Page 32 - All India Magazine Feb-2026

with it or else they use it as a tool to open tins, you see; for
anything whatever, where they need an instrument they get
hold of their scissors and use them. So naturally, after quite
a short while they come to me again and say, “Oh, my pair of
scissors is spoilt, I would like to have another.” And they are
very much surprised when I tell them, “No, you won’t have an-
other, because you have spoilt this one, because you have used
it badly.” This is just one example. I could give many others.
People use something which gets dirty and is spoilt in be-
coming dirty, or they forget to clean it or neglect it, because all
this takes time.
There is a kind of respect for the object one has, which must
make one treat it with much consideration and try to preserve
it as long as possible, not because one is attached to it and de-
sires it, but because an object is something respectable which
has sometimes cost a lot of effort and labour in the producing
and so must as a result be considered with the respect due to
the work and effort put into it.
There are people who have nothing, who don’t even have
the things which are absolutely indispensable, and who are
compelled to make them in some way for their personal use.
I have seen people of this kind who, with much effort and in-
genuity had managed to make for themselves certain things
which are more or less indispensable from the practical point of
view. But the way they treated them, because they were aware
of the effort they had put in to make them, was remarkable —
the care, that kind of respect for the object they had produced,
because they knew how much labour it had cost them. But
people who have plenty of money in their pockets, and when
they need something turn the knob of a shop-door, enter and
put down the money and take the thing, they treat it like that.
They harm themselves and give a very bad example.
CWM 7: 50-51 The Mother

32 All India Magazine, February 2026