
though they were of their own flesh and blood, yet this is not 
invariably the case, and, however that may be, it should be 
remembered that the servants are almost inevitably less educated and 
less refined than their mistresses, and that, therefore, a child who 
is left too much to their companionship is constantly subjected to 
the impact of thought which is at least not unlikely to be of a less 
elevated order than even the average level of that of his parents. So 
that the mother who wishes her child to grow up into a refined and 
delicate-minded individual should entrust him to the care of others 
as little as possible, and should, above all things, take good heed 
of her own thoughts while watching over him.
> 
> Her great and cardinal rule should be to allow herself to harbour 
no thought and no desire which she would not wish to see reproduced 
in her child. Nor is this merely negative conquest over herself 
sufficient, for, happily, all that has been said about the influence 
and power of thought is true of good thoughts just as much as of evil 
ones, and so the parents' duty has a positive as well as a negative 
side. Not only must they abstain most carefully from fostering, by 
unworthy or selfish thoughts of their own, any evil tendency which 
may exist in their child, but it is also their duty to cultivate in 
themselves strong, unselfish affection, pure thoughts, high and noble 
aspirations, in order that all these may react upon their charge, 
quicken whatever of good is already latent in him, and create a 
tendency towards any good quality which is as yet unrepresented in 
his character.
> 
> How Thought Works
> Nor need they have any fear that such effort on their part will 
fail of its effect, because they are unable to follow its action for 
lack of astral vision. To the sight of a trained clairvoyant the 
whole transaction is obvious; he would distinguish the vibrations set 
up in the mind-body of the parent by the inception of the thought, 
would see it radiating forth, and note the sympathetic vibration 
created by its impingement upon the mind-body of the child: and if he 
renewed his observations at intervals during some considerable 
period, he would discern the gradual but permanent change produced in 
that mind-body by the constant repetition of the same stimulus to 
progress. If the parents themselves possessed the astral sight, it 
would, no doubt, be of great assistance to them in showing exactly 
what were the capabilities of their child, and in what directions he 
most needed development; but if they have not yet that advantage, 
there need not, therefore, be the slightest doubt or question about 
the result, for that must follow sustained effort with mathematical 
certainty, whether the process of its working be visible to them or 
not.
> 
> And not only should a parent watch his thoughts, but his moods 
also. A child is quick to notice and to resent injustice; and if he 
finds himself scolded at one time for an action which on another 
occasion caused only amusement, what wonder that his sense of the 
invariability of nature's laws is outraged! Again, when trouble and 
sorrow comes upon the parent, as in this world it sometimes must, it 
is surely his duty to try, as far as possible, to prevent his load of 
grief from weighing upon his children as well as upon himself; at 
least when in their presence he should make a special effort to be 
cheerful and resigned, lest the dull, leaden hue of depression should 
extend itself from his aura to theirs.
> 
> Yet again, many a well-meaning parent has an anxious and fussy 
nature - is always fidgeting about trifles, and worrying his children 
and himself about matters which are really quite unimportant. If he 
could but observe clairvoyantly the utter unrest and disquiet which 
he thus produces in his aura, and could further see how these 
vibrations introduce quite unnecessary agitation and irritation into 
the susceptible auras of his children, he would no longer be 
surprised at their occasional outbursts of petulance or nervous 
excitability, and would realize that in such a case he is often far 
more to blame than they. What he should contemplate and set before 
him as his object, is a restful, unruffled spirit - the peace which 
passeth all understanding - the perfect calm which comes from the 
confidence that all will at last be well.
> 
> It is further obvious that the training of the parents' character 
which is necessitated by these considerations is in every respect a 
splendid one, and that in thus helping on the evolution of their 
children they also benefit themselves to an extent which is 
absolutely incalculable, for the thoughts which at first have been 
summoned by conscious effort for the sake of the child will soon 
become natural and habitual, and will in time form the background of 
the parents' entire life.
> 
> It must not be supposed that these precautions may be relaxed as 
the child grows older, for though this extraordinary sensitiveness to 
the influence of his surroundings commences as soon as the ego 
descends upon the embryo, sometimes long before birth takes place, it 
continues in most cases up to about the period of maturity. If such 
influences as are above suggested have been brought to bear upon him 
during infancy and childhood, the child of twelve or fourteen will be 
far better equipped for the efforts which lie before him than his 
less fortunate companions with whom no special trouble has been 
taken. But it must be remembered that he is still far more 
impressionable than an adult, and the same strong help and guidance 
upon the mental plane must still be continued in order that the good 
habits both of thought and of action may not yield before the newer 
temptations which are likely to assail him.
> 
> Responsibility of the Teacher
> Although in his earlier years it was naturally chiefly to his 
parents that he had to look for such assistance, all that has been 
said of their duties applies equally to anyone who comes into contact 
with children in any capacity, and most especially to those who 
undertake the tremendous responsibilities of the teacher. The 
influence of a teacher for good or for evil over his pupils is one 
that cannot readily be measured, and (exactly as before) it depends 
not only upon what he says or what he does, but even more upon what 
he thinks. Many a teacher repeatedly reproves in his children the 
exhibition of tendencies for the creation of which he is himself 
directly responsible; if his thought is selfish or impure, then he 
will find selfishness and impurity reflected all around him, nor does 
the evil caused by such a thought end with those whom it immediately 
affects.
> 
> The young minds upon which it is reflected take it up and magnify 
and strengthen it, and thus it reacts upon others in turn and becomes 
an unholy tradition handed down from one generation of children to 
another. Happily a good tradition may be set up almost as easily as a 
bad one - not quite as easily, because there are always undesirable 
external influences to be taken into account; but still a teacher who 
realizes his responsibilities and manages his school upon the 
principles that have been suggested will very soon find that his self-
control and devotion have not been fruitless.
> 
> I am convinced that there is only one way in which either parent or 
teacher can really obtain effective influence over a child and draw 
out all the best that is in him - and that is by winning his love and 
confidence. It is true that obedience may be extorted and discipline 
preserved by inspiring fear, but rules enforced by such a method are 
kept only so long as he who imposes them (or someone representing 
him) is present, and are invariably broken when there is no fear of 
detection; the child keeps them because he must, and not because he 
wishes to do so.
> 
> But if on the other hand, his affection has been invoked, his will 
at once ranges itself on the side of the rule; he wishes to keep it, 
because he knows that in breaking it he would cause sorrow to one 
whom he loves; and if only this feeling be strong enough, it will 
enable him to rise superior to all temptation, and the rule will be 
binding no matter who may be present or absent. Thus the object is 
attained not only much more thoroughly, but also much more easily and 
pleasantly both for teacher and pupil, and all the best side of the 
child's nature is called into activity, instead of all the worst. 
Instead of rousing the child's will into sullen and persistent 
opposition, the teacher arrays it on his own side in the contest 
against distractions or temptations; and thus results are achieved 
which could never be approached on the other system.
> 
> It is of the utmost importance always to try to understand the 
child, and to make him feel certain that he has one's friendliness 
and sympathy. All appearance of harshness must be carefully avoided, 
and the reason for all instructions given to him should always be 
fully explained. It must indeed be made clear to him that sometimes 
sudden emergencies arise in which the older person has no time to 
explain his instructions, and he should understand that in such a 
case he should obey even though he may not fully comprehend; but even 
then the explanation should always be given afterwards.
> 
> Unwise parents or teachers often make the mistake of habitually 
exacting obedience without understanding - a most unreasonable 
demand; indeed they expect from the child at all times and under all 
conditions an angelic patience and saintliness which they are very 
far indeed from possessing themselves. They have not yet realized 
that harshness towards a child is always not only wicked, but 
absolutely unreasonable and foolish as well, since it can never be 
the most effective way of obtaining from him what is desired.
> 
> It often happens that a child's faults are the direct result of the 
unnatural way in which he is treated. Sensitive and nervous to a 
degree, he constantly finds himself misunderstood, and scolded or ill-
treated for offences whose turpitude he does not in the least 
comprehend; is it to be wondered at that when the whole atmosphere 
about him reeks with the deceit and falsehood of his elders, his 
fears should sometimes drive him into untruthfulness also? Certainly 
in such a case the karma of the sin will fall most heavily upon those 
who, by their criminal harshness, have placed a weak and undeveloped 
being in a position where it was almost impossible for him to avoid 
it. If we expect truth from our children, we must first of all 
practise it ourselves; we must think truth as well as speak truth and 
act truth, before we can hope to be strong enough to save them from 
the sea of falsehood and deceit which surrounds us on every side. But 
if we treat them as reasonable beings - if we explain fully and 
patiently what we want from them, and show them that they have 
nothing to fear from us - for 'perfect love casteth out fear' - then 
we shall find no difficulty about truthfulness.
> 
> A curious but not at all uncommon delusion is that children can 
never be good unless they are unhappy, that they must be thwarted at 
every turn, and never by any chance allowed to have their own way in 
anything, because when they are enjoying themselves they must 
necessarily be in a condition of desperate wickedness! Absurd and 
atrocious as this doctrine is, various modifications of it are still 
widely prevalent, and it is responsible for a vast amount of cruelty 
and unnecessary misery wantonly inflicted upon little creatures whose 
only crime was that they were natural and happy. Undoubtedly nature 
intended that childhood should be a happy time, and we ought to spare 
no efforts to make it so, for in that respect as in all others, if we 
thwart nature we do so at our peril.
> 
> Children are Egos
> It will help us much in our dealings with children if we remember 
that they also are egos, that their small and feeble physical bodies 
are after all but the accident of the moment, and that in reality we 
are all about the same age. Our business in training them is to 
develop only that in their lower nature which will co-operate with 
the ego - which will make it a better channel for the ego to work 
through. Long ago, in the golden age of the old Atlantean 
civilization, the importance of the office of the teacher of the 
children was so fully recognized that none was permitted to hold it 
except a trained clairvoyant, who could see all the latent qualities 
and capabilities of his charges, and could, therefore, work 
intelligently with each so as to develop what was good in him, and to 
amend what was evil.
> 
> In the distant future it may be that that will be so once more; but 
that time is as yet far away, and we have to do our best under less 
favourable conditions. Yet unselfish affection is a wonderful 
quickener of the intuition, and those who really love their children 
will rarely be at a loss to comprehend their needs; and keen and 
persistent observation will give them, though at the cost of much 
more trouble, some approach to the clearer insight of their Atlantean 
predecessors. At any rate, it is well worth the trying, for when once 
we realize our true responsibility in relation to children, we shall 
assuredly think no labour too great which enables us to discharge it 
better.
> 
> Theosophy for Children
> A word should be said in conclusion upon the subject of religious 
training. Many members of the Theosophical Society, while feeling 
that their children need something to take the place filled in 
ordinary education by religious training, have yet found it almost 
impossible so to put Theosophy before them as to make it in any way 
intelligible to them. Some have even permitted their children to go 
through the ordinary routine of Bible lessons, saying that they did 
not know what else to do, and that though much of the teaching was 
obviously untrue it could be corrected afterwards. This, however, is 
a course which is entirely indefensible; no child should ever waste 
its time in learning what it will have to unlearn afterwards. If the 
true inner meaning of Christianity could be taught to our children, 
that indeed were well, because of course that would be pure Theosophy.
> 
> Nor is there any real difficulty in putting the grand truths of 
Theosophy intelligibly before the minds of our children. Certainly it 
is useless, at first, to trouble them with rounds and races, with 
lunar pitris and manasaputras; but then, however interesting and 
valuable all this information may be, it is of little importance in 
the practical regulation of conduct, whereas the great ethical truths 
upon which the whole system rests can, happily be made clear even to 
the childish understanding. What could be simpler in essence than the 
three great truths which are given to Sensa in The Idyll of the White 
Lotus?
> 
> "The soul of man is immortal, and its future is the future of a 
thing whose growth and splendour have no limit. 
> 
> The principle which gives life dwells in us and without us, is 
undying and eternally beneficent, is not heard, nor seen, nor smelt, 
but is perceived by the man who desires perception.
> 
> Each man is his own absolute law-giver, the dispenser of glory or 
gloom to himself - the decreer of his life, his reward, his 
punishment.
> 
> These truths, which are as great as is life itself, are as simple 
as the simplest mind of man. Feed the hungry with them."
> 
> We might express these more tersely by saying: 'Man is immortal; 
god is good; as we sow, so shall we reap.' But surely none of our 
children can fail to grasp these simple ideas in their broad outline, 
though as they grow older they may spend many a year in learning more 
and more of the immensity of their full meaning. Teach them the grand 
old formula that 'death is the gate of life' - not a terrible fate to 
be feared, but simply a stage of progress to be welcomed with 
interest. Teach them to live, not for themselves, but for others - to 
go through the world as friends and helpers, earnest in loving 
reverence and care for all living things. Teach them to delight in 
seeing and in causing happiness in others, in animals and birds as 
well as in human beings; teach them that to cause pain to any living 
thing is always a wicked action, and can never have aught of interest 
or amusement for any right-thinking or civilized man. A child's 
sympathies are so easily roused, and his delight in doing something 
is so great that he responds at once to the idea that he should try 
to help, and should never harm, all the creatures around him. He 
should be taught to be observant, that he may see where help is 
needed, whether by man or by animal, and promptly to supply the want 
so far as lies in his power.
> 
> A child likes to be loved, and he likes to protect, and both these 
feelings may be utilized in training him to be a friend of all 
creatures. He will readily learn to admire flowers as they grow, and 
not wish to pluck them heedlessly, casting them aside a few minutes 
later to wither on the roadside; those which he plucks he will pick 
carefully, avoiding injury to the plant; he will preserve and tend 
them, and his way through wood and field will never be traceable by 
fading blossoms and uprooted plants.
> 
> Physical Training and Purity
> Do not forget also that the physical training of the child is a 
matter of the greatest importance, and that a strong, pure, healthy 
body is necessary for the full expression of the developing soul 
within. Teach him from the first the exceeding importance of physical 
purity, so that he may regard his daily bath just as much an integral 
part of his life as his daily food. See to it that his body is never 
befouled with such filthy abominations of modern savagery as meat, 
alcohol or tobacco; see to it that he has always plenty of sunlight, 
of fresh air and of exercise. So shall he grow up pure, healthy and 
happy; so shall you provide for the soul entrusted to your care a 
casket of which it need not be ashamed, a vehicle through which it 
shall receive only the highest and best that the physical world can 
give - which it can use as a fitting instrument for the noblest and 
the holiest work.
> 
> As the parent teaches the child, he will also be obliged to set the 
example in this as in other things, and so the child will thus again 
civilize his elders as well as improve himself. Birds and 
butterflies, cats and dogs, all will be his friends, and he will 
delight in their beauty instead of longing to chase or destroy them. 
Children thus trained will grow up into men and women recognizing 
their place in evolution and their work in the world, and each will 
serve as a fresh centre of humanizing force, gradually changing the 
direction of human influence on all lower things.
> 
> If thus we train our children, if we are thus careful in our 
relations with them, we shall bear nobly our great responsibility, 
and in so doing we shall help on the grand work of evolution; we 
shall be doing our duty, not only to our children, but to the human 
race - not only to their egos, but to those of the many millions yet 
to come.
> 
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