When I was in Italy, Mme. Montessori told me that besides all the activities she gives to children, she encourages them to keep silence; and after a little time, they like it so much that they prefer silence to their activity. And it interested me to see a little girl of about six years of age, when the time of silence came, went and closed the windows and door, and put away all the things that she was playing with. Then she came and sat in her little chair and closed her eyes, and she did not open them for about three or four minutes. It seemed she preferred those five minutes of silence to all the playing of the whole day.
As the threads of fabric are woven into a pattern, so the Self as the living garment of divinity is woven out of the many decisions and crises by which we are affected in the course of our lives. Whether or not they lead to a manifestation of the Self depends solely on our response. Many of us have observed that children, even small children, when faced with some difficulty, possess an attitude which many adults could only envy. That "something," the lack of which we experience as soullessness, is a "someone" who takes a position, who is accountable and who feels committed. Where this higher, responsible ego is lacking there can be no Self.
