During the first week of May, we may remember Amina Begum, the wife of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat and the mother of their four children, for she was born in Albuquerque on May 8th, 1888, and passed away in Paris on May 2rd, 1949.
Amina Ora Ray Baker, also called Sharda, was destined to be the support and soul-mate of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and together they faced all the difficulties of family life in the midst of the intense spiritual, often very public work of the Message.
The following is an article she wrote for the ‘Sufi’ quarterly magazine, published in May of 1917. At that time she already had two children, Noor, aged 3 and Vilayat,11 months, and was six months pregnant with Hidayat.
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The Children of Today
It is a very interesting study in the Philosophy of Nature to watch the development of a new born babe from infancy to childhood.
At first sight one would think that the children of today show more intelligence than the children of the past. But this cannot be said especially of the child of the present day, for children in all ages have shown the gradual evolution of the world. The sharpness of a little child has always bewildered the grandparents, who confess that they never knew until quite grown up what their grandchild seems to know already, and have never understood until later what a child understands today.
This fact shows how undesirable it is for the parents to try to limit their children to the bound of their own beliefs, which is perhaps narrow and may hinder the spread and achievement of knowledge for children who already have a broad outlook on life. It should be understood that children should have a wide area open before them to think and act freely; it is like the freedom of the park for their play in comparison with the narrow limits of the backyard at home. They must not always be considered as little children knowing nothing. A keen study of a child’s nature reveals that they know and understand much more than they appear to do. Certain signs of the higher planes which are hidden from the eyes of grown up people are disclosed to little children.
The past, present and future can be learnt from the movements of an infant, and from the words of a child, for they are nearer to the spirit plane, and their hearts are pure to receive the impressions reflected upon them from the inner spheres. Sometimes a child who is beginning to speak says unheard of things, and parents, not knowing the mystery, pay no heed. Grown-up people are always so absorbed in the cares of life that they consider their affairs as the only important ones and the children’s concerns are as play. This keeps parents unaware of the complexity of the child’s intelligence until he is old enough to understand for himself. The help we could give to the little ones is to study them in their thoughts and actions, and consider their every thought and action as important as those of a grown-up person, thereby not only helping the child, but giving a new trend to our own thoughts. In this way we can encourage the desirable and safely check the undesirable thoughts and actions, without hindering the development of their intelligence.