Education and the Aim of human life

IV

Sri Aurobindo's Integral Education

Dissatisfaction with the conventional education of the time may be traced back to Jean Jacques Rousseau; it was expressed forcefully later by Tolstoy. But a clear awareness of the true needs of education dawned really with this century.

In the U.S.A., Dewey wrote:

The child is the starting-point, the center, and the end. His development, his growth, is the ideal. It alone furnishes the standard. To the growth of the child all studies are subservient; they are instruments valued as they serve the needs of growth. Personality, character, is more than subject-matter. Not knowledge or information, but self-realisation, is the goal. To possess all the world of knowledge and lose one's own self is as awful a fate in education as in religion. Moreover, subject-matter never can be got into the child from without. Learning is active. It involves reaching out of the mind. It involves organic assimilation starting from within. Literally, we must take our stand with the child and our departure from him. It is he and not the subject-matter which determines both quality and quantity of learning.¹

In India, the foundation of Shantiniketan by Rabindranath Tagore, dates back to 1901.

The object of education is to give man the unity of truth. Formerly when life was simple all the different elements of of man were in complete harmony. But when there came the separation of the intellect from the spiritual and the physical, the school education put entire emphasis on the intellect and the physical side of man. We devote our sole attention to giving children information, not knowing that by this emphasis we are accentuating a break between the intellectual,

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physical and the spiritual life.

I believe in a spiritual world - not as anything separate from this world - but as its innermost truth. With the breath we draw we must always feel this truth, that we are living in God. Born in this great world, full of the mystery of the infinite, we cannot accept our existence as a momentary outburst of chance, drifting on the current of matter towards an eternal nowhere. We cannot look upon our lives as dreams of a dreamer who has no awakening in all time. We have a personality to which matter and force are unmeaning unless related to something infinitely personal, whose nature we have discovered, in some measure, in human love, in the greatness of the good, in the martyrdom of heroic souls, in the ineffable beauty of nature, which can never be a mere physical fact nor anything but an expression of personality......

In ancient India the school was there where was the life itself. There the students were brought up, not in the academic atmosphere of scholarship and learning, or in the maimed life of monastic seclusion, but in the atmosphere of living aspiration. They took the cattle to pasture, collected firewood, gathered fruit, cultivated kindness to all creatures and grew in spirit with their own teachers' spiritual growth. This was possible because the primary object of these place not teaching but giving shelter to those who lived their life in God....

This ideal of education through sharing a life of high aspiration with one's master took possession of my mind....Only let us have access of the life that goes beyond death and rises above all circumstances, let us find our God, let us live for that ultimate truth which emancipates us from bondage of the dust and gives us the wealth, not of things but of inner light, not of power but of love. Such emancipation of soul we have witnessed in our country among men devoid of book-learning and living in absolute poverty. In India we have the inheritance of this treasure of spiritual wisdom. Let the object of our education be to open it before us and to give us the power to make the true use of it in our life. and

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offer it to the rest of the world when the time comes, as our contribution to its eternal welfare.2

Since then and with an accelerated tempo, a considerable amount of theoretical and experimental research work on education has been carried out, mostly in Western countries.3

Following this pioneering work, an entirely new conception of education has gradually emerged. This is how R. Cousinet defines the new outlook:

New education ... is really a new attitude towards the child. An attitude of understanding and love, and above all an attitude of respect. An attitude of expectation, of patience; the restraint of a delicate hand that dare not open a flower bud nor disturb a baby in the midst of his first experiments, a student in the course of his early work. An acceptance of childhood as such, acknowledging its value as a necessary period in man's development. A leniency, more than leniency, an acceptance of the child's mistakes, of his stumblings, his hesitations, his slowness. A desire, often passionate, to satisfy the child's needs, even if society has to wait some time for the satisfaction of its own needs. A conviction that the more a child remains fully and leisurely a child, the more and better he will grow into a good adult. A conviction that a child must be happy and that the educator's first task is to make sure that he is happy, even if it is at the cost of the educational ends that the teacher has in view; that we adults have everything to gain by leaving a child as long as possible in this age of primal innocence and for us to bathe in the well-spring of this innocence, instead of trying to shape him at any cost into our own image, which is not worthy to be taken as a model. A conviction that the child has within himself everything that allows a true education, and particularly a ceaseless activity, incessantly revived, in which he is totally engrossed, the activity of a growing being who is continuously developing and to whom for that very reason, our help may be useful, but our direction is not necessary.4

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When we compare this conception with the old view of the child as a shapeless and plastic mass which the teacher has to press into a desired shape as expeditiously as possible, we measure the tremendous, the really revolutionary change.

The practical results of the new methods are truly interesting, but they are partial and not as yet sufficiently significant to command the wide acceptance of the methods, They may be considered as indications, rather than decisive proofs.

Their insufficiency may be traced to two main causes:

1. The opposition between the individual and the society is not solved, because the new conception is still lacking the unifying and harmonizing vision of both child and society as evolving soul-entities moving towards a fuller manifestation of the Divine in this world. Moreover each of the new systems has taken an idea - fact of experience or intuitive perception - as its guiding principle; none has tackled the problem of education in its integrality,

2. Such a deep reform of education can only bear its fruit? if there is a corresponding change and newness in the ideal and aim of life of society itself. It is vain to expect a genuine recognition of a new system of this kind, not to speak of its general acceptance, if society keeps to the old ruts and presses upon the educator the same old demand of students made to a certain number of uniform patterns. In that case there is bound to be a mixture of the old and the new systems that will prevent the new venture from showing its true results. Moreover the judgment will be passed from the old standards, and that will bar any valid conclusion.

We may therefore accept these new systems as steps in the right direction. They are valuable, but within a limited range: they will be useful in devising practical methods and in their application. But, if we want to discover the principles which the methods should elaborate, we need a deeper and more comprehensive understanding.

In education we have to consider the child, the teacher, and the link and relation between them, which in its

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generality we shall call the teaching.

The Child: I shall speak of the "child" rather than the student" because education starts with the child. But it must be clear that the child is for us the man in the process of formation.

In the proceeding sections, we have seen that Sri Aurobindo does not consider the individual and the society s opposing entities, the existence and fulfilment of one being achieved by the subjection, subordination or rejection of the other. Both have a right to exist, to grow and to seek fulfilment, and it has been the constant preoccupation of Sri Aurobindo to show that each grows in and through the other.

This is in accordance with the ancient Indian tradition. For, as Sri Aurobindo puts it:

India has seen always in man the individual a soul, a portion of the Divinity enwrapped in mind and body, a conscious manifestation in Nature of the universal self and spirit. Always she has distinguished and cultivated in him a mental, an intellectual, an ethical, dynamic and practical, an aesthetic and hedonistic, a vital and physical being, but all these have been seen as powers of a soul that manifests through them and grows with their growth, and yet they are not all the soul, because at the summit of its ascent it arises to something greater than them all, into a spiritual being, and it is in this that she has found the supreme manifestation of the soul of man and his ultimate divine manhood, his paramārtha and highest purusārtha. And similarly India has not understood by the nation or people an organised State or an armed and efficient community well prepared for the struggle of life and putting all at the service of the national ego, - that is only the disguise of iron armour which masks and encumbers the national Purusha, - but a great communal soul and life that has appeared in the whole and has manifested a nature of its own and a law of that nature, a Swabhāva and Swadhārma, and embodied it in its intellectual, aesthetic,

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ethical, dynamic, social and political forms and culture. And equally then our cultural conception of humanity must be in accordance with her ancient vision of the universal man testing in the human race, evolving through life and mind but with a high ultimate spiritual aim, - it must be the idea of, the spirit, the soul of humanity advancing through struggle and concert towards oneness, increasing its experience an maintaining a needed diversity through the varied culture and life motives of its many peoples, searching for perfection through the development of the powers of the individual and his progress towards a diviner being and life, but feeling out too though more slowly after a similar perfectibility in the life of the race.... The only true education will be that which will be an instrument for this real working of the spirit in the mind and body of the individual and the nation. There is the principle on which we must build, that the central motive and the guiding ideal. It must be an education that for the individual will make its one central object the growth the soul and its powers and possibilities, for the nation will keep first in view the preservation, strengthening and enrichment of the nation-soul and its Dharma and raise both into powers of the life and ascending mind and soul of humanity. And at no time will it lose sight of man's highest object, the awakening and development of his spiritual being.5

In accordance with this view, the great purpose of education is to help the soul to come forward, to assert its mastery over its instruments, gain experience and grow, and eventually manifest the powers it has to set forth in life.

Even in a young child, it is the soul we have to meet a soul meeting a soul - giving to it due consideration and trust without forgetting however that the body is frail and the mind immature. We shall be surprised to see the response of the child to this attitude.

The Teaching: Let me quote from Sri Aurobindo an important passage which is the key to his conceptions:

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The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught. The teacher is not an instructor or task-master, he is a helper and a guide. His business is to suggest and not to impose. He does not actually train the pupil's mind, he only shows him how to perfect his instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages him in the process. He does not impart knowledge to him, he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself. He does not call forth the knowledge that is within; he only shows him where it lies and how it can be habituated to rise to the surface. The distinction that reserves this principle for the teaching of adolescent and adult minds and denies its application to the child, is a conservative and unintelligent doctrine. Child or man, boy or girl, there is only one sound principle of good teaching. Difference of age only serves to diminish or increase the amount of help and guidance necessary; it does not change its nature.6

In other words, the idea that the teacher should impart his knowledge - what he knows about a subject - to the child is fundamentally wrong. He must show the child how to learn that subject by himself, help him in devising his own methods of learning and of organizing the knowledge which he gathers or discovers. And the teacher should remember that a child learns by doing, by discovering, and not by listening submissively to a display of factual knowledge. It is only in this active, creative process leading to discovery that the child finds interest and joy, and that concentration becomes spontaneous.

In the few lines I have quoted, Sri Aurobindo has in fact enunciated, in its broad generality and with a Platonic flavour, the principle which is at the basis of the modern methods of education.

The principle is of wide applicability. It is not limited to intellectual or mental knowledge. It applies also, as we shall see, to ethical knowledge, the discrimination between good

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and evil, and aesthetic knowledge, the feeling and understanding of beauty

Sri Aurobindo says further:

The second principle is that the mind has to be consulted in its own growth. The idea of hammering the child into the shape desired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant superstition. It is he himself who must be induced to expand in accordance with his own nature. There can be no greater error than for the parent to arrange beforehand that the son shall develop particular qualities, capacities, ideas, virtues, or be prepared for a prearranged career. To force the nature to abandon its own dharma is to do it permanent harm, mutilate its growth and deface its perfection. It is a selfish tyranny over a human soul and a wound to the nation, which loses the benefit of the best that a man could have given it and is forced to accept instead something imperfect and artificial, second-rate, perfunctory and common. Every one has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it and use it. The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use.7

Each part of the child's being has also its own dharma, its own law of growth, its own needs and its own accomplishment. It grows by experience; and to be true, its growth must be spontaneous, not twisted, impaired or deformed The various parts are instruments, which must be appropriately developed and strengthened. And they must be trained to obey - not the teacher - but the central knowledge and will of the soul in evolution.

In fact, if the teacher can discover the true needs and interests (both go always together) of a child at every stage of his growth and offer him an activity in conformity with those needs, it will not be necessary to draw or compel the attention of the child. The child will be spontaneously

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captivated and work joyfully and silently, with concentration and without tiring. This gives a key to a natural and healthy education.

The Teacher: The teacher is therefore not one who knows and "gives knowledge" to the children. He is the guide, the helper, and above all the wise friend to whom the children come gladly and confidently in case of difficulty, when they do not see the way or when they need a bit of information or a clue. His rule is to present and to suggest, never to command or impose.

Quite naturally, a child will have respect and admiration for his teacher; unless quite unworthy the teacher will appear to the child as a demigod whom he will seek to imitate as well as he can. But the teacher should refrain from thrusting himself forward for imitation. Truly, he must be an example, but not set himself up as such.

On the other hand, the teacher must be aware of the disastrous influence his defects, impulses, weaknesses would have on the children. The following advice given by The Mother to parents applies as well to teachers.

If you wish to be respected by your child, have respect for yourself and be at every moment worthy o{ respect. Never be arbitrary, despotic, impatient, ill-tempered.8

When a child asks a question he should not be answered by a rebuke, a derogatory remark or a piece of stupidity, under the pretext that he cannot understand:

You can always make yourself understood if you take sufficient pains for it, and in spite of the popular saying that it is not always good to tell the truth, I affirm that it is always good to tell the truth, only the art consists in telling it in such a way as to make it accessible to the brain of the hearer. In early life, till twelve to fourteen years, the child's mind is not accessible to abstract notions and general ideas. And yet you can train it to understand these things by using concrete images or symbols or parables. Up to a sufficiently advanced

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age and for some who mentally remain always children, a narrative, a story, a tale well told teaches much more than a heap of theoretical explanations.9

Another fault to avoid:

Do not scold your child except with a definite purpose and only when quite indispensable. A child too often scolded gets hardened to rebuke and comes to attach little importance to words or severity of tone. Particularly, take care not to rebuke him for a fault which you yourself commit. Children are very keen and clear-sighted observers: the soon find out your weaknesses and note them without pity.10

In short, the teacher should surmount himself always and constantly if he wants to be equal to his task and truly fulfil his duty.

What Is an Integral Education?

An education which has accepted the goal outlined by Sri Aurobindo and which takes into account the entire complexity of man's nature can rightly be termed an "integral education". For the purpose we have in view, we may adopt a five-fold classification of the human being.

Education to be complete, must have five principal aspects relating to the five principal activities of the human being: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. Usually, these phases of education succeed each other in a chronological order following the growth of the, individual. This, however, does not mean that one should replace another but that all must continue, completing each other, till the end of life." 11

Each of these parts has its own law of growth and its fulfilment. Truly, the spirit remains unchanged as it is

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beyond space and time. But as we rise to our goal of perfection,

... we shall perceive that the truth we seek is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge, Power and Beauty. These four attributes of the Truth will spontaneously express themselves in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind that of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and a perfect harmony.12

We shall now see the most important specific points of these five aspects of education one by one and their reciprocal relations.

The Physical Education

Perfection is the true aim of all culture .... If our seeking is for a total perfection of the being, the physical part of it cannot be left aside; for the body is the material basis, the body is the instrument which we have to use. Śarīram khalu dharmasādhanam, says the old Sanskrit adage, — the body is the means of fulfilment of dharma, and dharma means every ideal which we can propose to ourselves and the law of its working out and its action.13

In the past the body has been regarded by spiritual seekers rather as an obstacle, as something to to be overcome and discarded than as an instrument of spiritual perfection and a field of the spiritual change.14

This contempt was a part of the general attitude towards matter as contrasted and opposed to spirit. Matter was looked upon as something gross, inert, unconscious, unchangeable, an insuperable impediment to spiritual realisation. We have seen that, according to Sri Aurobindo, this

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view does not represent the whole truth. The limitations the body are great and real, but they are not due to its essentially unredeemable nature. A self-exceeding is possible in this domain also, and such an exceeding is part of Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future:

A total perfection is the ultimate aim which we set before us for our ideal is the Divine Life which we wish to create here, the life of the Spirit fulfilled on earth, life accomplishing its own spiritual transformation even here on earth in the conditions of the material universe. That cannot be unless the body too undergoes a transformation .... The body itself must reach a perfection in all that it is and does which now we can hardly conceive. It may even in the end be suffused with a light and beauty and bliss from the Beyond and the life divine assume a body divine. 15

This is an ideal whose realization may well belong to a distant future. But, even if we limit ourselves to the actualities, a relative perfection of the physical body must be the aim of an efficient physical education. Our stand is that, whatever type of body a man may have, he must accept as a starting-point and bring out, by a concentrated effort and an appropriate training, the possibilities it contains and make it into fit instrument for as perfect a life as possible.

The results that a wholesome and methodical program of physical education may be expected to bring about are:

1. A sound and healthy body: This is a vast subject on which a good amount of knowledge has already been accumulated. The means include the acquisition of good habits in food. sleep, hygiene, and the use of physical exercises to regulate the various functions of the body, Bodily defects and malformations can be reduced or even cured by appropriate methods of corrective gymnastics,

2. Strength and fitness: Not only muscular strength as the physical stamina, but the use and command of life energy any time it is required. We have only to think of the skill,

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dexterity, endurance which sports and games develop and which are an excellent preparation for many occupations such as those of soldiers, sailors, policemen, travellers and explorers. There is no reason why this advantage should be denied to ordinary labourers and peasants.

3. Training of the senses: A quick perception of the eye and ear and a quick response of all the parts of the body to any call made upon them, a wonderful co-ordination and mastery over the reflexes - as for instance in gymnastics and balancing.

4. Not only strength, but also grace, beauty and harmony. Beauty is not a superfluity but the very spirit of the physical world. The ancient Greeks were awake to this ideal not only for the female form but the male also. Some glimpses of it seem to reappear today, though spoilt by commercialism in the beauty contests and physical culture displays held periodically in many countries of the world.

5. Self-mastery and discipline, courage and confidence: To control one's impulses, reactions, weaknesses is a very important gain brought about by the practice of athletics and games. We must mention here that the regular use of physical exercises has a healthy influence on the control of sexual energy.

6. Co-operation, impartiality and fair dealings with others: These qualities are especially developed by team games. The English people, who originated or codified most of these games, have been as a nation immensely benefited by them.

Moreover, as we have already seen, physical culture has also favourable results on the vital and mental parts of the being. Unfortunately, there has been recently a tendency to use games and sports as a means of political propaganda .Though the immixture of politics may increase the budget allocated to physical education, its effects on the morale of the athletes cannot but be harmful.

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The Vital Education

. . . the vital is the Life-nature made up of desires, sensations feelings, passions, energies of action, will of desire, reaction of the desire-soul in man and of all that play of possessive and other related instincts, anger, fear, greed, lust, etc., that belong to this field of the nature. 16

The vital is a vast kingdom full of forces acting and reacting upon one another, the very nexus of man's life an the motive power of his action - for good or for evil

The organization and training of this complex of forces is of the utmost importance for the building up of character, Even so, school education is usually little concerned with it as this is supposed to be the work of the family. But whosoever's responsibility it is, the same principles apply, especially the principle enunciated by Sri Aurobindo that true knowledge comes from within and conditions must be given for it to manifest.

Accordingly, the key to a strong, straightforward and harmonious character is to awaken in the child the will to overcome his weaknesses and eliminate his defects. The aspiration towards perfection exists in every human being, but too often the conditions in which the child lives, at home and elsewhere, the moral and mental environment are so antagonistic to the tiny little flame of aspiration that it dwindles and dies out. This aspiration has to be gently kindled and helped to translate itself into will.

The child has to be shown that the will can be cultivated by practice, beginning with very easy tasks. He will take interest and little by little become capable of taking charge of himself and of his training,

The only way for him to train himself morally is to habituate himself to the right emotions, the noblest associations, the best mental, emotional and physical habits and the following out in right action of the fundamental impulses of his essential nature.17

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A well planned program of physical education. Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and premilitary training can be of help for the cultivation of such basic qualities as endurance, courage, decision, resourcefulness, respect for others, truthfulness, faithfulness, loyalty to duty and the common good. However

...you can impose a certain discipline on children, dress them into a certain mould, lash them into a desired path, but unless you can get their hearts and natures on your side, the conformity to this imposed rule becomes a hypocritical and heartless, a conventional, often a cowardly compliance.18

This is what is too often done and it leads to what is known as the sowing of wild oats as soon as the yoke of discipline at school and at home is removed, and to social hypocrisy.

Only what the man admires and accepts, becomes part of himself; the rest is a mask. He conforms to the discipline of society as he conformed to the moral routine of home and school, but considers himself at liberty to guide his real life, inner and private, according to his own likings and passions.19

The attempt to make boys and girls moral and religious by preaching or by the teaching of moral and religious textbooks is of very little effect as it goes against our first principle of education. It would be an error to say that it has no effect at all. It throws certain seeds of thought into the mind and if these thoughts become habitual they influence the conduct. "But the danger of moral text-books is that they make the thinking of high things mechanical and artificial, and whatever is mechanical and artificial is in-operative for good.20

Advice may be given when needed or asked for, but the teacher should remember that "the first rule of moral training is to suggest and invite, not command or impose.21

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He has only "to put the child into the right road to his perfection and encourage him to follow it, watching, suggesting, helping, but not interfering."22

The best method of suggestion is by personal example, converse and the books read from day to day. These I should contain, for the younger student, the lofty examples of the past given, not as moral lessons, but as thin supreme human interest, and, for the elder student great thoughts of great souls, the passages of literature which set fire to the highest emotions and prompt the highest! and aspirations, the records of history and biography exemplify the living of those great thoughts, noble emotions and aspiring ideals. This is a kind of good company, satsanga, which can seldom fail to have effect so long as sententious sermonising is avoided, and becomes of the highest effect if the personal life of the teacher is moulded by the great things he places before his pupils cannot, however, have full force unless the young life given an opportunity, within its limited sphere, of embodying in action the moral impulses which rise within it…..

Every boy should, therefore, be given practical opportunity as well as intellectual encouragement to develop all that is best in the nature.23

As we have said, the relation between teacher and student should be a relation of soul to soul. Familiarity is required, not even advisable, but consideration and respect, as well as patience, understanding and love.

When a child has made a mistake, see that he confesses you spontaneously and frankly; and when he has confesses make him understand with kindness and affection what wrong in his movement so that he should not repeat it. In any case, never scold him; a fault confessed must be forgiven. You should not allow any fear to slip in between and your child; fear is a disastrous way to education.

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invariably it gives birth to dissimulation and falsehood. An affection that sees clear, that is firm yet gentle and a sufficient practical knowledge will create bonds of trust that are indispensable for you to make the education of your child effective.24

All experience shows that man must be given a certain freedom to stumble in action as well as to err in knowledge so long as he does not get from within himself his freedom from wrong movement and error; otherwise he cannot grow .Society for its own sake has to coerce the dynamic and vital man, but coercion only chains up the devil and alters at best his form of action into more mitigated and civilised movements; it does not and cannot eliminate him. The real virtue of the dynamic and vital being, the Life Purusha, can only come by his finding a higher law and spirit for his activity within himself; to give him that, to illuminate and transform and not to destroy his impulse is the true spiritual means of regeneration.25

[If a child] has bad qualities, bad habits, bad samskaras, whether of mind or body, he should not be treated harshly as a delinquent, but encouraged to get rid of them by the Rajayogic method of samyama, rejection and substitution He should be encouraged to think of them, not as sins or offences, but as symptoms of a curable disease, alterable by a steady and sustained effort of the will, - falsehood being rejected whenever it rises into the mind and replaced by truth, fear by courage, selfishness by sacrifice and renunciation, malice by love. Great care will have to be taken that unformed virtues are not rejected as faults. The wildness and recklessness of many young natures are only the overflowings of an excessive strength, greatness and nobility. They should be purified, not discouraged.26

Punishment and the stimulation of fear are really the last resort and should be avoided. Love and sympathy, desire to help, devotion to an ideal, the satisfaction of being at peace with oneself, are in the end more potent constructive forces

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than fear of punishment, whether from the head-master, police or a god.

Tolerance, understanding and good-will should encouraged, based on an awakened sense of unity. children should be made to realize that the unity which aimed at is not uniformity, nor is it achieved by domination and subjection, but it is an all-inclusive order, each individual occupying its true place and playing the role it has play in accordance with its own essential nature, which is a part of the divine Unity. Thus, a rich diversity harmoniously blended and supported by an underlying unity is the highest manifestation of the Divine in any collectivity or nation, or even in mankind and the whole world. "All urge of rivalry, all struggle for precedence and domination should disappear giving place to a will for harmonious organisation, for clear sighted and effective collaboration".27

We have dealt up till now with the first part of vital education, the building up of character. There is another part, the training of the aesthetic being,

This begins with the education of the senses. They should be trained so as to attain precision and power. Much more can be done along these lines than is generally thought.

To this general education of the senses and their action there will be added, as early as possible, the cultivation of discrimination and the aesthetic sense, the capacity to choose take up what is beautiful and harmonious, simple, healthy and pure. For, there is a psychological health as much a physical health; there is a beauty and harmony of the sensations, as much as a beauty of the body and its movements. As the child grows in capacity and understanding, he should be taught, in the course of his education, to add aesthetic taste and refinement to power and precision. He must be shown, made to appreciate, taught to love beautiful, lofty, healthy and noble things, whether in nature or in human creation. It must be a true aesthetic cultures it will save him from degrading influence .... A methodical

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and enlightened culture of the senses can, little by little, remove from the child whatever has been vulgar, common place and crude in him through contagion: this culture will have happy reactions even on his character. For one who has developed a truly refined taste, will feel, because of this very refinement, incapable of acting in a crude, brutal or vulgar manner. This refinement, if it is sincere, will bring to the being a nobility and generosity which will spontaneously find expression in his behaviour and will keep him away from many base and perverse movements.28

The Divine is Purity as well as Beauty and it is by the cultivation of both the ethical and the aesthetic being that the heart's needs can be really fulfilled.

The teaching of the different Arts - dance, music, painting - should be based on the same fundamental principle: to give to the student the best conditions for the perfecting of his own capacities and to help and encourage him in the process. A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development.

The highest aim of Art is to find the Divine through beauty. But this discovery has its own laws and the first endeavour is "to see and depict man and Nature and life for their own sake, in their own characteristic truth and beauty; for behind these first characters lies always the beauty of the Divine in life and man and Nature and it is through their just transformation that what was at first veiled by them has to be revealed."29 In this way the aesthetic being of man will rise towards its diviner possibilities.

The Mental Education

The greatest mistake is to make an accumulation of factual knowledge, i.e., erudition, the crowning end of education. This error distorts the whole process of education itself. Instead of learning how to acquire knowledge, the student is asked to store in his memory the knowledge

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gained by others, so as to keep it ready at hand - at least for the time of the examination.

This error becomes more apparent every day as the bulk of scientific knowledge constantly increases. It has become so enormous that mathematicians, biologists, physicists chemists, find it impossible to keep up to date even in the own branches; they have to specialize more narrowly, in what may be called a "twig" of science. To keep up with the mass production of scientific knowledge, the syllabuses swell constantly, however one may try to compress more matter in less hours of teaching. To pretend that the student will retain for a very long time all that he has committed memory is an illusion and a farce. Most of it will fade away except in the speciality in which the student will actual enter and work, because there it will be kept alive constant refreshment.

Besides the illusory attachment to an encyclopaedic knowledge, another pillar of the traditional education is slowly giving way under the pressure of accelerated progress, - it is the idea that man can receive before becoming an adult an education that will suffice him for the whole of professional career. The acceleration of scientific progress, the desiderata of research already impose in certain professions a periodical boosting up on recent theories and techniques (refreshment courses or seminars, sabbatical year) A permanent education from childhood to the age of retirement will soon become a necessity.

Is not the insistence of the examination upon the accumulation of memorized knowledge a surviving trace of the time when it was believed that the human brain could accommodate an encyclopaedic knowledge? This time has passed and to persist in such an attitude is not only a waste of time and energy but, what is worse, it diverts from the main object of education, which should be the training in acquiring and applying knowledge; whether old or new, it is the same thing: from the point of view of the student every knowledge that he acquires is fresh.

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The real gain that one can expect from a well organized and thorough mental education has an individual aspect and a social or collective aspect.

The individual aspect is culture. Culture is not erudition, it does not depend on the amount of knowledge, but on the way knowledge has been assimilated, integrated, transformed into a synthetic Weltanschauung which can serve as a base to a still higher vision and understanding. In fact, it has been said aptly that "culture is what remains when all has been forgotten" (Edouard Herriot). Culture is not acquired by forcefully memorizing but by keeping a wide interest and a mind open to all sources of knowledge (books, magazines, lectures, exhibitions, human contacts, etc.); whatever is retained and assimilated will be welcome; it may be deep or shallow according to one's capacity.

The collective aspect of education is utilitarian and functional. It is connected with the professional life of the individual and his relations with his fellow-beings.

The present trend of the technological society makes it likely that specialization will increase. This means that many jobs will require an early and thorough technical training. But, as a counterpart of the subjection and constraint of his professional life, the young man will find an increasing amount of leisure and he will have at his disposal a real abundance of cultural facilities, such as books and magazines, radio and television broadcasts, exhibitions, travel arrangements. This will make it possible for him to pursue all his life the cultural formation started at school, so that the two aspects of formation, the professional or functional and the personal or cultural, can be kept harmoniously blended for the benefit of the individual and the society alike.

In view of the variety and the multiplicity of the specialized jobs, it will be necessary to bring out and define the essential features of an education which can serve for all those tasks. What kind of basic mental formation should a be a young man have coming out from university or technological

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institute, irrespective of his graduation subjects? What would make him a valuable asset in any of the hundred jobs that are open to him? If we analyze what this usefulness consists in, we find

1. the capacity to gather old knowledge, i.e., how to use the various means of documentation (text-books, reference books, technical magazines, etc.) to find out what is already known on a subject; how to grade and organize the knowledge so that it can be made available to oneself for ready reference and to others;

2. the capability to find out new knowledge, i.e., engage successfully in research work; how to face a problem, to analyze and get at the core of it; how to use imagination in the search for analogies and structural similarities; how to formulate and test hypotheses;

3. The capacity to use and apply knowledge (old and new) to specific cases and to deal with concrete situations; how reach optimal decisions; how to get on with fellow-workers and engage in team work, understand others and make oneself understood.

In all this "know-how" the amount of memorized knowledge is of comparatively little importance and will matter less and less, because it is never all-inclusive and needs be verified before it can be applied.

Throughout all his years of formation, the student should be helped to study and unravel his own individual nature and capacities, to develop them and to find the type of work that will suit him best, i.e., in which he will be most happy, successful and useful. That will be true orientation.. As already quoted,

The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make perfect for a noble use. 30

The acquisition of new knowledge, what is usually call "research", is at present reserved for the post-graduate

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level. Up to that level, knowledge is presented as a chewed matter, to be swallowed up and digested. But it is really assimilated only if the student is able to forget it and regain it by himself. It is this creative discovery of knowledge which should be the aim and means of education.

It is often complained that the students show little originality. But it is we who stamp out all originality from our students. Instead of helping them towards a discovery, we tell them in all matters what others have discovered and assure them that it is what they would also find if they made the attempt by themselves. Is this a way of inciting them to inquiry and originality?

It is by its best individuals that a society progresses. This fact is becoming gradually recognized and the need for inventive and creative minds increasingly felt as a consequence of the importance taken by research and discovery in all scientific fields. Non-conformism and originality are no longer shunned or ridiculed; they may be indications of a creative capacity and genius. If we want to discover such gifted minds and help them to develop, we should make our education itself a creation, and that at all stages, from the primary to the graduation level. Invention and creation would then become natural and spontaneous.

Moreover, we should remember that, according to some psychologists, the destructive instinct in man results from a deviation of unemployed creative energy. This would explain the anti-social and destructive behaviour of young people when deprived of an outlet for their creative urge.

It is thought that the pre-natal growth of the child recapitulates, so to say, the whole process of biological evolution in general, from the simplest forms of life up to the human type. Should not education in the same way but more broadly enable the child to recapitulate in his own creative experience the whole process of civilization? Thus would culture have a firm foundation and grow during the whole lifetime.

Another point which we have to consider is the range of

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the faculties which mental education should cover.

In the intellect, or buddhi, which is the real instrument of thought and that which orders and organizes the knowledge acquired by the other parts of the mental machine, Sri Aurobindo conveniently distinguishes

. . . . several groups of functions, divisible into two important classes, the functions and faculties of the right-hand, the functions and faculties of the left-hand The faculties of the right-hand are comprehensive, creative and synthetic; the faculties of the left-hand critical and analytic. To the right hand belong judgment, imagination, memory, observation to the left-hand comparison and reasoning. The critical faculties distinguish, compare, classify, generalise, deduce infer, conclude; they are the component parts of the logical reason. The right-hand faculties comprehend, command judge in their own right, grasp, hold and manipulate. right -hand mind is the master of the knowledge, the left-hand its servant. The left-hand touches only the body knowledge, the right-hand penetrates its soul. The left-hand limits itself to ascertained truth, the right-hand grasps that which is still elusive or unascertained. Both are essential the completeness of the human reason These important functions of the machine have all to be raised to their highest and finest working-power, if the education of the child is not to be imperfect and one- sided.32

Sri Aurobindo adds that there is another layer of faculty which,

... .not as yet entirely developed in man, is attaining gradually to a wider development and more perfect evolution The powers peculiar to this highest stratum of knowledge are chiefly known to us from the phenomena of genius, sovereign discernment, intuitive perception of truth, plenary inspiration of speech, direct vision of knowledge to an extent often amounting to revelation, making a man a prophet of

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truth These powers are rare in their higher development, though many possess them imperfectly or by flashes. They are still greatly distrusted by the critical reason of mankind because of the admixture of error, caprice and a biased imagination which obstructs and distorts their perfect workings. Yet it is clear that humanity could not have advanced to its present stage if it had not been for the help of these faculties, and it is a question with which educationists have not yet grappled, what is to be done with this mighty and baffling element, the element of genius in the pupil. The mere instructor does his best to discourage and stifle genius, the more liberal teacher welcomes it.33

The way to deal with such cases is the way we have already advocated:

Here, as in all educational operations, (the teacher) can only put the growing soul into the way of its own perfection.34

It is customary to divide education between the "humanities" and "science". The term "humanities" has come to mean nowadays a set of certain branches of knowledge: literature, philosophy, history, sociology, etc., while "science" is restricted to mathematics, physical and natural sciences, and the various parts of applied science, such as engineering. This classification may seem to some extent related to the division of faculties between what Sri Aurobindo has called the right-hand faculties and the left- hand faculties, according to the faculty or faculties that predominate. But a deeper look shows that each branch of knowledge puts a demand on both classes of faculties (although in various proportions) and, as Sri Aurobindo has rightly pointed out, the two classes are complementary and both are necessary. It is therefore idle to oppose the humanities and science on this ground. There is no superior or inferior branch of knowledge. It is a question of personal interest and capacity, and also of general demand at the time

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considered. Moreover, one may note that the division between the humanities and science is somewhat arbitrary pure mathematics is sometimes included in the Arts Course, the gap between psychology and physiology is vanishing rapidly, and the introduction of scientific methods in psychology, sociology, economics, history, has earned for them the name of "human sciences" (or "sciences of man").

But there is something more behind the common opposition between the humanities and science. The term "humanities" was initially equivalent to "classical studies" and it was introduced in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to describe a conception of education common to all cultural men of that time. Its characteristics were

1. the idea that an encyclopaedic knowledge is possible knowledge to which "nothing human is alien";

2. the recourse to the lives, deeds and written words of great men of the past as a source of inspiration and a means of building up the moral character;

3. the study of the classical languages, Greek, Latin, and we may add Sanskrit, Persian and Chinese, for this conception of education is not limited to the West, - as an instrument of training the mind.

This approach of education was mostly literary and it suited the conditions of society when science was in its infancy and technology still dormant. It had probably been formulated as a protection against the disruptive effect of a budding scientific thought and outlook. Secondary education in France was for long divided into “classical" and "modern". The fact is that classical studies have nowadays fallen into disfavour and they are even considered as obsolete by a number of scientists. Many thinkers however would regard their abandonment as a calamity because they do not believe other studies can inculcate so effectively the finer qualities in man. Truly the results were remarkable, They gave to the mind power and discrimination and to the character a humane disposition of great value :nobility and a wide and generous understanding.

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But conditions have changed. Science has invaded the field of knowledge and has inflated it to such an extent that an encyclopaedic attitude is no longer possible. Moreover the technological progress is altering the face of the world so rapidly that the conception and ideals of the past seem hardly to befit our present life. Finally, it is clear that the vast range of scientific studies, i.e., mathematics, the numerous physical, natural and human sciences, and engineering also, offer means of training the mind at least as complete and effective as the grammatical subtleties and literary graces of the classical languages. If we add to these reasons growing need for scientists and technicians, the gradual abandonment of the humanities will be easy to understand,

The cry for a synthesis humanities and science comes from the wish to find a remedy to this situation. Is such a synthesis possible, and how? It is certainly not by a juxtaposition or an amalgamation of the two conceptions that it can be achieved. If our analysis is correct, such a unification can only be accomplished by linking in one great movement the past with the future, by showing that the future conceals and is pregnant with all that has been prized by the great men of the past, and that the ideals of the past will find their realization in the future, here upon earth. In this new vision the various branches of knowledge would not be classified into opposing factions. A grouping of the branches may be done for convenience's sake, with regard to their interconnexion. But, whether their object is the study of man or of nature, they are all legitimate studies of the One in its multitudinous manifestations. Past, present and future are but phases of a single movement.35

The study of classical languages and their literature would not disappear. It is bound to lose - it has already lost – the position it has for long occupied as an all-sufficient instrument of education. But it should retain its due place as a separate and independent branch of knowledge. Moreover literature - poetry as well as prose - would also continue to

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have a place - a reduced but appropriate place - in the general education, as a part of our cultural inheritance and for the appreciation of beauty they bestow, especially in showing how great ideas and ideals have been perceived. given shape and infused into the human mind and life as promises for the future. The great masterpieces, whether in literature or the fine arts, are immortal landmarks of the Spirit. In this vision the longings of the heart as well as the promptings of the mind would both find their harmonious blending and their ultimate satisfaction.

The Psychic and the Spiritual Education

Till now we have dealt with the education which can be given to all children born upon earth; it is concerned will purely human faculties. But, as The Mother says, one need not stop there:

Every human being carries hidden within him the possibilities of a greater consciousness beyond the frame of his normal life through which he can participate in a higher and vaster life. Indeed, in all exceptional beings it is always this consciousness that governs their life, and organises both the circumstances of their life and their individual reaction these circumstances. What the human mind does not know and cannot do, this consciousness knows and does. It is like a light that shines at the centre of the being radiating through the thick covering of external consciousness. Some have vague perception of its presence; a good many children are under its influence which shows itself very distinctly at times in their spontaneous reactions and even in their words…. With psychic education we come to the problem of the motive of life, the reason of our existence upon earth, very discovery to which life must lead and the result of that discovery, the consecration of the individual to his eternal principle. This discovery very generally is associated with mystic feeling, a religious life, because it is religions particularly

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that have been occupied with this aspect of life. But it need not be necessarily so: the mystic notion of God may be replaced by the more philosophical notion of truth and still the discovery will remain essentially the same, only the road leading to it may be taken even by the most intransigent positivist. For mental notions and ideas possess a very secondary importance in preparing one for the psychic life. The important thing is to live the experience: for it carries its own reality and force apart from any theory that may precede or accompany or follow it, because most often theories are mere explanations that are given to oneself in order to have more or less the illusion of knowledge. Man clothes the ideal or the absolute he seeks to attain with different names according to the environment in which he is born and the education he has received. The experience is essentially the same, if it is sincere: it is only the words and phrases in which it is formulated that differ according to the belief and the mental education of the person who experiences. All formulation is only an approximation that should be progressive and grow in precision as the experience itself becomes more and more precise and coordinated. Still, if we are to give a general outline of psychic education, we must have an idea, however relative it may be, of what we mean by the psychic being. Thus one can say, for example, that the creation of an individual being is the result of the projection, in time and space, of one of the countless possibilities latent in the Supreme Origin of all manifestation which, through the one and universal consciousness, is concretised in the law or the truth of an individual and so becomes by a progressive growth its soul or psychic being.36

This definition of the psychic being will be sufficient for our purpose. "Psychic" means "belonging to the soul, or psyche”. The psychic being is a conscious form of the Divine growing in the evolution.

It is through the psychic presence that the truth of an

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individual being comes into contact with him circumstances of his life. In most cases this presence act to say, from behind the veil, unrecognised and unknown; but in some, it is perceptible and its action recognisable; in a few among these, again, the presence becomes tangible and its. action quite effective. These go forward in their life with an assurance and a certitude all their own, they are masters off their destiny.37

Sri Aurobindo expresses the same idea in this way:

.... the true central being is the soul, but this being stand; back and in most human natures is only the secret witness or, one might say constitutional ruler who allows his minister to rule for him, delegates to them his empire, silently assent to their decisions and only now and then puts in a won , which they can at any moment override and act otherwise. But this is so long as the soul personality put forward by the psychic entity is not yet sufficiently developed; when this is strong enough for the inner entity to impose itself through it then the soul can come forward and control the nature. It is by the coming forward of this true monarch and his taking up of the reins of government that there can take place a real harmonisation of our being and our life.38

The importance in education of the discovery of the soul is shown by Sri Aurobindo when, speaking of new educational trends evidenced by the experiments carried out in various countries, he says:

The discovery that education must be a bringing out of the child's own intellectual and moral capacities to their highest possible value and must be based on the psychology of the child-nature was a step forward towards a more healthy because a more subjective system; but it still fell short because it still regarded him as an object to be handled and moulded by the teacher, to be educated. But at least there

was a glimmering of the realisation that each human being is a self-developing soul and that the business of both parent and teacher is to enable and to help the child to educate himself, to develop his own intellectual, moral, aesthetic and practical capacities and to grow freely as an organic being, not to be kneaded and pressured into form like an inert plastic material. It is not yet realised what this soul is or that the true secret, whether with child or man, is to help him to find his deeper self, the real psychic entity within. That, if we ever give chance to come forward, and still more if we call it into the foreground as "the leader of the march set in our front", will itself take up most of the business of education out of our hands and develop the capacity of the psychological being towards a realisation of its potentialities of which our present mechanical view of life and man and external routine methods of dealing with them prevent us from having any experience or forming any conception. These new educational methods are on the straight way to this truer dealing. The closer touch attempted with the psychical entity behind the vital and physical mentality and an increasing reliance on its possibilities must lead to the ultimate discovery that man is inwardly a soul and a conscious power of the Divine and that the evocation of this real man within is the right object of education and indeed of all human life if it would find and live according to the hidden Truth and deepest law of its own being.39

The discovery of the soul, the real man within, is truly the first great goal of human life. Education can and should give a good start in the right direction. But the discovery is a matter of personal effort and aspiration:

The great resolution, a strong will and an untiring perseverance are indispensable to reach the goal. Each one must, so to say, chalk out his own path through his own difficulties. The goal is known to some extent;-for, most of those who have reached it, have described it more or less clearly. But

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the supreme value of the discovery lies in its spontaneity, the genuineness: that escapes all ordinary mental laws. And this is why anyone wanting to take up the adventure, usually seeks at first some person who has gone through it successfully and is able to sustain him and show him the way. Yet there are some solitary travellers and for them a few general indications may be useful. 40

Here are the first indications which The Mother gives to a young seeker:

The starting-point is to seek in yourself that which is independent of the body and the circumstances of life, which is not born of the mental formation that you have been given the language you speak, the habits and customs of the environment in which you live, the country where you are born or the age to which you belong. You must find, in the depths of your being, that which carries in it the sense of universality, limitless expansion, termless continuity. Then you decentralise, spread out, enlarge yourself; you begin to live in everything and in all beings; the barriers separating an individuals from each other break down. You think in their thoughts, vibrate in their sensations, you feel in their feelings, you live in the life of all. What seemed inert suddenly becomes full of life, stones quicken, plants feel and will and suffer, animals speak in a language more or less inarticulate, but clear and expressive; everything is animated with a marvellous consciousness without time and limit. And this is only one aspect of the psychic realisation. There are many others. All combine in pulling you out of the barriers of your egoism, the walls of your external personality, the impotence of your reactions and the incapacity of your will.

But. . . the path to come to that realisation is long and difficult, strewn with traps and problems and to face them demands a determination that must be equal to all test and trial. It is like the explorer's journey through virgin forest quest of an unknown land, towards a great discovery. The

psychic being is also a great discovery to be made requiring as much fortitude and endurance as the discovery of new continents.41

Still this is the destiny of man and it is an enormous advantage to know that we are each of us moving towards this aim, overtly or secretly, consciously or unconsciously, through many zigzags and many failures, and that we shall succeed in the end. The certitude completely changes our outlook and generates confidence, strength and peace.

Never forget the purpose and the goal of your life. The will for the great discovery should be always there soaring over you, above what you do and what you are, like a huge bird of light dominating all the movements of your being.

Before the untiring persistence of your effort, an inner door will open suddenly and you will come out into a dazzling splendour that will bring to you the certitude of immortality, the concrete experience that you have lived always and shall live, that the external forms alone perish and that these forms are, in relation to what you are in reality, like clothes that are thrown away when worn out. Then you will stand erect freed from all chains and instead of advancing with difficulty under the load of circumstances imposed upon you by nature, borne and suffered by you, you can, if you do not want to be crushed under them, walk on straight and firm, conscious of your destiny, master of your life.42

This release from all slavery to the flesh, this liberation from all personal attachment is not the last fulfilment. There are other steps before one can reach the summit of the psychic realization. Then comes the spiritual realization, which opens the gates of the future.

The Mother puts the question:

Why is it necessary to make a distinction between the psychic

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education of which we have just now spoken and spiritual education of which we are going to speak presently It is necessary because the two are usually mixed up under the generic name 'yogic discipline', although the goal they aim at is very different in each case: for one, it is a higher realisation upon earth, for the other, an escape from earthly manifestation, even away from the whole universe, a return to the unmanifest.

So one can say that the psychic life is the life immortal, endless time, limitless space, ever-progressive change, broken continuity in the world of forms. The spiritual consciousness, on the other hand, means to live the infinite and eternal, to throw oneself outside all creation, beyond time and space. To become fully aware of your psychic being and to live a psychic life you must abolish in you selfishness; but to live a spiritual life you must be selfless.

Here also in spiritual education, the goal you set before you will assume, in the mind's formulation of it, different names according to the environment in which you have grown, the path you have followed and the affinities of your temperament. If you have a religious tendency you will call it God and your spiritual effort will be towards identification with the transcendent God beyond all form, in opposition the Immanent God dwelling in each form. Others will call it the Absolute, the Supreme Origin, others again, Nirvanas, yet others who view the world as an unreal illusion will name it the Only Reality and to those who regard all manifestation as falsehood it will be the Sole Truth. And everyone of these definitions contains an element of truth, but all are incomplete, expressing only one aspect of what is. Here also the mental formulation has no great importance and once you go beyond the intermediate steps, it is always the same experience. In any case, the most effective starting-point, the swiftest method is total self-surrender. Besides, no joy more perfect than that of a total self-surrender to the highest point your conception can reach: for some it is the notion of God, for others that of Perfection. If this surrender is made

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with persistence and ardour, a moment comes when you go beyond the concept and arrive at an experience that escapes all description, but which is almost always identical in its effect on the being. As your surrender becomes more and more perfect and integral, it will carry with it the aspiration for identification, a total fusion with That to which you have given yourself, and little by little this aspiration will overcome all difficulties and all resistances, especially if the aspiration has, added to it, an intense and spontaneous love; then nothing can stand in the way of its victorious onset.43

The merging into the Absolute, the Formless, is the supreme liberation - Nirvana, Moksha which has been presented as the highest goal of human endeavour. But does it give a satisfactory meaning to this terrestrial existence?

(Moreover] a liberation that leaves the world as it is and does in no way affect the conditions of life from which others suffer, cannot satisfy those who refuse to live a felicity which they alone enjoy, and who dream of a world more worthy of the splendours that hide behind its apparent disorder and general misery. They dream that others should profit by the wonders they have discovered in their inner explorations. And the means to do so is within their reach, now that they have arrived at the summit of their ascent.44

The Mother then speaks of what is the core of Sri Aurobindo's message:

From beyond the frontiers of form, a new force can be evoked, a power of consciousness which has not yet manifested and which, by its emergence, will be able to change the course of things and bring to birth a new world. For the true solution of the problem of suffering, ignorance and death is not the individual escape by self-annihilation from earthly miseries into the non-manifest, nor a problematical collective escape from universal suffering by an integral and

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final return of the creation to its creator, thus curing the universe by abolishing it, but a transformation, a total transfiguration of matter brought about by the logical continuation of Nature's ascending march in her progress towards perfection, by the creation of a new species that will be in relation to man what man is in relation to the animal and that will manifest upon earth a new force, a new consciousness and a new power.45

And The Mother hints at the future education, when she adds:

Then will begin also a new education which can be called the supramental education; it will, by its all-powerful action work not only upon the consciousness of individual beings, but upon the very substance of which they are built and upon the environment in which they live.

Contrary to the type of education we have spoken of hitherto that progresses from below upward through an ascending movement of the different parts of the being, the supramental education will progress from above downward, its influence spreading from one state of being to another till the final state, the physical, is reached. This last transformation will happen in a visible manner only when the inner states of being have already been considerably transformed. It would be therefore quite unreasonable to try to judge the presence of the supramental by physical appearances. The physical is the last to change and the supramental force can be at work in a being long before something of it becomes perceptible in the life of the body.

In brief, one can say that the supramental education will result not merely in a progressively developing formation of the human nature, an increasing growth of its latent faculties, but in a transformation of the nature itself, a transformation of the being in its entirety, a new ascent of the species above and beyond man towards superman, leading in the end to the appearance, of the divine race upon earth.46

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Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education

In the foregoing pages I have shown that, if education is to prepare humanity for its future and meet the needs of a rapidly evolving world, it must be based on a clear conception of the true aim of human life, both individual and collective. And I have tried to show that the comprehensive views of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother give a complete answer to this problem.

The Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education is tentatively trying to translate this ideal into practice, but does not in any way claim to have realized it. The ideal we have accepted, it is towards it that we move with our faith and devotion. But we are still very far from it and its very comprehensiveness makes us more conscious of our limitations; we know that we are only at the beginning of the way and that, to be really worthy of collaborating in this great endeavour, we have first to transform ourselves.

I shall now, and this is the end of this essay, enumerate a few specific conditions in which the Centre functions and which have proved useful for the work that we are carrying on.

There is first what we may call the homogeneity of the school population. Most of the students are children of disciples of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother and, whether they live in hostels or with their families in the Ashram, they have been brought up and are continuing to live in an environment suited to our ideals. Too often, outside, the work of the educator is hampered by the conditions, physical or otherwise, which the child finds at home.

Secondly, there is a continuity of education from the Kindergarten till the end of the studies. The students remain in the Centre for ten to fifteen years and they may, if they so choose, live afterwards in the Ashram, which truly offers them a suitable field in practically all lines of human activity.

Thirdly, the Centre of Education is a part of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, its extension, so to say, in the educational

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field. The life of the children is intimately interwoven with the Ashram life, in which very often they have parents or relatives. This fact, coupled with the first two points, means that they live in a community which is a big family, which the relations are peaceful and loving. Young and old mix freely, without any complex of superiority or inferiority.

The community provides each of its members with what he requires for his growth according to his nature. This one of the reasons why the Ashram has developed into such a complex organism, with many departments and services workshops, farms, and with a number of commercial industrial undertakings attached to it.

Fourthly, the Centre of Education is international in practice and not only in name. This is in accordance with Sri Aurobindo's conception that unity manifests in diversity without losing its unifying oneness. The students as well as the teachers are from all parts of India and from man countries abroad, without any distinction of sex, race, creed or caste. Most of the Indian languages are taught, as also several foreign languages. The cultures of different nations are made accessible not merely intellectually in ideas principles and languages, but also vitally in habits and customs, in art under all forms - painting, sculpture, music dance, architecture and decoration - and physically in dress games and sports. Shows, exhibitions and films are used extensively for this purpose.

[The aim is] to help individuals to become conscious of the fundamental genius of the nation to which they belong and at the same time to put them in contact with the modes of living of other nations so that they may know and respect equally the true spirit of all the countries upon earth. For all the countries upon earth. For all world organisation, to be real and to be able to live, must be based upon mutual respect and understanding between nation and nation as well as between individual and individual.47

All these conditions are eminently favourable to a work.

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which we consider as an experiment in education. When a biologist wants to produce certain results, he selects the favourable conditions and protects his strain from influences which would hinder or prevent success. The wisdom and protection of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother have acted with us in a similar way.

But above all these favourable conditions there is the towering presence of The Mother. She is not only the organizer who directs and harmonizes our effort, but she is the guide, the Guru, the incarnation of the Divine Mother, to whom all, children and parents, students and teachers, girls and boys, come with love and confidence, for advice, help, strength, comfort and peace.

*

The Students' Prayer

Make of us the hero warriors we. aspire to become.

May we fight successfully the great battle of the future

that is to be born against the past that seeks to endure;

so that the new things may be manifest and we may be

ready to receive them.48

The Mother

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