April 18, 2012 – The Greatest Obstacle: Hypocrisy

God is a great and cruel Torturer because He loves.
You do not understand this,
because you have not seen and played with Krishna.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 28)

The Greatest Obstacle: Hypocrisy

Now I am addressing parents and teachers, for it is very important to teach children that it is absolutely useless to ‘look’ as if they were good, to ‘look’ as if they were obedient, to ‘look’ as if they were studying well, etc. Very often, the course parents and teachers adopt with their children is to encourage them to ‘look as if’. It often happens that if a child spontaneously confesses his mistake, he is given a scolding. This is one of the greatest mistakes of parents. You must have sufficient control over yourself never to scold a child, even if he has broken a very valuable and cherished object. You should simply ask him, ‘How did you do that?’ ‘What happened?’ For the child ought to see why it happened, so that he can be more careful next time. But that is all. In this way you will get the child to be sincere with you instead of trying to deceive you.

The greatest obstacle to the transformation of one’s own character is hypocrisy. If you always keep this in mind when dealing with a child, you can do him a lot of good.

The Mother

The Great Adventure pg 14