Not always. The psychic is more "in front" than later when they grow up and the mind develops, but it can't be said that in all children the psychic may be felt. And one cannot judge from what we have here, for the condition of admission I make when children are brought to me is this: if I see the psychic on the surface I take them, but if they are already veiled by all sorts of deformed activities, I don't take them. So, those whom we have here are an exception. It is the cream. It is a choice.

But why are there greedy children?

Oh, good heavens! greedy, that's not a crime! There are greedy children. Perhaps they have a bad digestion and so always want to eat. They don't gain by what they eat. The whole outer being is full of difficulties of all kinds, in everybody -in children also. You could ask me with much more justification: "Why are there such cruel children?" That indeed is one of the most dreadful things But it is due to unconsciousness. It is because they are not even aware that they are making others suffer. And usually, if care is taken to make them understand -for instance, through experience -then they understand. Children who ill-treat animals (there are many of these) -well, that is because they don't even know that animals feel as they do. When they are made to understand that when they pinch animals or pull their hair or beat them it gives them pain, and if necessary when they are shown on their own bodies how it hurts, they don't do it any more!
   There are some who are particularly wicked. These are  under a perfidious influence. And at times this shows itself from their very infancy and they are like that all through their life, unless they are converted, which is not easy.
      There is a sort of association between the physical and the psychic and between the mental and the vital being. A mental being is very often a very vital being. A psychic being is very often a physical being. Children -just because this psychic consciousness is in front in them -  live also altogether in their body. But as soon as one begins to develop the mind, the taste for association also develops, with all the deformations that go with it. People who make very strict distinctions between man and woman (I don't know why, for one is as good as the other), say that man is mental and vital and woman physical and psychic. There is some truth in it. But naturally it involves all possible exceptions and complications. These are arbitrary simplifications. In fact the physical being has a simplicity and even a goodwill (which is not always very enlightened, far from it), but still a simplicity and goodwill which put it in a closer relation with the psychic than the passions of the vital or the pretensions of the mind. And it is probably because of that also that in children the psychic can feel more at ease, being less constantly jostled by mental and vital contradictions.

THE MOTHER