Intent precedes the ability to do. The baby in the womb is preparing for life outside the womb. The current stage is always preparing for what comes next and this continues throughout one’s life. The pointing syndrome is a clear example. Pointing precedes naming and language development. The child is always preparing to move beyond their present state. See the early child’s breathless wonder a form of spiritual unfoldment that nature intends to remain life-long. Breathless wonder.

Jerome Brunner, Harvard’s great Developmental Psychologist, spoke of intent preceding the ability to do.  And you’ll find that right from the very beginning the infant in the womb is preparing for life outside the womb.  Language learning beginning around the fifth month in the womb, language learning, getting ready.  When the child comes into the world immediately they’re getting ready for the next step.  When they open their eyes and look all around they’re looking for a model they can lock on to that awakens the whole brain system and so forth, a lot of developmental stuff involved in that.

Look at even when the child is nursing or when they’re in arms, we find that they’re constantly looking at the mother’s whole throat and face area when she speaks. We’re not aware of it but automatically their muscles are mimicking that.  They’re making the same muscular movements from what they’re hearing, getting ready for speech which won’t take place for months yet, you see.  So they’re getting ready and these are the ways they’re going to overcome the constraint of no language to very regular procedures, very intelligent procedures.  

We look at Blerton Jones’ marvelous study of the “pointing syndrome” as he calls it.  Here we’ve got a little thing strapped up in her highchair at the table you know and she’s babbling away, this is before even walking or talking, babbling away and all of the sudden she begins to, at some certain point she’ll begin to wave her hand as she’s talking and waves it all around as she’s babbling, what we call the lulling period. And then all of the sudden this finger pops up, the pointing finger pops up, and she’s this very generic pointing as she’s babbling and this is getting ready for what, eventually she’s going to be on her hind legs out rushing around and every new object that she sees, that she’s never interacted with before, she will point right toward it and look back at the mother or the caretaker to see what their response is to this.  If it’s negative it might be dangerous and they won’t go near it, generally don’t, but if it’s positive they rush over to interact with that toward which they have pointed.  

All these things are simply ways of getting ready for the next stage of development.  So we find that continually they’re getting ready to move beyond the constraints of their present state.  They can’t speak it first.  They had to just make lots of funny noises and little by little they began to overcome the constraints of language with language.  You’ll find every aspect of development is rising above the constraints of the previous stage.  In the sensory motor stage there’s really little actual relationship with things, not much distinction between the child’s sense of self and the world out there. And then little by little that has serious limitations and little by little they can make the distinction between self and other and at the point you can have relationship and this sets up a while new world.  It just opens up a whole new universe by overcoming the constraints of a strict sensory motor system.  But the emotional system has its own limitations and problems and so nature has added another brain to that to overcome the constraints of the emotional system and rise above those constraints.  So the next stage of development in the child they’ll be rising above the limitations of their previous stage.  So that’s going on all the time.  Transcendence is an automatic part of life and should never stop.