WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

30 December 1953

What do you mean by the instinct of destruction in children?

It is not there in all children. I have known many who, on the contrary, were very careful.

Children are not as "concretised", materialised in their physical consciousness as older people--as one grows up, it is as though one is coagulated and becomes more and more gross in one's consciousness unless through a willed action one develops otherwise. For instance, the majority of children find it very difficult to distinguish their imagination, their dreams, what they see within themselves from outer things. The world is not as limited as when one is older and more precise. And they are extremely sensitive within; they are much closer to their psychic being than when they are grown up, and much more sensitive to the forces which, later, will become invisible to them--but at this moment are not. It is not unusual for children to have some sort of fits of fear or even of joy in their sleep, from dreams. Children are afraid of all sorts of things which for older people don't exist any more. Their vision is not solely material. They have a kind of perception, more or less exact and precise, of the play of the forces behind. So, being in that state they are influenced by forces which otherwise have no hold over people who are shut up in themselves and more gross. And these forces--the forces of destruction, for example, or forces of cruelty, forces of wickedness, of ill-will--all, all these things are in the atmosphere. When one is more conscious and more well-formed within, one can see that they are outside oneself and deny them any expression. But when one is very young and lives in a half-dream, these things can exercise much influence and make children do things which in their normal state they [new p. 410]would not do. I believe it is due to that above all. [old p. 411

There is also the phenomenon of unconsciousness. Very often a child does harm without even being aware that it is doing harm; they are unconscious, they are shut up in their movement, and they are not aware of the effect of what they do. That happens very often.

That means that if a child is rightly educated, and if one appeals to his best feelings and explains to him that to do things in such and such a way is harmful to others (and one can make this very tangible for them with a little demonstration), they stop doing harm, very often.

It is above all a question of education. These half-conscious movements of cruelty--it is very rare for parents not to have them; well, that is enough to set its impression upon a child's consciousness. There are some--but that is a very small number--who have an adverse formation inside them. These are irretrievably wicked children. But they are very rare. There are none here, happily.