NATURALMIND
BOOK REVIEW BY SHIRLEY BELL IN NOUMENON JOURNAL
This review is available at http://users.iafrica.com/n/no/noumenon/summer00.htm#prasanna
SUMMER
2000/2001 VOLUME SIX
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EXTENDING KRISHNAMURTI’S VIEW?
NATURALMIND
by Prasanna, (Softcover/100pp., Bangalore: GIPPNAC, 2000, $5.00)
The author regards all the problems of mankind as resulting from the ‘division of intelligence’ which is ‘permanently fragmented or divided during severe physical hurts in early childhood, but also invariably returns to natural state on its own.’ However, if the child is pampered immediately upon receiving the hurt, ‘fragmentation or division becomes permanent’.
The ‘formula’ he presents is: ‘At least until two and a half years of age, neither hurt nor pamper children if they are hurt or crying, but treat them only medically.’ If pampering is found to be irresistible, he says, it should occur only after the child has returned to ‘normal or playful state’. Pampering, he says, neither reduces pain nor heals injury. At best, it diverts the child's attention, while actually ‘preserving the effect’ of the hurt or injury. His thesis is that this prevents the ‘return of intelligence to [the] natural state, and that this is not beneficial to the child (or to the society).
Those children, he says, who are brought up in ‘the Natural State of Intelligence not only lead their lives happily and comfortably, but will also help the rest of mankind to lead full and natural lives’ (p. 40).
Mothers should train themselves to postpone pampering a child from the time it sustains a hurt to the time it ceases crying; however, medical treatment, even when only the most minor kind is required, is important.
Pampering at all other times does no harm, he says, and does not ‘fragment’ intelligence. The result of fragmentation is the emergence of such traits as competition, aggressiveness and exploitation, which are often accepted as normal aspects of modern society, but in fact lead to many social ills.
He
touches on many points of relevance and interest in his short book of 100 pages
(which would have benefited from the services of an editor), but I found some of
his assumptions hard to take, such as his statement that all babies' brains are
essentially ‘the same’ and that it is ‘only an error in processing of
information due to division of energy, which makes each individual behave or
respond differently even in the same or similar situations’. Most westerners
would recoil from seeing this as ‘an error’, but our perceptions – despite
much influence from eastern philosophies – operate largely in the western
paradigm, whereas the writer is writing within a different context. It is
therefore not particularly helpful to take up issues when there are likely to be
both contextual and semantic differences in our worldviews. (Mothers who are now
middle-aged will recall that the guru of the 50s and 60s in the child-raising
arena was the much-discussed Dr Spock, who could have comfortably endorsed such
a view as that given in Naturalmind,
but from the perspectives of a very different worldview.)
Website: www.naturalmind.org / www.naturalmind.net
-Shirley Bell
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Gist - 2 (Questions & Answers)
Gist - 3 (Hierarchy of intelligence)
gist - 4 (Various states of intelligence)
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