Discipline - Audio

Here again Mother once wrote down for me a very nice sentence, — If the body does not obey in its very functioning meticulous discipline, you cannot put one step forward while walking; and this is the importance of discipline in education. Without discipline there is no education. This conflict which comes about between freedom and discipline is because we are all lame. We are limping all the time and then these conflicts arise. If you are really free, Sri Aurobindo has written ‘Discipline is a child of freedom’. If you really become free then discipline will automatically flow from it, it’s not the other way round and the highest goal of life is freedom. So the moment we begin to grow into freedom, you’ll find there will be no conflict between freedom and discipline. The more free you become the more disciplined your methods for work, for example if you read The Life Divine, the meticulous arrangement of ideas and oceanic ideas, you think without discipline all this can be written in the way it is written and all that is written is in absolute freedom. That freedom automatically expresses itself in all disciplined methods of writing and expositions. So if we develop ourselves into freedom, you will see your children will be highly disciplined automatically, you don’t need to tell them: now do this, do that all the time, taunting the child that is not necessary. If your own life is full of freedom, true freedom, all your activities will be rhythmic, your arrangement of life will be rhythmic, in fact the whole atmosphere of Auroville will be rhythmic, you won’t need to tell the children: now be disciplined, be obedient, you won’t need it. I have seen families where children who are really living a life of great freedom and parents are living a life of great enlightenment, the children are automatically obedient. It’s a fact. This is the place according to me of discipline and education.