THE ABSORBENT MIND

Whereas in later stages acquisition is filtered through the logical capacities, the Absorbent Mind refers to the period of the child’s life wherein experiences are gleaned with an effortless absorption. This critical phase of brain and mind development occurs at large during the initial six years of life, and within this First Plane of the Absorbent Mind, are again found two sub-planar stages. During the precedent three-year Period of Creation, the infant has no capacity to filter sensorial input, no classification system in place that will divide and separate one stimulus from another. And so does she record all impressions: emotional, social, sensory – sleep being the infant’s only respite from a flood of data on every side at once. From the exercise of storing this incessant stream of input, the child’s brain begins to group and classify…search for patterns. This is the birth of the mind from the mere biology of her brain.

The Absorbent Mind exists at this time in an “unconscious mental state which is of a creative nature,”¹ and fundamentally allows adaptability. All stored impressions form the mind and create intelligence, but the mind’s absorption of knowledge occurs here in a purely unconscious state. Memories are indeed made, but only in a non-systemic way, not yet willingly recalled. In the second stage, the Period of Crystallisation, consciousness begins to awaken, and the opportunistic tide of the Absorbent Mind begins its gradual cede. After the Absorbent Mind has faded, which tends to occur in or around the sixth year, every newly learned acquisition costs an effort of will.

PHYSIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

The Human, for developmental reasons, is born well before she is able to fend at all for herself. This is different from most other animals of the planet. The lack of maturity is an asset, however, for the full potential of a cognisant creature. Being born before the brain is fully developed, or even developed enough to support the body and locomote, ensures that the child’s mind and body will develop together as suits best the environment into which the child has been born. “The development of the senses actually precedes that of the higher intellectual facilities.”²

Physiologically, the brain at this time is growing its Myelin, the layer of proteins and fatty substances that surround the axons of a neuron to promote “rapid and efficient transmission of impulses along the nerve cells.”³ This first formative period in the child’s life is the time in which this critical myelin development is most acute. The “periodically interrupted electrical insulation” provided by the myelin for the brain’s neurological transmission results in a “substantial increase in pulse propagation velocity over that of a bare axon of the same diameter,”⁴ and these myelin sheaths “undergo conspicuous growth during the first two years of life.”⁴ Though these myelin sheaths “may not be fully mature before adolescence or even late adulthood,”⁵ it is during the First Plane of Development, the first phase of the Absorbent Mind, that the brain experiences its greatest period of construction. It is important to note, then, that in this period doing is learning, watching is not. “It is not movement for its own sake that he will derive from these exercises, but a powerful coefficient in the complex formation of his personality.”⁶ The development and usage of the child’s appendages and sensory inputs, facilitated by surrounding influences, works now actively to assist the brain in its own formation. And, conversely, this Absorbent Mind influences all aspects of development, including locomotion, hand movement, muscular coordination, intelligence, memory, the capacity for creativity, and everything that stems from and bridges all these things.

THE MATHEMATICAL MIND

The Absorbent Mind feeds the child’s mathematical mind: the capacity for classification that eventually makes sense of an unfilterable barrage of environmental data. On this function of the Absorbent Mind, the whole of the future child is based, and it is the child’s surroundings during this critical stage that stamp upon her mind the acquisition of culture and identity: gender roles, customs, prejudices, understanding of relationships, nationality, etc. These surroundings help the Absorbent Mind create a person of specific time and place. And from among these early influences, running parallel with the Absorbent Mind, are found the progenitors of will and functional independence and the capacity for obedience.

With the ability for memory not nascent, actions must be demonstrated, not told. A child learns by senses and recall of captured impressions applied to local situations. It is absolutely crucial, therefore, that the adult prepare for the child an environment rich in material, experience and comfort to foster and nurture this Absorbent Mind. Intelligence equals activity in this period, and so the adult must take care that “we should never give to the brain more than we give to the hand.”⁷ The child will only learn by doing for herself, and the essence of her independence will be sewn in this.

The adult must also beware that the child can easily sense both mood and feeling, and so care must also be taken to prepare an environment rich and not oppressive in psychic body.