2018 (35c) :Montessori , Winnicott , Derrida , Montessori , Winnicott , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Montessori , Winnicott , I Ching , Montessori , Winnicott , John Ashbery , Montessori , Winnicott

Each type and especially every animal form of life
has a special irresistible way of conducting its life which
shows that their actions are directed by a special form
of psyche. If we were to leave the strictly scientific field
we might say that there is a psychic director who dis-
tributes all the activities upon the earth using different
types of life to do so. In other words today life is con-
sidered as a great energy, one of the energies of cosmic
creation. Therefore, why should it surprise us when
people state that the new-born child is endowed with
psychic life ? Indeed if it were not so, how could it
be alive? (Montessori)

Diana, Aged Five Years : I had to conduct
two consultations in parallel, one with the mother, who
was in distress, and a play relationship with the daughter
Diana. She had a little brother (at home) who was mentally
defective and who had a congenital deformity of the heart. The
mother came to discuss the effect of this brother on herself and
on her daughter Diana. (Winnicott)

Why do I now underscore that expression: “what is happening?” Because
for me this belongs to the order of the absolutely unforeseeable, which
is always the condition of any event. Even when it seems to go back to
a buried past, what comes about always comes from the future. And it
is especially about the future that I will be talking. Something happens
only on the condition that one is not expecting it. Here of course I am
speaking the language of consciousness. But there would also be no event
identifiable as such if some repetition did not come along to cushion the
surprise by preparing its effect on the basis of some experience of the
unconscious. If the word “unconscious” has any meaning, then it stems
from this necessity. (Derrida)

This conclusion made a great impression because
previously the child had been considered void of psychic
life. Many began to study and meditate upon the fact
that the child is endowed with a psychic life even be-
fore birth. (Montessori)

My contact with the mother lasted an hour. The child was
with us all the time, and my task was a threefold one: to
give the mother full attention because of her own needs, to play
with the child, and (for the purpose of writing this paper) to
record the nature of Diana’s play.
As a matter of fact it was Diana herself who took charge from
the beginning, for as I opened the front door to let in the mother
an eager little girl presented herself, putting forward a small
teddy. I did not look at her mother or at her, but I went straight
for the teddy and said: ‘What’s his name?’ She said: ‘Just Teddy.’
So a strong relationship between Diana and myself had quickly
developed, and I needed to keep this going in order to do my
main job, which was to meet the needs of the mother. In the
consulting-room Diana needed all the time, naturally, to feel
that she had my attention, but it was possible for me to give the
mother the attention she needed and to play with Diana too. (Winnicott)

The tangle which is entirely below the level of consciousness can be set right by being with yourself, the ‘I am’, by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

If one is endowed with psychic life, one receives
impressions and at birth a great shock must be felt by
the child. This is a new point which makes thinkers
dwell upon the drama of birth, the fact of a psychic life,
of a living being thrown all of a sudden from one environ-
ment into another vastly different. This sudden change
of environment is even more impressive when one
considers the condition of the child at birth. The new-
born child is not fully developed and indeed the more
people study it, the more they realize how incomplete it is
even physically. Everything is unfinished. The legs
with which he will walk upon the earth and invade the
whole world are still cartilaginous. The same is true
of the cranium that encloses the brain which is in need
of a strong defence, but in the new-born child the head
is not yet ossified. Only a few of its bones are deve-
loped. More important still is the fact that the nerves
themselves are not completed so that there is a lack of
central direction and therefore a lack of unification
between the organs, so that this being, whose bones are
not yet developed, is at the same time unable to obey
the urge to move because every urge is transmitted by
nerves and they are not yet fully developed. (Montessori)

When we all three got into the consulting-room we settled
down, the mother sitting on the couch, Diana having a small
chair to herself near the child table. Diana took her small teddy
bear and stuffed it into my breast pocket. She tried to see how
far it would go down, and examined the lining of my jacket, and
from this she became interested in the various pockets and the
way that they did not communicate with each other. This was
happening while the mother and I were talking seriously about
the backward child of two and a half, and Diana gave the
additional information: ‘He has a hole in his heart.’ One could
say that while playing she was listening with one ear. It seemed
to me that she was able to accept her brother’s physical disability
due to the hole in his heart while not finding his mental
backwardness within her range. (Winnicott)

Thus also in nature a holy seriousness is to be seen in the fact that natural occurrences are uniformly subject to law. Contemplation of the divine meaning underlying the workings of the universe gives to the man who is called upon to influence others the means of producing like effects. This requires that power of inner concentration which religious contemplation develops in great men strong in faith. It enables them to apprehend the mysterious and divine laws of life, and by means of profoundest inner concentration they give expression to these laws in their own persons. Thus a hidden spiritual power emanates from them, influencing and dominating others without their being aware of how it happens. (I Ching , Hexagram 20)

So in
the human new-born, there is no movement whilst
among animals the new-born walk almost at once.
The conclusion is this : the child at birth is still in
an embryonic stage. Thus we must consider” the child
as possessing an embryonic life that extends before
and after birth. This life is interrupted, we might say,
by a great event, the great adventure of birth, by which
he plunges into a new environment. The change
in itself is terrific ; it is as though one went from the earth
to the moon. But this is not all ; in order to make this
great step the child must make a tremendous physical
effort. Generally the fact that the child goes through
so difficult an experience is not considered. When a
child is born, people think only about the mother, and how
difficult it has been for her. The child, however, passes
through a greater trial than the mother, especially if one
considers that the child is not even complete, but is never-
theless endowed with a psychic life. Let us therefore
remember that the new-born child does not possess
developed psychic faculties because he has yet to create
them, this psychic embryo, which even physically is not
complete, must create its own faculties. (Montessori)

In the playing that Diana and I did together, playing without
therapeutics in it, I felt free to be playful. Children play more
easily when the other person is able and free to be playful. I
suddenly put my ear to the teddy bear in my pocket and I said:
‘I heard him say something!’ She was very interested in this. I
said: ‘I think he wants someone to play with’, and I told her
about the woolly lamb that she would find if she looked at the
other end of the room in the mess of toys under the shelf.
Perhaps I had an ulterior motive which was to get the bear out
of my pocket. Diana went and fetched the lamb, which was
considerably bigger than the bear, and she took up my idea of
friendship between the teddy bear and the lamb. For some time
she put the teddy and the lamb together on the couch near
where the mother was sitting. I of course was continuing my
interview with the mother, and it could be noted that Diana
retained an interest in what we were saying, doing this with
some part of herself, a part that identifies with grown-ups and
grown-up attitudes. (Winnicott)

Blithely passing in and out of where, blushing shyly
at the tag on the overcoat near the window where
the outside crept away, I put aside the there and now.
Now it was time to stumble anew,
blacking out when time came in the window.
There was not much of it left.
I laughed and put my hands shyly
across your eyes. Can you see now?
Yes I can see I am only in the where
where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window.
Go presently you said. Go from my window.
I am in love with your window I cannot undermine
it, I said. (John Ashbery)

Let us then continue to reason along this line. This
being which is born, powerless, motionless, must be
endowed with a behaviour that leads it towards move-
ment. The formation of those human faculties which
do not exist and which must be created, represents a
further period of embryonic life : the psycho -embryonic
life.

This physically incomplete new-born child must
complete the complicated being who is man : he must
create man’s psychic faculties. (Montessori)

In the play Diana decided that these two creatures were her
children. She put them up under her clothes, making herself
pregnant with them. After a period of pregnancy she
announced they were going to be born, but they were ‘not
going to be twins’. She made it very evident that the lamb was
to be born first and then the teddy bear. After the birth was
complete she put her two newly born children together on a
bed which she improvised on the floor, and she covered them
up. At first she put one at one end and the other at the other
end, saying that if they were together they would fight. They
might ‘meet in the middle of the bed under the clothes and
fight’. Then she put them sleeping together peacefully, at the
top of the improvised bed. She now went and fetched a lot of
toys in a bucket and in some boxes. On the floor around the top
end of the bed she arranged the toys and played with them; the
playing was orderly and there were several different themes
that developed, each kept separate from the other. I came in
again with an idea of my own. I said: ‘Oh look! you are putting
on the floor around these babies’ heads the dreams that they
are having while they are asleep.’ This idea intrigued her and
she took it up and went on developing the various themes as if
dreaming their dreams for the babies. All this was giving the
mother and me time which we badly needed because of the
work we were doing together. Somewhere just here the mother
was crying and was very disturbed and Diana looked up for a
moment prepared to be anxious. I said to her: ‘Mother is crying
because she is thinking of your brother who is ill. This
reassured Diana because it was direct and factual, and she said
‘hole in the heart’ and then continued dreaming the babies’
dreams for them. (Winnicott)

2018 (35b) : Montessori , Winnicott , John 7:16 , Montessori , Winnicott , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Montessori , Winnicott , Bhagavad Gita , Montessori , Derrida , Winnicott , Montessori , Winnicott , Katha Upanishad , Montessori , Derrida , Winnicott , Montessori , Sri Ramana Maharshi , Derrida , Montessori , John Ashbery , Sri Ramana Maharshi

From what we have said above we can also under-
stand how the child absorbs by this type of psyche, the
customs that he finds in the land, the habits, etc., and
thus forms the individual who is typical of his race.
This * local ‘ behaviour of man, i.e., of man suited to the
special country in which he lives, is a mysterious con-
struction which takes place during childhood. It is evi-
dent that men acquire customs, habits, mentality, etc.
peculiar to their own surroundings because none of them
is natural to humanity. So we have now a fuller picture
of the work of the child. He constructs a behaviour suited
not only to the time and to the place, but also to
the mentality of the place. Here in India there is
a great respect for life, a respect which leads to venera-
tion also of animals. This cannot be acquired by
an adult person. It is not by saying : ” Oh, life must be
respected ” that this feeling is acquired. I may reason
that those people are right and feel that I also must
respect animal life, but with me it is not a sentiment, it
is reasoning. What I cannot feel is the sort of venera-
tion that some Indians feel for the cow, for instance,
whereas people who possess it can never get rid of it.
Other people have their religion and even if their mind
eventually rejects it, still at heart they feel uneasy, rest-
less. These things form part of us as we say in Europe :
they are in our blood “. The things that together
form the personality, sentiments of caste and all sorts
of other feelings that make a typical Italian, a typical
Englishman, a typical Indian, are constructed during
childhood by this mysterious sort of psychic power that
psychologists call Mneme. This is true for everything,
even for certain types of characteristic movement that
distinguish different races. There are certain people in
Africa who develop and fix qualities which are provoked
by the need of defence against wild animals. They do
certain exercises in order to render their hearing sharper.
Sharpness of hearing is one of the special characteristics
of the individual of that special tribe. In the same way
all characteristics are absorbed by the child and fixed in
the individual. There are certain religious sentiments
which remain in spite of the fact that the mind may later
on reason otherwise and reject the teachings of this
religion. Something continues in the sub-conscious,
because what has been formed by the child can never
be totally destroyed. This Mneme, which may be con-
sidered as a superior natural memory, not only creates
characteristics, but holds them alive in the individual.
The individual changes, it is true, but those things which
are formed by the child remain in the personality just
as the legs remain, so that each man has this special
character. (Montessori)

In order to give a place to playing I postulated a potential space
between the baby and the mother. This potential space varies a
very great deal according to the life experiences of the baby in
relation to the mother or mother-figure, and I contrast this
potential space (a) with the inner world (which is related to the
psychosomatic partnership) and (b) with actual, or external,
reality (which has its own dimensions, and which can be studied
objectively, and which, however much it may seem to vary
2 Miller (1963): This story does eventually tail off into a sentimental ending,
and therefore, as it seems to me, abandons the direct link with childhood
observation. according to the state of the individual who is observing it, does
in fact remain constant). (Winnicott)

My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. (John 7:16)

One would like to change individual adults. Often
we say : ” This person does not know how to behave “.
Often we call such and such a person bad-mannered.
He or she knows it, they feel humiliated, because they
recognize that they have * a bad character ‘, but the fact
is that it cannot be changed. In the same way in which
this type of psychology leads the child to the wonderful
acquisitions of civilization, to the complications and
elaborations of modern language, it also leads him to fix
in his psyche certain things which reason would like to
eliminate from the personality, but which cannot be
changed. The same phenomenon explains the adapta-
tion to, we might say, different phases of history, because,
while an adult of olden times could not adapt him*
self to modern times, the child adapts himself to the
level of civilization which he finds, no matter what
the level of that civilization may be and succeeds
in constructing a man suited to those times and those
customs. (Montessori)

I can now restate what I am trying to convey. I want to draw
attention away from the sequence psychoanalysis, psychotherapy,
play material, playing, and to set this up again the other way
round. In other words, it is play that is the universal, and that belongs
to health: playing facilitates growth and therefore health; playing
leads into group relationships; playing can be a form of communication
in psychotherapy; and, lastly, psychoanalysis has
been developed as a highly specialized form of playing in the
service of communication with oneself and others. (Winnicott)

There is the body and there is the Self, between them is the mind, in which the Self is reflected as ‘I am’. Because of the imperfections of the mind, its crudity and restlessness, lack of discernment and insight, it takes itself to be the body and not the Self. All that is needed is to purify the mind so that it can realize its identity with the Self. When the mind merges in the Self, the body presents no problems. It remains what it is, an instrument of cognition and action, the tool and the expression of the creative fire within.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

o today the child begins to be visualized as it should
be, as the connection, the joining link between different
phases of history and different levels of civilization.
Childhood is now considered by psychologists as a very
important period because they realize that if we wish to
give new ideas to the people, if we wish to alter the habits
and customs of the country, or if we wish to accentuate
more vigorously the characteristics belonging to a people,
we must take as our instrument the child, as very little
can be done by acting upon adults. If one has really
a vision of better conditions, of greater enlightenment
for people, it is only the child that one can look upon
in order to bring about the desired results (Montessori)

The natural thing is playing, and the highly sophisticated
twentieth-century phenomenon is psychoanalysis. It must be of
value to the analyst to be constantly reminded not only of what
is owed to Freud but also of what we owe to the natural and
universal thing called playing. (Winnicott)

There is no work that affects the Self/Atman; nor do I aspire for the fruits of action. One who understands this truth about the Self/Atman also does not become entangled in the fruitive reactions of work.(Bhagavad Gita)

If there
are people who think that their customs are degenerate,
or others who want to revive old ones, the only individual
with whom they can work is the child. They will never
have success with the adults. If anybody wants to
have an influence upon society, he must orientate himself
towards chilhood. In past times people tried to influence
adults. Now they have understood better and they start
schools for children because in the children the construc-
tion of humanity takes place. They construct with what
we give them. Let us suppose that a statesman wanted
to try and change the customs of his people. Strange
as it may sound, this person must take into great con-
sideration the children of his country. This has actually
happened recently among different nations. A person
set out to make warrior-like people out of those who were
very peaceful, of a loving nature. He tried with the
grown-ups, but in the end he had to take the young
children. Mussolini did so in Italy, Hitler followed suit in
Germany. The Fascist hymn begins with the words
‘ Youth, Youth ‘. This was the main trend of their policy,
to make use of the creative spirit of youth, but soon they
had to go towards even younger people and soon the
hymn should have sounded * Infancy, Infancy ‘. By
taking children of three years and younger and by
creating around them an atmosphere of enthusiasm, of
dignity, of activity, in one generation the character of the
whole people was changed. (Montessori)

Multiplicity and migration of languages, certainly, and within language itself, Babel within a single language … multiplicity within language, insignificant difference as the condition of meaning. But by the same token, the insignificance of language, of the properly linguistic body : it can only take on meaning in relation to a place. By place, I mean just as much the relation to a border, country, house, or threshold, as any site, any situation in general from within which, practically, pragmatically, alliances are formed, contracts, codes and conventions established which give meaning to the insignificant , institute passwords, bend language to what exceeds it, make of it a moment of gesture and of step, secondarize or ‘reject’ it in order to find it again. — (Derrida)

Edmund, Aged Two and a HaifYears
The mother came to consult me about herself and she brought
Edmund with her. Edmund was in my room while I was talking
to his mother, and I placed among us a table and a little chair
which he could use ifhe wished to do so. He looked serious but
not frightened or depressed. He said: ‘Where’s toys?’ This is all
he said throughout the hour. Evidently he had been told to
expect toys and I said that there were some to be found at the
other end of the room on the floor under the bookcase. (Winnicott)

The mentality we fight today was neither the original
character of the Italian people nor perhaps that of the
Germans, but by creating an atmosphere, an enthusiasm
based upon 4 our glory * around the children, these rooted
so firmly this warrior-spirit in their psyche that no matter
what disaster may fall upon the nation, this spirit will
not die. With older people one can reason, but not
with the young ones. They will fight till they are dead.
If they are defeated they will continue to fight under-
ground. And you see the different methods and how
even ordinary democracy is not the answer to our needs,
for children cannot choose a leader because they do not
understand. We cannot hold a meeting of children of
three years in order to make them understand political
idealism or to make them warriors. In order to influence
them, you must do so by means of the environment, be-
cause the child absorbs the environment, he takes every-
thing from the environment and incarnates it in himself.
He can do everything. He is really omnipotent, where-
as the adult who is already formed cannot change. So
we have in front of us a clear vision. If we wish to
change a generation, if we wish to influence it either
towards good, or evil, if we want to reawaken religion or
add culture, whatever it is that we may wish to do, we
must take the child. (Montessori)

Soon he fetched a bucketful of toys and he was playing in a
deliberate way while the consultation between the mother and
me proceeded. The mother was able to tell me the exact significant
moment at two years five months when Edmund had
started stammering, after which he gave up talking ‘because
the stammer frightened him’. While she and I were going
PLAYING: A THEORETICAL STATEMENT 57
through with a consultation situation about herself and about
him, Edmund placed some small train parts on the table and
was arranging them and making them join up and relate. He
was only two feet away from his mother. Soon he got onto her
lap and had a short spell as a baby. She responded naturally
and adequately. Then he got down spontaneously and took up
playing again at the table. All this happened while his mother
and I were heavily engaged in deep conversation. (Winnicott)

‘When the knot of the heart is cut, mortal becomes immortal. This is the law.
‘The heart has a hundred and one arteries; one of ‘The heart has a hundred and one arteries; one of these—Sushumna—goes up into the head. He who climbs through it attains immortality. (Katha Upanishad)

The power of the psyche is something parallel to what
has been discovered in the embryo. By action upon the
embryo, you can either make a monster or a more
perfect being. Indeed, experiments have been made by
transfering the sanglion and arms have been made to
develop on the back. But in an adult, one could not do
it. It is the same here for the psyche. You cannot create
man, but you can make him more perfect by acting upon
the psychic embryo. This gives great power to the
adults and to education because it confers control over
psychic growth and psychic development. This power is
immense if we compare it to the power society has had
when it acted merely upon the adult. The child gives us
a new hope and a new vision. Perhaps a great many
modifications which would bring more understanding,
greater welfare, greater spirituality can be brought about
in the future humanity. (Montessori)

This disadjustrnent will no doubt never end. Doubtless it will reverse itself, and we’ll have the revolution within the revolution, the future revolution that, without mourning, wins out over the past revolution: it will finally be the event, the advent of the event, the coming of the future-to-come. (Derrida)

After about twenty minutes Edmund began to liven up, and
he went to the other end of the room for a fresh supply of toys.
Out of the muddle there he brought a tangle of string. The
mother (undoubtedly affected by his choice of string, but not
conscious of the symbolism) made the remark: At his most
non-verbal Edmund is most clinging, needing contact with my
actual breast, and needing my actual lap.’ At the time when the
stammer began he had been starting to comply, but he had
reverted to incontinence along with the stammer, and this was
followed by abandonment of talking. He was beginning to
cooperate again at about the time of the consultation. The
mother saw this as being part of a recovery from a setback in
his development.
By taking notice of Edmund’s playing I was able to maintain
communication with the mother. (Winnicott)

LET us repeat again that the child at birth is endowed
with psychic life. If this be so, this psychic life may not
have begun then. If it exist, it may already have been
built, otherwise how could it be there ? Also in the
embryo there may be psychic life. When one conceives
this idea, one wonders at what period of embryonic life
the psychic life begins. Let us consider certain cases.
We know there are occasions when a child is born at 7
instead of at 9 months and at 7 months the child is
already so complete that it can live. Therefore its
psychic life is capable of functioning like that of the child
who is born at 9 months. I do not want to insist upon
this question, but this example will suffice to illustrate
what I mean when I postulate that all life is psychic life,
and that even as an embryo the child is endowed with a
psyche. As a matter of fact, each type of life has a
specific quantity of psychic energy, a specific kind of
individual psyche, no matter how primitive the form of
life is.(Montessori)

Truly there is no cause for you to be miserable and unhappy. You yourself impose limitations on your true nature of infinite being, and then weep that you are but a finite creature. Then you take up this or that spiritual practice to transcend the non-existent limitations. But if your spiritual practice itself assumes the existence of the limitations, how can it help you to transcend them?
(Sri Ramana Maharshi)

Repetition and first time: this is perhaps the question of the event
as question of the ghost. What is a ghost? What is the effectivity or
the presence of a specter, that is, of what seems to remain as ineffective,
virtual. insubstantial as a simulacrum? Is there there, between the thing itself and its simulacrum, an opposition that holds up? Repetition and first time, but also repetition and last time, since the Singularity of any first time, makes of it also a last time. Each time it is the event itself, a first time is a last time. Altogether other. Staging for the end of history. Let us call it a
hauntology. (Derrida)

Even if we consider unicellular beings, we find
that there is a kind of psyche, they move away from
danger, towards food, etc. To give an example, there is
a unicellular being which is called the little vampire of
the spirogyra. This little being, out of all the plants in
the water, feeds upon a special weed. In order to do this
it must have a specific psychic individuality which makes
it choose this plant. It must, in other words, be endowed
with a specific behaviour. (Montessori)

Sublime receptivity to anything, can disentangle the whole

Lining of fabricating living from the instantaneous

Pocket it explodes in, enters the limelight of history from,

To be gilded and regilded, waning as its legend waxes,

Disproportionate and triumphant. Still I enjoy

The long sweetness of the simultaneity, yours and mine, ours and mine,

The mosquitoey summer night light. Now about your poem

Called this poem: it stays and must outshine its welcome.

(John Ashbery)

Hence I say know that you are really the infinite pure being, the Self/Atman. You are always that Self/Atman and nothing but that Self/Atman. Therefore, you can never be really ignorant of the Self/Atman. Your ignorance is merely an imaginary ignorance, like the ignorance of the ten fools about the lost tenth man. It is this ignorance that caused them grief.

Know then that true knowledge does not create a new being for you, it only removes your ignorant ignorance. Bliss is not added to your nature, it is merely revealed as your true natural state, eternal and imperishable. The only way to be rid of your grief is to know and be the Self. (Sri Ramana Maharshi)

–

2018 (35a) : Derrida

So, this non-knowing . . . it is not a limit . . . of a knowledge, the limit in the progression of a knowledge. It is, in some way, a structural non-knowing, which is heterogeneous, foreign to knowledge. It’s not just the unknown that could be known and that I give up trying to know. It is something in relation to which knowledge is out of the question. And when I specify that is is a non-knowing and not the secret, I mean that when a text appears to be crypted, it is not at all in order to calculate or to intrigue or to bar access to something that I know and that others must not know; it is a more ancient, more originary experience, if you will, of the secret. It is not a thing, some information that I am hiding or that one has to hide or dissimulate; it is rather an experience that does not make itself available to information, that resists information and knowledge, and that immediately encrypts itself. That is what I try to underscore about Celan, who is supposed to be a difficult and cryptic poet, for example, in the way in which he arranges dates, allusions to experiences he has had, and so forth, with all the problems of decipherment that this supposes . . . What I suggested is that he didn’t do it out of calculation, in order to put generations of academics to work looking for the keys to a text. It is the experience of writing and language that is involved in this crypt, in this cryptics.” — Derrida

“Multiplicity and migration of languages, certainly, and within language itself, Babel within a single language … multiplicity within language, insignificant difference as the condition of meaning. But by the same token, the insignificance of language, of the properly linguistic body : it can only take on meaning in relation to a place. By place, I mean just as much the relation to a border, country, house, or threshold, as any site, any situation in general from within which, practically, pragmatically, alliances are formed, contracts, codes and conventions established which give meaning to the insignificant , institute passwords, bend language to what exceeds it, make of it a moment of gesture and of step, secondarize or ‘reject’ it in order to find it again.” — Derrida

This disadjustrnent will no doubt never end. Doubtless it will reverse itself, and we’ll have the revolution within the revolution, the future revolution that, without mourning, wins out over the past revolution: it will finally be the event, the advent of the event, the coming of the future-to-come

Repetition and first time: this is perhaps the question of the event
as question of the ghost. What is a ghost? What is the effectivity or
the presence of a specter, that is, of what seems to remain as ineffective,
virtual. insubstantial as a simulacrum? Is there there, between the thing itself and its simulacrum, an opposition that holds up? Repetition and first time, but also repetition and last time, since the Singularity of any first time, makes of it also a last time. Each time it is the event itself, a first time is a last time.
Altogether other. Staging for the end of history. Let us call it a
hauntology. (Derrida)

Why do I now underscore that expression: “what is happening?” Because
for me this belongs to the order of the absolutely unforeseeable, which
is always the condition of any event. Even when it seems to go back to
a buried past, what comes about always comes from the future. And it
is especially about the future that I will be talking. Something happens
only on the condition that one is not expecting it. Here of course I am
speaking the language of consciousness. But there would also be no event
identifiable as such if some repetition did not come along to cushion the
surprise by preparing its effect on the basis of some experience of the
unconscious. If the word “unconscious” has any meaning, then it stems
from this necessity

To protect its life, to constitute itself as unique living ego, to
relate, as the same, to itself ( it is necessarily led to welcome the other within (so many figures of death: differance of the technical apparatus, iterability, non-uniqueness, prosthesis, synthetic image, simulacrum, all of which begins with language, before language), it must therefore take the immune defenses apparently meant for the non-ego, the enemy, the opposite, the adversary and direct them at once for itself and against itself. (Derrida)

not toward death but toward a living-on [sur-vie], namely, a trace of which life and death would themselves be but traces and traces of traces, a survival whose possibility in advance comes to disjoin or dis-adjust the identity to itself of the living present as well as of any effectivity. There is then some spirit. Spirits. And one must reckon with them. One cannot not have to, one must not
not be able to reckon with them, which are more than one: the more than one/no more one [Ie plus d’un]. (Derrida)

Such difference without presence appears, or rather baffles the process of appearing, by disclosing any orderly time at the center of the present. The present is no longer a mother-form around which are gathered and differentiated the future (present) and the past (present). What is marked in this hymen between the future (desire) and the present (fulfillment), between the past (remembrance) and the present (perpetration), between the capacity and the act, etc., is only a series of temporal differences without any central present, without a present of which the past and future would be but modifications. Can we then go on speaking about time, tenses, and temporal differences? … (Derrida)

by a kind of spacing that punctuates it … if thought belongs from the beginning to no one … blended into the continuum of something always – already – there … the origin is suspended by this multiple punctuation … moving again … (Derrida)

There must be event—and therefore appeal to narrative and event
of narrative—for there to be gift, and there must be gift or phenomenon
of gift for there to be narrative and history…How is one to behave with regard to this originary productivity,and this event, event of chance and necessity of donating nature? That is the question …

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Now, when we study the human kind and compare
it with the animal kind, we find some differences and an
important one is that the human kind has not had allotted
to it a special kind of movement or a special kind of re-
sidence. Certainly, it is a facilitation of life to have one’s
task assigned by nature. The study of nature shows, how-
ever, that there is no animal which is as capable as man
to adapt itself to any climate or to any place upon this
earth. We find man in frozen lands where certain animals
such as tigers or elephants cannot live. Yet if you look in
the jungle where elephants and tigers are to be found there
man can also be found. Man can be found even in
deserts. So we can see that man has been allotted no fixed
place. He can adapt himself and can live in any part of
the world, for he is destined to invade every part of the
world. Let us say then that because of this adaptability,
man is the only being who is free to go wherever he likes
upon this earth. (Montessori)

For me the meaning of playing has taken on a new colour since I
have followed up the theme of transitional phenomena, tracing
these in all their subtle developments right from the early use of
a transitional object or technique to the ultimate stages of a
human being’s capacity for cultural experience. (Winnicott)

ask the tender

cloud

(William Blake)

If we look at the behaviour of animals, we find that
this behaviour is expressed in their movements, which
stand in relation to the work that they carry out, whereas
man has no special movements. Man is capable of the
most varied movements which he can acquire very
rapidly and very perfectly. Also man can do certain
things which no animal has ever been able to do or will
ever be able to do. Man has done them from his first
appearance upon the earth : he works with his hands.
T[here is no limit to man’s behaviour. Each animal, for
instance, has one language. If we take for example an
English dog, it will bark in the same fashion as a dog in
America. But if we take a Tamilian and bring him to
Italy, he will not understand the language there and the
Italians will not understand him. Mankind has the most
varied languages. The same can be said for movements :
man can walk, run, jump and crawl also. Like the fish
man can swim. Birds can fly. Man can fly better than
birds. Not only this, man is capable of artificial move-
ments such as dancing. (Montessori)

Yet one does know why. The covenant we entered
Bears down on us, some are ensnared, and the right way,
It turns out, is the one that goes straight through the house
And out the back. By so many systems
As we are involved in, by just so many
Are we set free on an ocean of language that comes to be
Part of us, as though we would ever get away .
The sky is very bright and very wide, and the waves talk to us,
Preparing dreams we’ll have to live with and us
(John Ashbery)

Each animal has but one sort of movement. Man
has a great variety of movements. So his behaviour is not
fixed like that of the animals. Another thing is also
certain. In the child none of these abilities we have
mentioned are present. So we can conclude that though
it is true that the abilities of man are infinite, each has to
be acquired by the human individual during childhood.
It is by an active conquest, by work, that he acquires
language. He who is born without movement, who is
born almost paralysed, by means of exercise can learn to
walk, to run and to climb like any animal. But all these
capabilities he must acquire by his own effort. Every-
thing must be conquered by him. Whatever abilities man
possesses, there must have been a child who conquered
them. So we might say that the values of man have their
beginning in the work of the child. (Montessori)

I think it is not out of place to draw attention here to the
generosity that has been shown in psychoanalytic circles and in
the general psychiatric world in respect of my description of
transitional phenomena. I am interested in the fact that right
through the field of child care this idea has caught on, and
sometimes I feel that I have been given more than my due
reward in this area. What I called transitional phenomena are
universal and it was simply a matter of drawing attention to
them and to their potential for use in the building of theory.
Wulff (1946) had already, as I discovered, written about fetish
objects employed by babies or children, and I know that in Anna
Freud’s psychotherapy clinic these objects have been observed
with small children. I have heard Anna Freud speak of the use of
the talisman, a closely allied phenomenon. (Winnicott)

The solution is found in the child, whom we can call
the instrument of the adaptability of humanity. The child
whom we saw born without any special movement, not
only acquires all the human faculties, but also adapts the
being that it constructs to the conditions in his environ-
ment. And this takes place because of the special
psychic form of the child, for the child’s psychic form is
different from that of the adult. Psychologists today
show great interest in the study of this different form of
psychology. The child stands in a different relationship
to the environment. We may admire an environment.
We may remember an environment, but the child absorbs
it into himself. He does not remember the things that he
sees, but he forms with these things part of his psyche.
He incarnates in himself the things which he sees and
hears i.e., in us there is no change, in the child transfor-
mations take place. We merely remember an environment
while the child adapts himself to it. This special kind of
vital memory, that does not remember consciously, but
absorbs images into the very life of the individual has
received from the psychologists a special name : they
have called it Mneme. (Montessori)

… water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:14)

In the chapter on cultural experience and its location
(Chapter 7) I make my idea of play concrete by claiming that
playing has a place and a time. It is not inside by any use of the word
(and it is unfortunately true that the word inside has very many
and various uses in psychoanalytic discussion). Nor is it outside,
that is to say, it is not a part of the repudiated world, the not-me,
that which the individual has decided to recognize (with whatever
difficulty and even pain) as truly external, which is outside
magical control. To control what is outside one has to do things,
not simply to think or to wish, and doing things takes time. Playing
is doing. (Winnicott)

Each of us stands and surveys this empty cell of time. Well,

What is there to do? And so a mysterious creeping motion

Quickens its demonic profile, bringing tears, to the eyes at least,

Tears of excitement. When was the last time you KNEW that?

(John Ashbery)

We have an example of this in language. The child
does not remember the sounds of language. The child
incarnates these sounds and he can pronounce them
better than anybody else. He speaks the language
according to all its complicated rules and all its exceptions,
not because he studies and remembers it by means
of ordinary memory, perhaps his memory never takes
it consciously. Yet this language forms a part of his
psyche, forms a part of him. This is a phenomenon
different from mere mnemonic activity. It is a psychic
feature that characterizes an aspect of the child’s psychic
personality. (Montessori)

Since these concepts are indispensable for unsettling the heritage to
which they belong, we should be even less prone to renounce them. Within
the closure, by an oblique and always perilous movement, constantly risking
falling back within what is being deconstructed, it is necessary to
surround the critical concepts with a careful and thorough discourse-to
mark the conditions, the medium, and the limits of their effectiveness and
to designate rigorously their intimate relationship to the machine whose
deconstruction they permit; and, in the same process, designate the crevice
through which the yet unnameable glimmer beyond the closure can be
glimpsed. (Derrida)

There is in the child an absorbent sensitivity towards
whatever is in his surroundings. And it is by beholding
and absorbing the environment that one becomes adapted
to it. This faculty reveals a subconscious power that is
only found in the child. (Montessori)

There must be love in the relation between the person who says ‘I am’ and the observer of the ‘I am’… It is only when the observer (‘vyakta’) accepts the person (‘vyakti’) as a projection or manifestation of himself, and so to say, takes the self into the Self, the duality of ‘I’ and ‘this’ goes and the identity of the outer and the inner, the Supreme Reality manifests itself.

(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

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We thought that she gave us milk and manure and
nothing else. At the most we may have thought that
the cow is an example of patience. But much more
does humanity owe to the cow. It is something which
has been ignored by humanity at large, but which has
been felt by the subconscious mind in India, where the
cow is worshipped. It is the upkeep of the earth, the
life of other plants that we owe to the cow. The
patience she has is more than the superficial patience
that we admire. It is the patience of generations and
generations. (Montessori)

When I come to state my thesis I find, as so often, that it is
very simple, and that not many words are needed to cover the
subject. Psychotherapy takes place in the overlap of two areas of playing,
that of the patient and that of the therapist. Psychotherapy has to do with
two people playing together. The corollary of this is that where playing is not
possible then the work done by the therapist is directed towards bringing
the patient from a state of not being able to play into a state of being able
to play. (Winnicott)

Now f if the cow were conscious, she would be consci-
ous merely of the fact that she is hungry, that she likes
grass, just as in India the people like chapatis, rice and
curry and other people like something else. But certainly
the cow will never realize, will never think, will never be
conscious of the fact that she is an agriculturist. Yet the
behaviour of the cow is just such as to help nature in its
work of agriculture. (Montessori)

A module for the wind, something in which you lose yourself
And are not lost, and then it pleases you to play another day
When outside conditions have changed and only the game
Is fast, perplexed and true, as it comes to have seemed.(John Ashbery)

Now, let us take the example of crows and vultures
who eat the refuse of nature. Why, with the abundance
of food there is in the world, should the vultures eat rotten
carcases and the crows excrements and whatever dirt they
find in the environment > They have wings. They can
and do fly long distances in search of their food. So
it would not be difficuft for them to find somethiing
more appetizing, such as other animals less endowed
with strength and the possibility of movement do find.
But can you imagine the amount of mortality there would
be if this refuse were not removed from the earth ?
What an amount of illness, of plague and other diseases of
all kinds would there be, if there were not some instrument
whose only task in life is to keep the environment clean ?
They have by nature been allotted the task of cleaning
the environment. Tell me what is the difference between
the mass of workers that in Ahmedabad go back after
their work, streaming from the mills towards their homes,
and the hundreds of crows we see flying back at dusk
towards their roost, after having done their work of
cleaning and sweeping ? This is their behaviour.
(Montessori)

Neither ordinary, nor extra-ordinary. Just being aware and affectionate — intensely. He looks at himself without indulging in self-definitions and self-identifications. He does not know himself as anything apart from the world. He is the world. He is completely rid of himself, like a man who is very rich, but continually gives away his riches. He is not rich, for he has nothing; he is not poor, for he gives abundantly. He is just propertyless. Similarly, the realised man is egoless; he has lost the capacity of identifying himself with anything. He is without location, placeless, beyond space and time, beyond the world. Beyond words and thoughts is he. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

We might conclude that animals have no
free choice of food. They do not eat merely to satisfy
themselves. They eat to fulfil a mission upon the earth,
the mission which is prescribed for them by their behavi-
our. Certain it is that all these animals are benefactors
of nature and the benefactors of all other living beings.
They work to preserve the harmony of creation. They
work out creation, because creation is achieved by the
collaboration of all the living and non-living beings. And
these two do their part in it by their behaviour. Other
animals there are which eat in such tremendous quantity
that it cannot be explained merely on the ground of the
upkeep of life. They do not eat in order to keep them-
selves alive. They keep alive in order to eat, for instance,
the earth-worms. They eat only earth, although there is so
much choice of foods. These earthworms eat daily a
quantity of food which is 200 times the volume of their
body. This is measured by their droppings. This is a
species of being that does not eat in order to keep alive,
especially when one considers the amount of other better
food there is at its disposal. The worm is a worker of
the earth. It was Darwin himself who first said that
without the worms the earth would be less productive.
The worms render the earth fertile. So there are forms
of body or details of the body which go beyond the
direct advantage of the individual. (Montessori)

Although I am not attempting to review the literature I do
wish to pay tribute to the work of Milner (1952,1957,1969),
who has written brilliantly on the subject of symbol-formation.
However, I shall not let her deep comprehensive study stop me
from drawing attention to the subject of playing in my own
words. Milner (1952) relates children’s playing to concentration
in adults:
‘When I began to see … that this use of me might be not only
a defensive regression, but an essential recurrent phase of a
creative relation to the world .. .’
Milner was referring to a ‘prelogical fusion of subject and object’. I am
trying to distinguish between this fusion and the fusion or
defusion of the subjective object and the object objectively
perceived. 1 I believe that what I am attempting to do is also
inherent in the material of Milner’s contribution. Here is
another of her statements:
‘Moments when the original poet in each of us created the
outside world for us, by finding the familiar in the unfamiliar,
are perhaps forgotten by most people; or else they are guarded
in some secret place of memory because they were too much
like visitations ofof the gods to be mixed with everyday thinking’
(Milner, 1957). (Winnicott)

Take the bees. They come out in hot weather.
They are covered with a sort of fur or a sort of yellow
and black velvet. This fur is not necessary in a hot
country, but it collects the pollen from flowers which the
bee itself does not use. This pollen, however, is useful
to other flowers to which it is brought by them and which
are thus fertilized. So the work of the bee is not useful
to itself alone, it is useful for the propagation of plants so
that one might say that this fur has been developed by the
bees for the propagation of plants, not for themselves. Don’t
you begin to see in this behaviour that animals sacrifice
themselves for the welfare of other types of life, instead
of trying to eat as much as possible merely for their own
existence or upkeep ? The more one studies the behaviour
of animals and of plants, the more clearly one sees that
they have a task to perform for the welfare of the whole.
(Montessori)

Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink”. (John 4:7)

There are certain unicellular animals which live in
the ocean and drink such an enormous quantity of water
that if they were calculated to the proportion of man, they
would need to drink a gallon of water per second during
their whole life. Certainly one could call this intemper-
ance, for these animals cannot do it to satisfy their thirst.
It is not a vice, however, it is rather like a virtue. They
must work at high speed because their task is to filter all
the water of the ocean, to eliminate from it certain salts
which would be a terrible poison for all the other in-
habitants of the ocean. (Montessori)

Whatever I say about children playing really applies to adults
as well, only the matter is more difficult to describe when the
patient’s material appears mainly in terms of verbal communication.
I suggest that we must expect to find playing just as evident
in the analyses of adults as it is in the case of our work with
children. It manifests itself, for instance, in the choice of words,
in the inflections of the voice, and indeed in the sense of humour.
(Winnicott)

So the more one studies the functions of these
animals, the more one finds, that these functions are
not for the upkeep of the animal’s body only, but
that all give their contribution to the harmony of the
whole. Let us say then that these animals are not
merely inhabitants of the earth : they are the con-
structors and workers of this earth, they keep it going.
This is the vision given by these new discoveries. Once
given this light, by studying the geological epochs of
the past, we find testimony of similar work carried out by
animals which are now extinct. There has always been
this relation between the animals and the earth, of the
animals between themselves and between the animals
and the vegetation. (Montessori)

Even a man of knowledge acts according to his own nature, for everyone follows his nature. What can repression accomplish? (Bhagavad Gita)

A fundamental study today is to consider the task
of each upon this earth. Behaviour does not merely
fulfil the desire to continue to live. It serves a task which
evidently remains unknown and unconscious to the
being, because it does not form part of what one might
wish. If animals were to become self-conscious, they
would be conscious of their habits, of the beauty of the
places in which they live, but certainly the corals would
never realize or understand that they are the builders
of the world, nor would the worms which fertilize the
earth consider themselves agriculturists, nor would others
consider themselves the purifiers of the environment and
so forth. The purpose which places the animals in
relation to the earth and its upkeep would never enter
their consciousness. Yet life and its relation with the
surface of the earth, the purity of the air, the purity of
water are dependent upon these tasks. So there is
another force which is not the force of the desire for
survival, but a force which harmonizes all the tasks. Let
us say that each one is important, not because it is
beautiful, or because it has succeeded in the struggle for
existence, but because it carries out tasks which are useful
to the whole and the effort of each is to try and reach
the place allotted to it and the task which it is to fulfil.
That is why we said that there was a pre-established
plan, and that the organs were formed to fulfil this plan.
This pre-established plan puts the animals in relation
with the task that they have to accomplish upon the
earth. Nor is the purpose of life to perfect oneself, nor
only to evolve. The purpose of life is to obey the
hidden command which ensures harmony among all and
creates an ever better world. We are not created only
to enjoy the world, we are created in order to evolve the
cosmos. Today the influence of the existence of a cosmic
plan is gradually changing the theory of the linear evo-
lution of past times. (Montessori)

The archivist produces more archive, and that is why the archive is never closed. It opens out of the future.How can we think about this fatal repetition, about repetition in general in its relationship to memory and the archive? It is easy to perceive, if not to interpret, the necessity of such a relationship, at least if one associates the archive, as naturally one is always tempted to do, with repetition, and repetition with the past. But it is the future which is at issue here, and the archive as an irreducible experience of the future.(Derrida)

THE vision given by the theory of behaviourism shows
how each animal species has a task to perform upon the
environment and the individuals belonging to that species
faithfully carry out the task which has been allotted to
them, although they live and function independently from
those who have generated them. We may have the
impression that animals are free, that they have a free
choice and that they struggle with others to have the
upper hand. If we look more closely, we see that their
freedom is merely to carry out what is in the behaviour
of each and each one moves according to the dictates of
this behaviour. We see certain animals that proceed by
running, other animals by skipping, others by walking
slowly and sedately, others by crawling and so forth. If
we observe more closely still we find that each species
has a task assigned at a different level in the environment,
so that certain animals live upon the plains, others live
upon the hills, others live upon the mountains, some live
in frozen lands and others in torrid zones. (Montessori)

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we are better able to help the psychic development of
the child if we know when these sensitive periods occur.
People say : ” What about the previous generations ?
How did they develop into healthy and strong beings if
they did not know about them ? ” It is true that humanity
did not scientifically know the sensitive periods, but in
previous civilizations mothers applied an instinctive treat-
ment of their children which enabled them if not to
second the needs of a sensitive period at least not to
disturb it too much. Nature which in its plan has devised
the sensitive periods so as to achieve the construction of
the psychic organs has also put an instinct in mothers
that guides them to give protection. And when one
studies the simply living mothers in the treatment of their
children, then one understands how well mothers of
past generations must have aided the development of
their children and how well they seconded the special
sensitivities. It is in the sentiments that nature
has put in the hearts of parents that the reason is
to be found for the spiritual strength of previous
generations. (Montessori)

Naturally one turns to the work of Melanie Klein (1932), but I suggest that
in her writings Klein, in so far as she was concerned with play, was
concerned almost entirely with the use of play. The therapist is reaching for
the child’s communication and knows that the child does not usually possess
the command of language that can convey the infinite subtleties that are to be
found in play by those who seek. (Winnicott)

From our perception of the world there follows acceptance of a unique First Principle possessing various powers. Pictures of name and form, the person who sees, the screen on which he sees, and the light by which he sees: he himself is all of these. (Sri Ramana Maharshi)

Today, on account of civilization, mothers have lost
this instinct. Humanity is headed towards degeneration.
That is why it is as important to study the maternal
instinct as it is to study the phases of the natural develop-
ment of children. In the past the mother not only gave
physical life, not only the first nourishment, but she also
gave protection to growth as other mothers belonging
to animal species give it even today. And if today in
humanity the maternal instincts tend to disappear as they
do, then a very real danger looms ahead of humanity. (Montessori)

For me the meaning of playing has taken on a new colour since I have
followed up the theme of transitional phenomena, tracing these in all their
subtle developments right fromthe early use of a transitional object or
technique to the ultimate stages of a human being’s capacity for cultural
experience. (Winnicott)

Today, we are face to face with the great practical
problem that mothers must co-operate and science must
find some way of aiding and protecting the psychic
development of the child as it has found a way of
protecting the physical development. The artificial
life of the West has deprived most children of their
mother’s milk and the children would have starved if
science had not intervened and supplied the child with
some other sort of physical nourishment. In the psychic
field, maternal love is a force, it is one of the forces of
nature. This must receive today the attention of science,
science must enlighten the mothers by means of the dis-
coveries made in the field of the psyche of the children
so that henceforth mothers can help consciously instead
of unconsciously. (Montessori)

But at the same time, at once for strategic reasons and because the conditions of archivization implicate all the tensions, contradictions, or aporias we are trying to formalize here, notably those which make of it a movement of the promise and of the future no less than of recording the past, the concept of the archive must inevitably carry in itself, as does every concept, an unknowable weight. The presupposition of this weight also takes on the figures of “repression” and “suppression,” even if it can not necessarily be reduced to these. This double presupposition leaves an imprint. It inscribes an impression in language and in discourse. The unknowable weight which imprints itself thus does not weigh only as a negative charge. It involves the history of the concept, it inflects archive desire or fever, their opening on the future, their dependency with respect to what will come, in short, all that ties knowledge and memory to the promise. (Derrida)

Now that circumstances no longer
give free play to instincts in the mother, a consciousness
of the child’s needs must be given to her. Education
must come to the rescue and give mothers this knowledge.
Education that starts from birth means to give a conscious
protection to the psychic needs of the children. It is
certain that in this effort to give protection to the psychic
needs of the children, the mothers must be the first to be
invited and interested. And if the life of today has
become so artificial that the child cannot achieve its
development, then society must create institutions which
will fulfil the needs of the children. (Montessori)

In the chapter on cultural experience and its location (Chapter 7) I make
my idea of play concrete by claiming that playing has a place and a time. It is
not inside by any use of the word (and it is unfortunately true that the word
inside has very many and various uses in psychoanalytic discussion). Nor is it
outside, that is to say, it is not a part of the repudiated world, the not-me, that which the individual has decided to recognize (with whatever difficulty and
even pain) as truly external, which is outside magical control. To control
what is outside one has to do things, not simply to think or to wish, and doing
things takes time. Playing is doing. (Winnicott)

Your mind projects a structure and you identify yourself with it. It is in the nature of desire to prompt the mind to create a world for its fulfilment. Even a small desire can start a long line of action; what about a strong desire? Desire can produce a universe; its powers are miraculous. Just as a small matchstick can set a huge forest on fire, so does a desire light the fires of manifestation. The very purpose of creation is the fulfilment of desire. The desire may be noble, or ignoble, space (akash) is neutral — one can fill it with what one likes: You must be very careful as to what you desire. And as to the people you want to help, they are in their respective worlds for the sake of
their desires; there is no way of helping them except through their desires.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

When should schools
begin ? We started from 3, then we went to 3, then 22. Now the children of one year are brought to
school. But education meant to give protection to life,
must reach further down until it includes the new-born
child. THIS passing from a cell to a complete organ is some-
thing which is incomprehensible, but it is a fact. It does
exist, but it is so marvellous that no one can understand
it and if one reads the modern scientific books upon
this subject, one finds a word used which before was
anathema to scientists. It is the word * miracle ‘. Be-
cause though it is something that happens continuously,
nevertheless it is miraculous and wonder at this miracle
is felt just the same.(Montessori)

In order to give a place to playing I postulated a potential space between
the baby and the mother. This potential space varies a very great deal
according to the life experiences of the baby in relation to the mother or
mother-figure, and I contrast this potential space (a) with the inner world
(which is related to the psychosomatic partnership) and (b) with actual, or
external, reality (which has its own dimensions, and which can be studied
objectively, and which, however much it may seemto vary according to the
state of the individual who is observing it, does in fact remain constant).
(Winnicott)

All this came to pass eons ago.

Your program worked out perfectly. You even avoided

The monotony of perfection by leaving in certain flaws:

a backward way of becoming, a forced handshake.

An absent-minded smile, though in fact nothing was left to chance.

Each detail was startlingly clear, as though seen through a magnifying

glass,

Or would have been to an ideal observer, namely yourself (John Ashbery)

This is really science. Yet if one stops to think
what this implies, one realises how mystic this dry scienti-
fic statement sounds, for this cell is so tiny as to be
almost invisible, yet it contains within itself the heredity
of all times. In this little speck, there is the whole ex-
perience, the whole history of the human kind. Before
any apparent change is visible in the primitive cell, already
a combination among these genes has taken place. They
have already arranged themselves to determine exactly
the form of the nose f the colour of the eyes etc. of the
being that will result from this primitive cell. Not all the
genes are employed in the formation of a body. A sort
of struggle takes place between these genes ; only a few
combine and these give the outer characters of the indi-
vidual while others remain hidden and obscure. (Montessori)

I can now restate what I amtrying to convey. I want to draw attention away
fromthe sequence psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, play material, playing, and
to set this up again the other way round. In other words, it is play that is the
universal, and that belongs to health: playing facilitates growth and therefore
health; playing leads into group relationships; playing can be a form of
communication in psychotherapy; and, lastly, psychoanalysis has been
developed as a highly specialized formof playing in the service of
communication with oneself and others. (Winnicott)

25 Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well. (Genesis 26:25)

Do we not find the same in our society to day ? Has
it not developed a circulatory system. All the substances
that are produced are thrown into circulation and each
one takes from it what is useful for his life and what is
produced is thrown into the stream of commerce so
that it becomes available to others. The merchants, the
travelling salesmen who go about everywhere, are they
not like red corpuscles ? If we look at human society,
we can better understand the functioning of the embryo
because in society also the functioning is such that things
produced in Germany are consumed in S. America,
things which are produced in England are consumed in
India and so forth. We can deduce from this that society
has reached an embryonic stage in which the circulatory
system begins to function, but with many defects still.
The defects of circulation reveal that our society has not
finished its development. (Montessori)

The natural thing is playing, and the highly sophisticated twentieth-century
phenomenon is psychoanalysis. It must be of value to the analyst to be
constantly reminded not only of what is owed to Freud but also of what we
owe to the natural and universal thing called playing. (Winnicott)

The Master gives himself up
to whatever the moment brings. (Tao Te Ching)

The work of direction is the most difficult task
and requires greater specialization than any other. So
it is not a question of election. It is a question of
being fit and prepared for the work. He who has to
direct others, must have transformed himself. Thus
there can be no leader unless he has first trans-
formed himself. But this principle that goes from
specialization to function is fascinating. It becomes
even much more fascinating when we discover that this
is the plan adopted by nature for all branches of life,
that it is the plan that nature follows when it creates.(Montessori)

Soon he fetched a bucketful of toys and he was playing in a deliberate way
while the consultation between the mother and me proceeded. The mother was
able to tell me the exact significant moment at two years five months when
Edmund had started stammering, after which he gave up talking ‘because the
stammer frightened him’. While she and I were going through with a
consultation situation about herself and about him, Edmund placed some small
train parts on the table and was arranging themand making themjoin up and
relate. He was only two feet away fromhis mother. Soon he got onto her lap
and had a short spell as a baby. She responded naturally and adequately. Then
he got down spontaneously and took up playing again at the table. All this
happened while his mother and I were heavily engaged in deep conversation.
(Winnicott)

That day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, “We’ve found water!” 33 He called it Shibah,[f] and to this day the name of the town has been Beersheba. (Shibah can mean oath or seven. Beersheba can mean well of the oath and well of seven.) (Genesis 26:32-33)

NEITHER the discoveries nor the theories that arise
from modern discoveries explain fully the mystery of life
and of its development. But certainly they do show and
illustrate facts. These furnish us with sufficient data to
enable us to see how growth takes place. Every new
detail discovered shows an added realization, but does
not explain it. These phenomena can be fully observed
and they give an explanation of events of ordinary life.
One of the things which is observed for instance is that
the plan of construction is only one and all types of
animal life follow it. Now when I say that it is a plan,
I do not mean that we actually see a plan drawn up like
a draftsman’s. But what we see occurring in front of
our eyes, shows us that all the details follow a certain
invisible plan. The plan can be seen materially in the
embryo, it can be followed in the psychology of child-
ren and it can also be recognized in society. (Montessori)

After about twenty minutes Edmund began to liven up, and he went to the
other end of the roomfor a fresh supply of toys. Out of the muddle there he
brought a tangle of string. The mother (undoubtedly affected by his choice of
string, but not conscious of the symbolism) made the remark: At his most nonverbal
Edmund is most clinging, needing contact with my actual breast, and
needing my actual lap.’ At the time when the stammer began he had been
starting to comply, but he had reverted to incontinence along with the
stammer, and this was followed by abandonment of talking. He was beginning
to cooperate again at about the time of the consultation. The mother saw this
as being part of a recovery froma setback in his development.
By taking notice of Edmund’s playing I was able to maintain
communication with the mother. (Winnicott)

Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits[a] before his throne (Revelation 1:4)

And when we say that the
new born is a psychic embryo, we must understand that
all new-born children are alike. There can therefore be
but one means of treating or educating children of this
age, r’.e., if education is to start from birth, there can be
but one method. There can be no question of special
methods for Indian children or Chinese or Japanese or
European children. Here there is an absolute method
which is the same for all. There is a period of incar-
nation in which every human being acts in the same
fashion, i.e., every human being incarnates itself in the same
way ; all have the same psychic needs and follow the
same procedure in order to achieve the construction of
man. No matter what type of man results from the
work of the child, no matter if it is a genius, or a labourer,
a saint or a murderer, each in order to become what he
is in the end, must pass through these stages of growth,
these phases of incarnation. What we must take into
consideration is this process of incarnation, we must not
pre-occupy ourselves with what the individual will become
later on. We cannot interfere with that. First of all we
do not know it, and then we should not have the power
to achieve it if we knew. What must preoccupy us, what
must take our energies is the assistance to those laws of
growth that are common to all. (Montessori)

Now Edmund developed a bubble in his mouth while playing with the toys.
He became preoccupied with the string. The mother made the comment that as
a baby he refused all except the breast, till he grew up and went over to a cup.
(Winnicott)

By thy grace I remember my Light, and now gone is my delusion. My doubts are no more, my faith is firm; and now I can say ‘Thy will be done’.
(Bhagavad Gita 18:73)

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The discovery of the fact that the child is endowed
with an absorbent mind has brought about a revolution
in education. Now it is easy to understand why the
first is the most important amongst the periods of develop-
ment. The creation of human character takes place
within its span ; and once we have understood this, it
also becomes clear that we must help the child in his
creative work. For there is no age in which the child is
more in need of intelligent help than in this period. (Montessori)

Spare no effort to devote yourself to this task, follow the subsequent transformations of the spontaneous fantasy attentively and carefully.
(Jung)

It is
evident that if the child meets with obstacles, his creative
work becomes less perfect. We do not any longer help
the child because he is a small and weak being. No ! We
have realised that the child is endowed with great creative
powers, that these great powers are delicate in their
nature and can be thwarted if obstacles are placed in
their path. It is these powers we wish to help, not the
small child, not his weakness. (Montessori)

The Lilly of the valley, breathing in the humble grass
(William Blake)

When we understand that
these powers belong to an unconscious mind which must
become conscious by work and experience carried out
in the environment, when we realise that the child’s
mind is different from ours, that we cannot reach it and
teach him things, that we cannot directly intervene in
this process of passing from the unconscious to the
conscious and of constructing the human faculties ; then
the whole conception of education will change and will
become that of a help to the child’s life. Education will
take the guise of an aid to the psychic development of
man and not of making him memorize ideas and facts. (Montessori)

Who am I to teach and whom? What I am, you are, and what you are — I am. The ‘I am’ is common to us all; beyond the ‘I am’ there is the immensity of light and love. We do not see it because we look elsewhere; I can only point at the sky; seeing of the star is your own work. Some take more time before they see the star, some take less; it depends on the clarity of their vision and their earnestness in search. These two must be their own — I can only encourage.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

When one enters the field of origins, the field of
embryology, one sees things which do not exist in the
fields that concern adults, or if they do exist, they are of
a very different nature. Scientific observations reveal a
type of life which is quite different from the one that
humanity was accustomed to consider previously. It is
by this new field of research that the personality of the
child has been thrown into the limelight. A very banal
consideration will show that the child does not progress
towards death like the adult, the child progresses to-
wards life because the purpose of the child is the con-
struction of man in the fullness of his strength and in
the fullness of his life. When the adult arrives, the
child is no longer. So the whole life of the child is a
progress towards perfection, a progress of ever greater
achievement. (Montessori)

I had the word
formlessness ready and from this she got back to the whole previous session
and to the idea of the dress material before it was cut out and the feeling that
nobody had ever recognized her need to start fromformlessness. She repeated
that she was tired today and I pointed out that this was something, not nothing.
To some extent it is being in control: ‘I am tired, I am going to sleep.’ She had the same feeling in her car. She was tired but she did not go to sleep because
she was driving. Here, however, she could go to sleep. Suddenly she saw a
possibility of health and found it breath-taking. She used the words: ‘I might
be able to be in charge of myself. To be in control, to use imagination with
discretion.’ (Winnicott)

one can deduct that the child can find joy in the fulfilment of a
task of growth and perfection. The child’s is a type of
life in which work, the fulfilment of one’s task, brings
joy and happiness, whereas in the field of adult, work
is something which is usually a rather painful process.
This process of growth, this proceeding in life is for
the child something that expands and enlarges, inasmuch
as the older the child becomes, the more intelligent and
stronger he becomes. His work, his activity help the
child to acquire intelligence and strength, whereas in the
case of adults, it is rather the contrary. Also in this field
of the child, there is no competition, because no one
can do the work that the child does in order to construct
the man that he has to construct. In other words,
nobody can grow for him. (Montessori)

analysis as untangling, untying, detaching, freeing, even liberation — and thus also, let us not forget, as solution. The Greek word analuein, as is well known, means to untie and thus to dissolve the link. It can thus be rigorously approached, if not translated, by the Latin solvere (to detach, deliver, absolve, or acquit). Both solutio and resolutio have the sense of dissolution, dissolved tie, extrication, disengagement, or acquittal (for example, from debt) and that of solution of a problem: explanation or unveiling. The solutio linguae is also the tongue untied. (Derrida)

The adults who are near the child usually are
protectors of the child. So one can see that, in the
case of human beings, it is in the field of the child
that examples and inspiration for a better society can be
found. It is not a question of an ideal. It is a reality.
As this field is different and also as it represents a
better kind of life, it deserves to be studied.

Now let us go still further back in the life of the
child, i.e. to the period before birth. Already before
birth the child has contact with the adult because as an
embryo life is spent in the body of the mother. Before
the embryo, there is the germinal cell which is the result
of two cells which come from adults. So from either
side when one goes towards the origin of the life of
human beings, and when one goes on following the child
towards the completion of his task of growth, one finds
the adult. The child’s life is the line that joins the two
generations of adult life. The child’s life which originates
and is originated, starts from the adult and finishes
in the adult. This is the way, the path of life, and it is
from this life that touches the adult so intimately that a
great light can be derived. That is why its study is so
fascinating. (Montessori)

There was one more thing to be done in this long session. She brought up
the subject of playing patience, which she called a quagmire, and asked for
help in regard to the understanding of it. Using what we had done together, I
was able to say that patience is a formof fantasying, is a dead end, and cannot
be used by me. If on the other hand she is telling me a dream– ‘I dreamt I was
playing patience’ – then I could use it, and indeed I could make an
interpretation. I could say: ‘You are struggling with God or fate, sometimes
winning and sometimes losing, the aimbeing to control the destinies of four
royal families.’ She was able to follow on fromthis without help and her
comment afterwards was: ‘I have been playing patience for hours in my empty
roomand the roomreally is empty because while I amplaying patience I do
not exist.’ Here again she said: ‘So I might become interested in me.’
(Winnicott)

Nature furnishes special protection to the young.
They are born amidst love, the very origin of the child is
love. Once he is born, he is surrounded by the love of
his father and mother. So it is not in strife that he is
generated and that is his protection. Nature gives to
the parents love for their young and this love is not
something artificial, or enforced by reason, such as the
idea of brotherhood that all people aspiring to unity are
trying to arouse. It is in the field of the child’s life that
can be found the type of love which shows what ought
to be the ideal moral attitude of the adult community,
because only here can be found love that naturally
inspires self-sacrifice. It inspires the dedication of an
ego to somebody else, the dedication of one’s self to the
service of other beings. (Montessori)

To those who are ever in harmony, and who worship me with their love, I give them the Yoga of vision and with this they come to me.
(Bhagavad Gita 10:10)

In the depth of their sentiment
all parents give up their own life in order to dedicate it to
their children. This sacrifice that the father and mother
make is something natural that gives joy. It does not
appear as sacrifice. Nobody for instance says : ” Oh,
this poor man has two children etc.” But one says : 4t How
lucky this man is to have a wife and children. What a
joy it must be for her to have such lovely children ! ”
And yet there is a real self-sacrifice on the part of the
parents for their children, but it is a sacrifice which gives
joy. It is life itself, so that the child inspires that which
in the adult world represents an ideal : renunciation, self-
sacrifice which are almost impossible to attain. (Montessori)

It is the absolute in you that takes you to the absolute beyond you — absolute truth, love selflessness are the decisive factors in self-realization. With earnestness these can be reached. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Now it is curious that, if the study is carried out
among animals instead of among men, these two types
of life are also to be found. There are, for instance, the
wild and ferocious animals which seem to change their
instincts when they have a family. Everybody knows how
tender are tigers and lions for their young and how brave
becomes the timid deer. It seems as if there were a
reversal of instinct in all animals when they have young
ones to protect. It is a sort of imposition of special
instincts over the ordinary ones. Timid animals, even
to a greater degree than we, possess an instinct of self-
preservation, but when they have young ones, this instinct
of self-preservation changes into an instinct of protection
for the young. So with many birds. Their instinct for
the protection of life is to fly away as soon as any danger
approaches, but when they have young ones, they do
not fly away, but some remain frozen upon the nest in
order to cover the betraying whiteness of the eggs.
Others feign being wounded, keep themselves just out of
reach of the dog’s jaws and attract them away from their
young who remain in hiding. Ordinarily instead of
taking the chance of being caught, they fly away. There
are many instances of this kind and in every form of
animal life there will be found two sets of instincts : one
set for self-protection and another set of instincts for the
protection of the lives of their young. One of the books
which most beautifully describes this is a book of the French
biologist J. H. Fabre in which he concludes by saying
that it is to this great mother-instinct that the species
owes its survival. (Montessori)

from within or from behind a light shines through us upon things , and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all. (Emerson)

If life owed its survival only to the struggle of the
strong, the species would perish. So the real reason, the
main factor of the survival of the species, is the love that
the adults feel for their young. If we study nature, the
fascinating part is to see the revelation of intelligence
that there is even in the lowest of the low, as we consider
them. Each one is endowed with different kinds of pro-
tective instincts ; each one is endowed with a different
kind of intelligence and all this intelligence is expended
for the protection of the young, whereas if one studies
their instincts for self-protection, these do not show so
much intelligence and there is not the same variety of
instinct in this field. There is not the finesse of detail
that made Fabre fill 1 6 volumes, treating mainly of the
protective instincts among insects. (Montessori)

Krishna said, “I saw myself, not the world, whatever I see, is myself.’ Once established in this knowledge, you can die any moment you wish. Make use of this knowledge, assimilate it and you will lose this habit to criticize others, Krishna said, when you are that, who will criticize whom?
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

that there is nothing pre-existing, that there is no ready-
made man or ready-made woman who grows and
grows until he becomes a full-grown man or woman ;
but there is a pre-established plan of construction which
is surprising, because it seems so well made, so well
reasoned out, that it appears as if somebody had thought
it out and fixed it. It is as though some one wanted to
build a house and started by collecting bricks before
beginning to build the walls of the house. And the
same happens with this primitive cell : first it accumulates
a number of cells, by sub-division and multiplication, and
then builds three walls. When the three walls have
been built, the second phase begins the phase of the
construction of the organs. (Montessori)

Tbe assumption of one single subject is perhaps unnecessary;
perhaps it is just as permissible to assume a multiplicity of subjects,
whose interaction and struggle is the basis of our thought
and our consciousuess in general? A kind of aristocracy of “cells”
in which dominion resides? To be sure, an aristocracy of equals,
used to ruling jointly and understanding how to command?
My hypotheses: The subject as multiplicity.
Pain intellectual and dependent upon the judgment “harmful”:
projected.The effect always “unconscious”: the inferred and imagined
cause is projected, follows in time. (Nietzsche)

Now the construction of the organs takes place in an
extraordinary way. It begins by one cell at one point.
I do not know what happens there. I do not know if it is
something of a chemical nature or if it is a sort of sensitive-
ness. I believe no one does. The fact is that around that
point an extraordinary activity begins. There the rate of
multiplication of cells becomes feverish whereas else-
where it continues in the same calm fashion. When this
feverish activity ceases, an organ has been built. There
are several of these points and each one of them builds
up a definite organ. The discoverer has interpreted the
phenomenon in this fashion : there are points of
sensitivity around which a construction takes place. These
organs develop independently one from the other. It is
as though the purpose of each of these cellular points
were to build something for themselves only, and the in-
tensity, the activity, is such that in each of these organs
the cells become so united, so imbued with what we
might call their ideal that they actually transform them-
selves and they become different from the other cells.
So the cells assume a special form according to the
organs that they are constructing. Then when the dif-
ferent organs are formed independently one of the other,
something else comes, which puts them into relation and
communication. When they are all united, so united and
so interconnected that one cannot live without the other,
the child is born. (Montessori)

they do not ask the question; they stage it or overflow this stage in the direction of that element of the scene which exceeds representation. (Derrida)

It is the circulatory system that joins
them together. And after the circulatory system, the
nervous system is finished, to make more intimate the
union. And then one sees the plan of construction.
This plan of construction is based upon a point of enthu-
siasm from which a creation is achieved. And once the
creation of the organs is a fact, they are destined to unite,
to join together. This plan is the same for all superior
animals and for man. It is followed by them all for the
development of each. (Montessori)

5 Abraham left everything he owned to Isaac. 6 But while he was still living, he gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and sent them away from his son Isaac to the land of the east.

7 Abraham lived a hundred and seventy-five years. 8 Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people. 9 His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah near Mamre, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, 10 the field Abraham had bought from the Hittites.[a] There Abraham was buried with his wife Sarah. 11 After Abraham’s death, God blessed his son Isaac, who then lived near Beer Lahai Roi. (Genesis 25:5-11)

Now if we have this in mind, then many obscure
facts are better understood, e.g. the psychic develop-
ment of the child, because not only the human body, but
also the human psyche is constructed following the same
plan. It starts from nothing, or at least from what
appears to be nothing, in the same way as the body
starts from that primitive cell which appears in no way
different from other cells. In the new-born child, also
psychically speaking, there seems to be nothing which is
already built up, just as there was not a ready-made man
in the primitive cell. And in the psychic field also,
organs are built around a point of sensitivity. There is
at first the work of accumulation of material, just as we
said there was an accumulation of cells by a multiplica-
tion in the case of the body. This is done by what I
have called the * absorbent mind/ After that come points
of sensitivity. These are so intense that we adults cannot
even imagine anything approaching it. (Montessori)

a whole chemistry of information largely under the sway of unconscious drives, as well as affects and phantasms that were already in place before calculation, (Derrida)

From these points of sensitivity, it is not the
psyche that is developed, but the organs of this psyche.
Here also each organ develops independently of the
other, e.g., language, being able to judge distances, or
being able to orient oneself in the environment, or being
able to stand on two legs and other co-ordinations. Each
of these items develops around an interest, but in-
dependently one of the other. Now this point of
sensitivity is so acute that it attracts the individual
towards a certain set of actions. None of these sen-
sitivities occupies the whole period of development. Each
occupies only part of the time ; long enough to ensure
the construction of a psychic organ. After the organ has
been formed, the sensitivity disappears, but during this
period there are powers so great that we cannot imagine
them, because we have lost them and therefore cannot
even have an idea of what they are. When all the
organs are ready, they unite, in order to form what we
call the psychic unity. (Montessori)

Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair.) 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

4 When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” 5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, 7 and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” (John 11:1-7)

Biological studies carried out upon different animals
have revealed that all of them build their adult
species by means of these sensitive periods. One
cannot understand the construction of the psyche of the
child, unless one has an idea of these sensitive periods.
When one knows of them, then the whole attitude to-
wards childhood is bound to change. As a consequence
we are better able to help the psychic development of
the child if we know when these sensitive periods occur. (Montessori)

Under whatever name and form one may worship the Absolute Reality, it is only a means for realizing It without name and form. That alone is true realization, wherein one knows oneself in relation to that Reality, attains peace and realizes one’s identity with it. (Sri Ramana Maharshi)

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This is not done with a conscious mind. We are
conscious ; we have a will and if we want to learn some-
thing, we go about it. There is no consciousness in the small
child, no will. For both consciousness and will have to
be created. The child’s mind is not the type of mind we
adults possess. If we call our type of mind the conscious
type, that of the child is an unconscious mind. Now an
unconscious mind does not mean an inferior mind. (Montessori)

Teaching is even more difficult than learning. We
know that; but we rarely think about it. And why is teaching
more difficult than learning? Not because the teacher
must have a larger store of information, and have it always
ready. Teaching is more difficult than learning because
what teaching calls for is this: to let learn. (Heidegger)

An
unconscious mind can be full of intelligence. One will find this type of intelligence in every being and every
insect has it. It is not a conscious intelligence even though
sometimes it looks as if it were endowed with reason. It
is of an unconscious type and while he is endowed with
it the child performs his wonderful achievements. The
child of one year has already seen all things that are in
his environment and is capable of recognising them. (Montessori)

The real teacher,
in fact, lets nothing else be learned than-learning. His conduct,
therefore, often produces the impression that we
properly learn nothing from him, if by “learning” we now
suddenly understand merely the procurement of useful information.
The teacher is ahead of his apprentices in this
alone, that he has still far more to learn than they-he
has to learn to let them learn. The teacher must be capable
of being more teachable than the apprentices. (Heidegger)

How has he been able to take in this environment >
This is due to one of the special characteristics that
we have discovered in the child : a power of such
intense sensitivity that the things which surround him in
the environment awaken in him an intense interest and
such a great enthusiasm that they seem to penetrate into
his very life. The child takes all these impressions not
with his mind, but with his life. The acquisition of lan-
guage is the most evident example of this. (Montessori)

People still hold the view that what is handed down
to us by tradition is what in reality lies behind us-while
in fact it comes toward us because we are its captives
and destined to it. The purely historical view of tradition
and the course of history is one of those vast self-deceptions
in which we must remain entangled as long as we are still
not really thinking. That self-deception about history prevents
us from hearing the language of the thinkers. We
do not hear it rightly, because we take that language to be
mere expression, setting forth philosophers’ views. But the
thinkers’ language tells what is. (Heidegger)

How is it
that the child acquires language ? It is said that the child
is endowed with the sense of hearing, that he hears the
voice of the human being and thus he learns to speak.
Let us admit this. It is a fact. Why, however, amongst all
the millions of different sounds and noises that surround him,
does he hear just the voice of man ? If it is true that the
child hears, and if it is true that he takes only the language
of human beings, it means that the human language must
have made a great impression on the child. These
impressions must be so strong, they must cause such an
intensity of feeling and such a great enthusiasm as to
set in motion invisible fibres within the body that begin
to vibrate in order to reproduce those sounds. (Montessori)

To hear it is in no case
easy. Hearing it presupposes that we meet a certain requirement,
and we do so only on rare occasions. We must acknowledge
and respect it. To acknowledge and respect consists in
letting every thinker’s thought come to us as something in
each case unique, never to be repeated, inexhaustible–and
being shaken to the depths by what is unthought in his
thought. (Heidegger)

Our mind, such as it is, could not do it ; to accom-
plish it a different type of mind is needed, and that is
what the child possesses, a type of intelligence different
from ours. We might say that we acquire with our
intelligence, the child absorbs with his psychic life. The
child merely by going on with his life, learns to speak the
language belonging to his race. It is like a mental
chemistry that takes place in the child. We are vessels ;
impressions pour in, and we remember and hold them in
our mind, but we remain distinct from our impressions,
as water remains distinct from the glass. The child
undergoes a transformation. The impressions not only
penetrate the mind of the child, but form it. They become
incarnate. The child makes its own * mental flesh ‘ by
using the things that are in his environment. We have
called his type of mind * Absorbent Mind. (Montessori)

Wbat is unthought in a thinker’s thought is not a
lack inherent in his thought. What is un-thought is there in
each case only as the un-thought. The more original the
thinking, the richer will be what is unthought in it. The
unthought is the greatest gift that thinking can bestow.(Heidegger)

It is difficult
for us to conceive the powers of the absorbent mind of
the small child, but certainly it is a privileged form of
mind. If only it could continue, if only it persisted ! Just
think. The child is born and for some months he lies in
his house. After a while he walks, goes around, does
things and he enjoys himself, he is happy ; he lives from
day to day and by doing this he learns movements ;
language comes into his mind with all its constructions ;
the possibility of directing his movements to suit his
life and many other things. (Montessori)

To attain a height and bird’s eye view, so one grasps how
everything actually happens as it ought to happen; how every
kind of “imperfection” and the suffering to which it gives rise
are part of the highest desirability. (Nietzsche)

Little by little the child becomes conscious of all
the things, these form his consciousness. And so we
see the path followed by the child. He acquires
all unconsciously, gradually passing from uncon-
scious to conscious, following a path of pleasure
and love, This consciousness seems to us a great acquisi-
tion. To become conscious ; to acquire a human
mind ! But we pay for it. Because as soon as we
become conscious, every new acquisition causes hard
work and fatigue. (Montessori)

The very condition of a deconstruction may be at work in the work, within the system to be deconstructed. It may already be located there, already at work. Not at the center, but in an eccentric center, in a corner whose eccentricity assures the solid concentration of the system, participating in the construction of what it, at the same time, threatens to deconstruct. One might then be inclined to reach this conclusion: deconstruction is not an operation that supervenes afterwards, from the outside, one fine day. It is always already at work in the work. (Derrida)

Movement is another of these wonderful acquisi-
tions. At birth the child moves very little, then gradually
his body becomes animated. He starts to move. The
movements that the child acquires, just as is the case
with language, are not formed by chance. They are
determined in the sense that they are acquired during
a special period. When the child begins to move, his
absorbent mind has already taken in the environment.
Before he starts to move, an unconscious psychic develop-
ment has already taken place. As he starts to move,
he begins to become conscious. (Montessori)

Water flowing out from a mountain becomes a spring, pure and transparent, symbolizing the pureness of a child’s innocent mind. After the spring flows out of the mountain, it accumulates sediment over time … after Beginning, Childhood follows. (I Ching)

If you watch a small
child of three, he is always playing with something.
That means he is elaborating with his hands, putting
into his consciousness, what his unconscious mind had
taken in before. It is by this experience in the environ-
ment in the guise of playing that he goes over the
things and the impressions that he has taken into his
unconscious mind. It is by means of work that he
becomes conscious and constructs Man. He is directed
by a marvellously grand mysterious power which little
by little he incarnates and thus he becomes a Man. He
becomes a man by means of his hands, by means of his
experience, first through play, then through work. (Montessori)

Remembering to forgive. Remember to pass beyond you into the day

On the wings of the secret you will never know.

Taking me from myself, in the path

Which the pastel girth of the day has assigned to me.

(John Ashbery)

The hands are the instrument of the human intelligence. And
by means of this experience he becomes a man, he takes
a definite form and becomes limited because conscious-
ness is always more limited than unconsciousness and
sub-consciousness. (Montessori)

15 Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” 16 And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them. (Mark 10:15-16)

He comes to life and begins his mysterious work
and little by little he becomes the wonderful personality
adapted to his time and to his environment. He builds
his mind, until little by little he has constructed memory ;
until little by little he has constructed understanding,
reasoning power ; until little by little, he has arrived at
his 6th year. (Montessori)

Neither ordinary, nor extra-ordinary. Just being aware and affectionate — intensely. He looks at himself without indulging in self-definitions and self-identifications. He does not know himself as anything apart from the world. He is the world. He is completely rid of himself, the realized man is egoless; he has lost the capacity of identifying himself with anything. He is without location, placeless, beyond space and time, beyond the world. Beyond words and thoughts is he. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Then suddenly we educators discover that
this individual understands, that he has the patience to
listen to what we say, whereas before we had no power
to reach him. He lived on another plane, different from
ours. In this book we are concerned with this first period.
And a study of the psychology of the child in the first
years of his life is so marvellous, so full of miracles, that
all who understand it cannot help but feel a great emo-
tion. (Montessori)

44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’[d] Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me. (John 6:44-45)

Our work is not to teach, but to help the absorbent
mind in its work of development. How marvellous it
would be if by our help, if by an intelligent treatment
of the child, if by understanding the needs of his physical
life and by feeding his intellect, we could prolong the
period of functioning of the absorbent mind ! (Montessori)

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond us all, beyond the heavens, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light that shines in our heart. (Chandogya Upanishad)

What a
service we should render if we could help the human
individual to absorb knowledge without fatigue, if man
could find himself full of knowledge without knowing how
he had acquired it, doing it almost by magic. And why
should it not be possible ? Is not nature full of magic, full
of miracles? (Montessori)

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It is a revolution inasmuch as every-
thing that we know today will be changed. Indeed I
consider it the last revolution. It will be a non-violent
revolution because if the slightest violence is offered to
the child, then his psychic construction will be faulty.
This delicate construction of human normality, as it
should be, needs protection ; it must be carried out with-
out the slightest violence being offered to it. Indeed all
our effort has been to remove obstacles from the path of
the growth of the child. We have taken away from him
the dangers and misunderstandings that surrounded him. (Montessori)

If I had invented a writing it would have been as an endless revolution. Each situation demands the creation
of a suitable mode of exposition, the invention of a law of the singular event, take into account the
recipient, imagined or desired; and at the same time it demands the belief that this writing will determine
the reader, who will learn to read (or to “live”) this writing, which he is not used to finding elsewhere. One
hopes that he will be reformed, otherwise determined; for example, these grafts (short of confusion) of the
poetic on the philosophical, or certain ways of using homonyms, the undecidable, ruses of language – into
which many people see confusion, while ignoring the properly logical need for it. (Derrida)

This is what is intended by education as a help to
life ; an education from birth that brings about a revolu-
tion : a revolution that eliminates every violence, a re-
volution in which everyone will be attracted towards a
common centre. Mothers, fathers, statesmen all will be
centred upon respecting and aiding this delicate con-
struction which is carried on in psychic mystery following
the guide of an inner teacher. (Montessori)

The ascertaining of “truth” and “untruth, ” the ascertaining of facts in
general, is fundamentally different from creative positing, from
forming, shaping, overcoming, willing, such as is of the essence of
philosophy. To introduce a meaning–this task still remains to be done,
assuming there is no meaning yet. Thus it is with sounds, but also with
the fate of peoples: they are capable of the most different
interpretations and direction toward different goals. (Nietzsche)

This is the new shining hope for humanity. It is
not so much a reconstruction, as an aid to the construc-
tion carried out by the human soul as it is meant to be,
developed in all the immense potentialities with which
the new-born child is endowed. (Montessori)

. We must therefore see the formation of
the conscious system as the result of a process of evolution: at the
boundary between the outside and the inside, between the internal
world and the external world, we could say that “a skin has been
formed which has been made so supple by the excitations it constantly
receives, that it has acquired properties making it uniquely suited to
receive new excitations”, retaining only a direct and changeable image
of objects completely distinct from the lasting or even changeless trace
in the unconscious system. (Deleuze)

Then there is another sub-phase from 3 to 6 in which the
type of mind is the same, but the child begins to become
approachable in a special manner. This period is
characterised by the great transformations that take place
in the individual. In order to realise this, it is sufficient to
think about the difference there is between a new-born
babe and a child of 6. How this transformation takes
place does not concern us for the moment, but the fact
is that at 6 years the individual becomes, according to
the usual expression, intelligent enough to be admitted
to school. (Montessori)

and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things. (Ephesians 3:9)

The next period is from 6 to 12 years. This period
is one of growth, but without transformations. It is a
period of calm and serenity. It is also psychically speaking
a period of health and strength and security. (Montessori)

By being with yourself, the ‘I am’; by watching yourself in your daily life with alert interest, with the intention to understand rather than to judge, in full acceptance of whatever may emerge, because it is there, you encourage the deep to come to the surface and enrich your life and consciousness with its captive energies. This is the great work of awareness; it removes obstacles and releases energies by understanding the nature of life and mind. Intelligence is the door to freedom and alert attention is the mother of intelligence.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Now if we look at the physical body, we see signs that seem to mark
the limit between these two psychic periods. The trans-
formation that takes place in the body is very visible. I will cite only one item : the child loses his first set of teeth
and starts growing the second. (Montessori)

Some see the soul as amazing, some describe it as amazing, and some hear of the soul as amazing, while others, even on hearing, cannot understand it at all. (Bhagavad Gita 2:29)

This has made a great
impression upon all who have had any sensibility towards
psychic life. Today many meditate upon the small
child ; upon the new-born, and the one year old, who
create the personality of man ; and they feel the same
emotion, the same deep impression as those who in olden
times used to meditate upon death. What is it that takes
place when death comes ? This is what attracted medita-
tion and sentimentality in the past. Today a similar
meditation is being carried out upon man who has just
entered the world. This is a Man, this is the being who
has been created with the highest and loftiest intelligence.
Why is he to have such a long and painful infancy ? No
animal has a period of infancy so painful and so
long. This is what attracts the attention of the thinkers.
“What is it that takes place during this period ?” they
ask themselves. (Montessori)

A full and powerful soul not only copes with painful, even
terrible losses, deprivations, robberies, insults; it emerges from
such hells with a greater fullness and powerfulness; and, most
essential of all, with a new increase in the blissfulness of love. I
believe that he who has divined something of the most basic
conditions for this growth in love will understand what Dante
meant when he wrote over the gate of his Inferno: “I, too, was
created by eternal love. (Nietzsche)

In the case of the human being, it
is not a question of development. It is a question of
creation that starts from zero. If you do not exist, you
cannot hope to grow. That is the tremendous step the
child takes, the step that goes from nothing to something.
We are not capable of it. Our mind is not capable of it. (Montessori)

eternity is In the split moment of the now. We miss it because the mind is ever shuttling between the past and the future. It will not stop to focus the now. It can be done with comparative ease, if interest is aroused… By keeping your mind clear and clean, by living your life in full awareness of every moment as it happens, by examining and dissolving one’s desires and fears as soon as they arise… Once you are well-established in the now, you have nowhere else to go what you are timelessly, you express eternally. (Sri Nisagadatta Maharaj)

A type of mind different from ours, endowed with
different powers is necessary to accomplish this. And it
is not a small creation that the child achieves. It is the
creation of all. He creates not only the language, but the
organs that make it possible for us to speak. Every
physical movement he creates, every side of our intelli-
gence. He creates all that the human mind, the human
individual is endowed with. It is a tremendous achieve-
ment! (Montessori)

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Education can no longer remain isolated
from society but must acquire authority over society.
Social machinery must arrange itself around what is to be
done so that life be protected. All must be called upon
to collaborate : mothers and fathers must, of course, do
their part well, but if the family has not sufficient means,
then society must give not only knowledge, but enough
means to educate the children. If education means care
of the individual and if society recognises that such and
such a thing is necessary for the child for its development
and the family is not capable of providing for it, then
it must be society which provides for the child. (Montessori)

I would be tempted to say that paralysis is the negative symptom of
aporia. Paralysis arrests, whereas aporia, at least as I interpret it (the possibility of the impossible, the “play” of a certain excess in relation to any
mechanical movement, oriented process, path traced in advance, or teleological
program), would be the very condition of the step [pas] , or even
of the experience of pathbreaking, route (via rupta), march [marche] , decision,
event: the coming of the other, in sum, of writing and desire. (Derrida)

Step by step the needs of the child during the years
of growth have been studied scientifically and the results
of this study are being given out to society. The educa-
tion conceived as a help to life takes in every one not
only the child. That means that social conscience must
take over responsibility for education and that education
will spread its knowledge to the whole of society in every
step it takes, instead of remaining isolated from society
as it does today. Education as protection to life affects
not only the child, but the mothers and fathers as well
as the state and international finance. It is something
which moves every part of society, indeed it is the great-
est of social movements.(Montessori)

The player-artist-child, Zeus-child:
Dionysus, who the myth presents to us surrounded by bis divine toys.
The player temporarily abandons himself to life and temporarily fixes
his gaze upon it; the artist places himself provisionally in his work and
provisionally above it; the child plays, withdraws from the game and
returns to it. In this game of becoming, the being of becoming also
plays the game with itself; the aeon (time), says Heraclitus, is a child
who plays, plays at draughts (Diels 53). The being of becoming, the
eternal return, is the second moment of the game, but also the third
term, identical to the two moments and valid for the whole. (Deleuze)

And behold him after a while ; the child, talking, walking
and passing on from conquest to conquest until he has
built up man in all his greatness, in all his intelligence.
If we consider this we begin to have a glimpse of reality.
The child is not an empty being who owes whatever he
knows to us who have filled him up with it. No, the
child is the builder of man. There is no man existing
who has not been formed by the child he once was.
In order to form a man great powers are necessary and
these powers are possessed only by the child. (Montessori)

. . no matter how it happened, each time “the hero” strode across the stage,
something new was attained, a terrible reverse of laughter, a profound emotion for many in their thought: “Yes, life is worth living! Yes, I’m worthy of life!”-Life, you and me, all of us just as we are, we became interesting to ourselves. We cannot deny that in the long run laughter, reason, and nature ended up becoming masters of each of the great masters of teleology: Brief-tenured tragedy finally has always returned to the eternal comedy of existence. And the sea “with its countless smiles”–to speak with Aeschylus–with its waves, will finally cover the greatest of our tragedies. . . (Nietzsche)

These
great powers of the child which we have described for
long, and which at last have attracted the attention of
other scientists, were hitherto hidden under the cloak of
motherhood, in the sense that people said that it is the
mother who forms the child, the mother who teaches him
to talk, walk etc., etc. But I say that it is not the
mother at all. It is the child himself who does all these
things. What the mother produces is the new-born babe,
but it is this babe who produces the man. (Montessori)

What does “innocence” mean? When Nietzsche denounces our
deplorable mania for accusing, for seeking out those responsible
outside, or even inside, ourselves, he bases this critique on five
grounds. The first of these is that “nothing exists outside of the
whole”. But the last and deepest is that “there is no whole”: “It is
necessary to disperse the universe, to lose respect for the whole. Innocence is the truth of multiplicity.It derives immediately from the principles of the philosophy of force and will. Every thing is
referred to as a force capable of interpreting it; every force is referred to
what it is able to do, from which it is inseparable. It is this way of being
referred, of affirming and being affirmed, which is particularly innocent.(Deleuze)

The child needs special aid in order to build man
properly and society must give this its attention. Re-
cognising the merits of the child does not diminish the
authority of the father and the mother for when they
come to realise that they are not the constructors, but
merely the helpers of this construction, then they will be
able to do their duty better ; they will help the child with
a greater vision. Only if this help is well given will the
child achieve a good construction, not otherwise. So
the authority of parenthood is not based upon an inde-
pendent loftiness but upon the help that is given to the
child. Parents have no authority other than that.(Montessori)

You, the Self (Atman), being the root of all being, consciousness and joy, impart your reality to whatever you perceive. This imparting of reality takes place invariably in the now, at no other time, because past and future are only in the mind. ‘Being’ applies to the now only. (Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

Let us realize
that the child is the worker who produces man. The
parents furnish the means of construction to the worker.
The social problem confronting us then is of much
greater importance, because from the children’s work,
humanity itself is produced, not an object. Childhood
does not produce one race, one caste, one social group,
but it produces the whole of humanity. This is the
reality that humanity must envisage : it is the child that
society must take into consideration, this worker who
produces humanity itself. (Montessori)

Forgive and you will be forgiven. (Luke 6:37)

For everything there are innumerable causal factors. But the source of all that is, is the Infinite Possibility, the Supreme Reality, which is in you and which throws its power and light and love on every experience. But, this source is not a cause and no cause is a source. Because of that, I say everything is uncaused. You may try to trace how a thing happens, but you cannot find out why a thing is as it is. A thing is as it is, because the universe is as it is.
(Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj)

We must
free childhood from repression that weighs upon it. The
conditions of this constructor of man are more dramatic
than those of the constructor of the environment. Better-
ing the conditions of life for the constructor of man will
bring about a betterment in humanity. We must follow
this great worker from the moment he starts, at birth,
follow him until he reaches adulthood ; and provide him
with means necessary for a good construction. We must
remember that he is going to form that humanity which
with its intelligence is building civilisation. The child is
the builder of our intelligence, and it is our human in-
telligence which guides our hands and produces what we
call civilisation. (Montessori)