The infant that is born on earth brings with it the air of heaven. In its expression, in its smiles, even in its cry you hear the melody of the heavens. The Sufi point of view is that an infant is an exile from heaven, and that is why its first expression on earth is a cry. The soul that comes from above feels uncomfortable on the dense earth. This atmosphere is strange and not free; and it is a feeling of exile that makes the soul cry, a feeling of horror, of a terror of this world of woes.

When a child comes to the earth without a cry it indicates abnormality. The child is quite abnormal, and it will not have a full development, because the new sphere has not struck it; in other words, it is not fully awake to the new sphere. Bring a waking person here, he will look at what is going on; bring a drunken person, he will sit here in intoxication. He does not know what is going on, he is not aware of the conditions, he does not care. And so it is with an infant. There is hardly a case where an infant does not cry; but if there is such a case there is something wrong. Why is the soul so much attracted to the earth? It is attracted to the earth because it is bound to the earth. It is the soul's passion to manifest; it is only expressing its passion.

Before the infant came to the world it had educators too, one or many educators. It first had educators on the jinn plane, the inhabitants of that plane and the ones going back who met it on the jinn plane. The older ones on the angelic plane have their experience, their life, their feeling to impart to a new soul going further on the journey. It is from there that an infant has brought the feeling of admiration for all beauty, the feeling and love of harmony, innocence, and the depth of feelings. Then it met other teachers on the jinn plane, and these teachers are the ones to whom it was directed from the angelic plane; because according to its association on the angelic plane it takes a certain route, a certain direction. It is the first instructors in the life of an infant who have the influence which directs and determines its destiny on the jinn plane.

Can the soul choose its instructor on the angelic and jinn planes, one may ask, or is it helpless before anyone who is attracted to it? There is always free will and the lack of it on all planes. If we go into the midst of the city, there are some things that we purposely want to see; we are looking for them. At the same time there are many things which attract our attention also without any intention on our part. In the same way, when the soul arrives it is attracted to things and beings which it had no intention of being attracted to, and at the same time it has its choice; it has both.

The experiences of the infant before birth on the higher planes are not directed by the stars as we understand it from the astrological point of view; it is from the time that it comes to the earth that its connection with the stars begins. But at the same time there are other factors which to a large extent determine the soul's destiny.

On the jinn plane the soul receives instruction from the inhabitants of that sphere, and also from those who have just returned from the earth, eager to give to the infant their experience, their knowledge, and all they still have with them brought from the earth. They would have given to it even what they had on the earthly plane, but no one is allowed to take to the other sphere what he has collected here. All that belongs to this sphere a person must leave behind in order to be free and in order to be allowed to enter the higher spheres. And therefore, what they have is what they have collected in those spheres while they were on earth. That is all they have, the thoughts, impressions, feelings, experiences, knowledge that they have gained. It is all, so to speak, a collection which a person makes in the higher spheres, but it is not something which can be deposited in the bank. So when man has left to the earth all that he has borrowed from the earth, then he goes on with only that property which he has deposited or collected in the higher spheres without knowing it. Very few on earth know that while they live on the earthly plane they are collecting something in the higher plane. They live at the same time on the higher plane, but they do not know it.

With this heritage and with this knowledge and instruction that it has received from one or many, an infant comes to the earth. People might object that an infant does not show any sign of any knowledge of the earth nor of the heavens; it does not show any sign of the angelic world nor of the world of the jinns. They do not know that an infant can perceive or can receive impressions of human beings much more readily than grown-up people. The infant at once senses the right person; and sometimes it perceives more than a grown-up person. Besides that, we grown-up people think that we appreciate music, but if we realized the sense that an infant has brought with it of appreciating sound and rhythm, we would never boast of knowing music. The infant is music itself. In the cradle it is moving its little arms and legs in a certain rhythm. And when our music fails on the ears of an infant it is of the lowest character compared with the music it is accustomed to.

At the same time it begins to move its legs and its arms to the rhythm of the dense music. We may believe we have the finest music, but for an infant it is the most dense music; it is accustomed to much finer music than we can conceive. It longs for it, it looks for it; and what we give as a substitute does not satisfy it. For a moment it tries to listen to it, it tries to enjoy, to like it; but at the same time it does not feel at home, it turns its back and wants to go away. Only for a moment it tries to enjoy it, thinking it is something that belongs to its country, which means the heavens; and then it finds out: no, it is foreign. That is the only reason why an infant will cry in the middle of a concert; if it were not so an infant would enjoy it more than anyone.

It takes some time for an infant to become accustomed to the life of the earth. And what makes it accustomed to it? Color. Color is what attracts most, and then sound. When it gets accustomed to the dense sound and the dense color, then it gradually begins to lose its heavenly attributes. And when its first wish is to change from being an angel and walk like an animal, when it begins to creep, it begins its earthly life; but before that it was an angel. Infancy is angelic; it is not the jinn time, it is the angelic time.

Infancy may be divided into three parts: the first three years are real infancy. The first year the infant is most angelic; the second year there is a little shade of the jinn sphere; and the third year it begins to manifest the earthly influence, the influence of this world. So an infant becomes worldly in its third year.

Why is it that an infant, though still conscious of the angelic planes, has no feeling of kindness originally? The angels are not obliged to be kind. They are kindness itself, but that angelic kindness must awaken here. Kindness and cruelty are learned after corning here; when the infant comes, it comes with love alone. Everything else is taught here. And if the guardians knew this, they would help the child much better. There are many qualities that the soul has brought from the higher spheres, but those qualities remain undeveloped if they remain buried, if they are not given an opportunity to develop. Thus, if kindness has not been given an opportunity to develop in the child, the kindness will remain buried in the depth of its heart all its life, and it will not know it.

Parents sometimes think that it is bad manners for an infant to put its hand in its mouth, and therefore they give it something made of wood or rubber, or something else. It very much hinders its real progress in life, because every soul is born to reach the ideal of being self-sufficient. An infant tries from the beginning to put its hand in its mouth when the mouth wants something; and the parents, in order to teach good manners, give it something else, making the infant more artificial. If they left it to its natural tendency, they would help its growth, its progress towards a higher ideal. What are the saints and sages and adepts and mystics doing during their time of spiritual attainment? They eliminate everything in their life which makes them depend on things outside. They eat with their hands; instead of taking plates they use leaves; and everything they do shows that they wish to become independent.

By independence is meant self-sufficiency: that what they can get from their own self they must not look for outside. That is the principal motive of those who are striving for self-attainment, because it is the means of overcoming the sorrows and troubles and woes of this life. One sees a constant striving in the life of the adepts to make themselves independent of outside things as much as possible. On the other hand worldly people think it progress if they can become daily more dependent on others. Every step we take is towards dependence; and the more we depend upon others, the more we think we are progressing. In the end we come to such a stage that for what the soul needs, what the mind needs, what the body needs, we depend upon others. And, not knowing this, we teach the child to put something else instead of its little hand in its mouth. In reality, it is natural for an infant to put its hand in its mouth; and that is the purest and the cleanest toy that it can have to play with.

The Qur'an says there is a time for everything. And so there is a time, there is a day, an hour, a moment fixed for the child to change its attitude: to learn to sit, to learn to stand, to learn to walk. But when the parents, eager to see the child stand or sit or walk, help it, the child will do it before the time, and that works against its development; because it is not only that it begins to learn to sit or to stand or to walk; there is a far greater meaning in it. These are different stages which an infant goes through in its spiritual life. Physically these are just ordinary actions; spiritually it is a stage. When the child sits it is a stage; when it stands it is a stage; when it begins to walk it is a stage. These are like three first initiations in the life of an infant.

In order to understand the meaning of an infant's laughter and cry one must become an infant, because it is the language of another sphere. But when a person does not trouble about it, then its cry is only a nuisance and its laughter is a game. Sometimes people wish to make the child laugh more and more because they are interested or as an entertainment; or people neglect the child, leaving it to cry, and pay no attention; or when an infant is crying the mother says, "Be quiet, be quiet"; in all these cases they lose the opportunity of understanding the language of an infant. This is the opportunity for the guardian, for the mother, for the one who looks after an infant, to learn the heavenly language. For there is nothing that has no meaning, and every movement of an infant, who is an expression, an example, from above, has a meaning. But as we are absorbed from morning to evening in the responsibilities and duties of the world, we forget the responsibility and duty to the infant. And because the infant cannot speak in our language and tell us how neglectful we are of what it wants, and what it needs, and what can be done for it, there remains a wall of separation between mother and child.

An infant knows and feels the presence of an undesirable person in the atmosphere around it. It is very unwise when people engage any nurse that comes along to take care of their infant. And it is unfortunate in these days when mothers have many other occupations, that they cannot take charge of their infant themselves, and have to send it to what they call a creche, a place where they take care of infants. This does not mean that to keep an infant among many other infants is not right, but at the same time it is only after we have grown up in this dense world that we come together, if not very much, at least partially. It is always difficult for many people to work together, to be together, to live together; and yet we have been here on this earth so many years, and we have become accustomed to the life of the earth. But what about an infant who has just arrived and who is placed among other infants, where the gap between the evolution of one infant and another is infinitely greater than the difference between two grown-up persons? They are not yet accustomed to being together, and the atmosphere of one infant is bad for another. It is all right for many soldiers to be together in one room, for many patients to be together in one hospital; but for many infants to be put in one place after being exiled from paradise to this earth, imagine what it means for them to have this experience! It is like a king banished from his kingdom. No doubt after six months or a year an infant becomes accustomed to it; but at the same time the individuality of the soul and the development of the personality become blunted.

No doubt a great amount of patience is required to take care of an infant. But patience is never wasted; patience is a process through which a soul passes and becomes precious. Souls who have risen above the world's limitations and sorrows, the world's falseness and deception, they are the souls who have passed through patience. If it is the destiny of the guardian or the mother to acquire patience, she must know that there is nothing lost, but that she has gained something in her life. To raise an infant, to look after it, to educate it, and to give oneself to its service, is as much and as good a work as the work of an adept; because an adept forgets himself by meditation, a mother forgets herself by giving her life to the child.

There is always a possibility of giving an infant bad habits. For example sometimes a guardian enjoys the laughter of an infant and thus makes it laugh more and more, because it is amusing. But however much an infant has laughed, so much it must cry afterwards, in order to make a balance. And then there may be another mother who, as soon as an infant has opened its mouth to cry, says, "Quiet, quiet!"; but if an infant then becomes quiet, something in its character is broken. It wants to cry, it must be allowed to cry; there is something in its character that wants to come out.

There is also a tendency in an infant to throw things about, to slap, to kick, to tear, to break things. Sometimes it is such a little thing that is broken or spoiled that the mother thinks its behavior is enjoyable. But if an infant is allowed to do what ought not to be encouraged, it will only make it difficult for it later. It must be corrected, but at the same time it must not be corrected with anger or annoyance. It should be corrected repeatedly by giving the infant something to do which is different from what it was doing before. One should always keep an infant focused on things that will be good for it, and try to divert its attention from things that it must not do, instead of enjoying and amusing oneself with things that it does which the parents may think do not matter.

It is very difficult to stop an infant in its first year from destroying things. Besides the inclination to destroy things is a great virtue in the child. It is the desire of the soul to know the mystery of life; because every object before an infant is a cover over the mystery the soul is looking for. It is annoyed with it because it is a cover. It wants to know, by breaking it, what it is.

However, it is possible to stop the infant from breaking things, but by suggestion, not by getting annoyed. Annoyance must be avoided, because it is not good for an infant if one is annoyed with it. The more patience one has with an infant the better; its will becomes more powerful. But if you are annoyed, then the nervous system of the infant deteriorates, and it becomes depressed. Its nervous system becomes contracted, it becomes tired; and when it is grown-up a fear remains. One must be extremely careful with an infant that its nerves do not get cramped. Its nervous centers are delicate; and these are the centers which are intuitive centers. Later on, these centers will help the soul to perceive higher knowledge. And if these centers become cramped by the annoyance of the guardians, then the infant has lost that faculty by which it should grow and profit in life. The infant will understand; one must have patience. One should repeat, "You must not break it", every time he breaks something. Let him break ten times, and every time just say, "You must not break it"; that helps.

Regarding the bad nature of an infant, sometimes it shows stubbornness and obstinacy even to the extent that one feels annoyed and begins to scold it. But that is not right. Scolding has a bad effect on the nerves of an infant. And once a bad effect has been made on the nerves of an infant there will be a mark of annoyance on the nerves all through its life. The best thing at such moments is to call the attention of the infant repeatedly to something that will take away that thought, and we must never tire of doing it. It is this which will make it come back to a proper rhythm.

There are two principal temperaments in infants: active and passive. There is an infant that is quite happy in the place where it is put, quite contented, enjoying itself; it cries only when it is hungry. And there is another infant who is always doing something; either it must cry, or break, or tear something; it must do something all the time. The best thing is to bring the infant back to a normal rhythm. An active infant must be quieted by the influence of the guardian; by attracting its mind to a certain thing, by beating time and getting it into a certain rhythm. Infancy is the time when the impulsive nature can be trained, and that is the time to draw out what is really best in the impulsive nature and utilize the impulsive nature to its best advantage.

When an infant is quiet, contented, passive, happy-natured, one must not be contented about it, because it may not prove to be good in the end. That infant should be made a little more active. A little more attention must be given to it, a few more playthings, a little more thought must be given. It should be stimulated, it should be picked up and its attention attracted to this or that, so that it may become more active and more interested in the things it sees; that will bring about a proper balance.