How can we understand the consciousness of children

When we are born, our consciousness is pure, unmarked by any impression of today's environment. This pure consciousness stays with us until the age of eight. In this state, consciousness is like a sponge; it simply absorbs everything. It takes in information received through the senses, through interactions, and through intellectual and emotional input. In this way, consciousness becomes conditioned for survival and existence on this material plane.

Until the age of eight, the information received by consciousness is purely intuitive. It takes in information that is non-linear, non-sequential. This is the idea behind the left and right hemispheres of the brain. We take in all information with our whole being. When we begin our schooling, a shift occurs in the pattern of consciousness, and we begin a sequential, linear process of learning. Once this sequential and linear learning process begins, our personality changes. We become fixed in certain ideas — that A comes before B, that C follows B — and understanding develops in this way. This understanding becomes very deeply entrenched, and it is here that the personality undergoes a major transformation in life.

The yogic tradition holds that the development of consciousness on every level — intuitive, spiritual, cultural, social, personal, and psychic — takes place before the age of eight, before a child actually enters the first grade of primary school. On the day we join the first grade of primary school, this development comes to a halt, and linear development begins.

The education that consciousness receives up to the age of eight is called "Samskara." Samskaras are the impressions imprinted upon consciousness. The information we receive at school after the age of eight is known as Shiksha (Learning). Samskaras are absorbed up to the eighth year of life, and Shiksha after the eighth year. Yogic traditions have always placed great emphasis on the need for Samskara, because later in life, when you grow up, when you are thirty, forty, or sixty, this is the person you will have become. You express the qualities and habits you absorbed before the age of eight. What you are today is what you were shaped into before the age of eight. What you were shaped into after the age of eight can be seen in the degrees and diplomas you keep at home and at work. That is your qualification for surviving in the world. Whatever your way of being, your nature, your mind and its reactions, your ability to cope with life's situations and deal with people — all these capacities you acquired in childhood, through that subtle education absorbed by consciousness — it is this consciousness that must be nurtured.

This is when we begin to believe that there is another mind beyond the rational mind, one we call the psychic mind, the intuitive mind, or the higher mind. When the higher mind switches on, mental faculties open up and reveal themselves. It is this very nature that must be nurtured in a child. A child's mind is free. Though they speak little, they understand a great deal. Their limitation lies in not yet being able to express themselves; yet their mental frequencies are far higher than the predefined frequencies of adults.

Ordinary consciousness is divided into four states: Jagrat (waking); Swapna (dreaming); Nidra (dreamless sleep); and Turiya (awakened spirituality). Children's consciousness, however, functions at a different level, an intuitive level, up until the age of eight. This is why the classification is different for children. There is Turiya-Jagrat (intuitive and awake); Turiya-Swapna (intuitive and dreaming); Turiya-Nidra (intuitive and in dreamless sleep); and Turiya-Turiya (intuitive and creative).

Christ also said that to enter the kingdom of heaven, you must become like a child.

Piyush Mittal

Institute of Yoga and Ayurveda

Source: On the Wings of a Swan, part VI

Photos used in this article: source Internet