On Education

Founded in May 1945, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Department of Physical Education organises the physical education programme for the students and teachers of the Centre of Education and for the members of the Ashram. Its activities are coordinated and supervised by a group of instructors called captains, who give training in athletics (track and field events), aquatics, gymnastics, games, combative sports and asanas. The yearly schedule is divided into four seasons: during the first three, there is a period of training followed by competitions; at the end of the year, participants prepare an annual demonstration of physical culture which is presented on December 2nd at the Ashram sportsground. Facilities of the department include a library, gymnasium, playground, sportsground, swimming pool, judo hall and tennis courts.

The Mother took active interest in the development of the Physical Education Department and helped to shape its programme. For years she spent her late afternoon and evening hours with those who took part in the various physical activities.

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Youth

Youth does not depend on the small number of years one has lived, but on the capacity to grow and progress. To grow is to increase one's potentialities, one's capacities; to progress is to make constantly more perfect the capacities that one already possesses. Old age does not come from a great number of years but from the incapacity or the refusal to continue to grow and progress. I have known old people of twenty and young people of seventy. As soon as one wants to settle down in life and reap the benefits of one's past efforts, as soon as one thinks that one has done what one had to do and accomplished what one had to accomplish, in short, as soon as one ceases to progress, to advance along the road of perfection, one is sure to fall back and become old.

One can also teach the body that there is almost no limit to its growth in capacities or its progress, provided that one discovers the true method and the right conditioning. This is one of the many experiments which we want to attempt in order to break these collective suggestions and show the world that human potentialities exceed all imagination.

2 February 1949

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