Centre of International Research in Human Unity (CIRHU) Auroville

Auroville was founded on 28 February 1968 with the declaration of the Charter announced by The Mother which, inter alia, underlined the aims of unending education, bridging the past and the future, and promoting material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity.

Centre of international research in human unity

(For consideration, suggestions, modifications, enrichment)

INTRODUCTION

Auroville was founded on 28 February 1968 with the declaration of the Charter announced by The Mother which, inter alia, underlined the aims of unending education, bridging the past and the future, and promoting material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual human unity.

In 1984, Auroville established Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research, which has been recognised by the Ministry of Human Resource Development as an All India Institution of Higher Learning. This Institute has a long-ranging programme that seeks to fulfil the aims of education and human unity that are envisaged in the Charter of Auroville.

Teachers and researchers of this Institute have, during the last fifteen years, conducted numerous experiments which are focussed on the problems that relate to primary and secondary levels of’ education. These experiments have promoted new methodologies of education, particularly those of "free progress system". It has undertaken innovative programmes such as those of interdisciplinary studies, poetry; art and music and body awareness. This Institute has also conducted research in some of the most fundamental themes of education that are relevant to all levels of education. The central question that has been raised in this research is as to what are the essential elements that every individual needs to study in order to attain true humanhood. Two publications which have become famous all over the country are "The Aim of Life" and the ’The Good Teacher and The Good Pupil". The Institute proposes to continue this line of research and bring out further publications.

A stage has, however, been reached where research pertaining to higher education can now be undertaken. A good deal of thinking has already been done at Auroville so as to determine the areas in which higher education should be concentrated. Since the ideal of human unity is being fostered in Auroville, it seems that university level education and educational research should be focussed on the theme of human unity. At the same time, since this theme is very vast, and since it is also being pursued in several other international universities, it has been felt that this theme should be focussed at Auroville on certain special subjects, with their own unique features. These unique features arise naturally from the fact that Sri Aurobindo has written a very important book entitled "The Ideal of Human Unity", and this subject has also been dealt with in his other works such as "The Life Divine", "The Human Cycle" and "The Foundation of Indian Culture". Besides, Sri Aurobindo has shown how evolution has at present reached a critical stage, where the, actualisation of human unity has become inevitable. He has also underlined the necessity of laying the foundation of the human unity on the necessity of spiritual transformation leading up to spiritual mutation of humanity into the next species.

Another factor which will, give other unique features in the proposed programme result from the expertise that is already being developed in Auroville, as also from the experiments which are already being conducted at Auroville.

A still further relevant factor is the design to establish in Auroville an international zone, which will consist of cultural pavilions of various nations of the world.

It is also envisaged that the proposed research will seek international collaboration and promote the establishment of assembly of scholars belonging to different countries and cultures.

The very nature of research will, therefore, be international in character.

In view of these considerations, it is proposed to set up a Centre, which will be called "The Centre of International Research in Human Unity" (CIRHU).

CONCEPT

The concept of the proposed Centre rests upon four needs:

1. Need to deepen, widen and heighten the tasks of higher levels of educational research;

2. Need to harness expertise, scholarship and professional experience, which are already available in Auroville, as also to invite such help that can be available from relevant institutions in the country and in the world as also from visiting scholars and teachers;

3. Need to give a more concrete shape to the growing understanding of the’ concept’ of human unity that underlies the Charter of Auroville; and
4. Need to provide suitable environment and programme of higher education to the^-students of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Educational Research.

The Centre will have interdisciplinary approach as it is appropriate to the theme of human unity. In Sri Aurobindo’s vision; human unity is a necessary step in the e^volutionary progression of humanity; and thus it is closely tied with a larger interdisciplinary theme of evolution.

FACULTIES

The Centre will have seven Faculties with organic relationship among themselves and with a Central Faculty.

The Central Faculty will reflect vast interdisciplinarity, and it will receive from other Faculties results of their specific themes of research and also promote them by a process of interchange and enrichment.

This Faculty will constitute the Sri Aurobindo World Centre for Human Unity (SAWCHU), which has begun to be organised at Auroville in 1999, as a part of the celebration of Sri Aurobindo’s 125th Birth Anniversary.

This Central faculty will have five major themes of research:

• Evolution;
• Synthesis of Knowledge;
• Synthesis of Culture;
• Human Unity and
• Next Species

There will be seven other Faculties, which are conceived to be supporting Faculties, and the will concentrate upon different aspects that are relevant to the theme of human unity in the context of evolutionary progression. These seven Faculties will be as follows: "

1. Faculty of Indian Culture and Human Unity;
2. Faculty^- of ^-East, West and Human Unity;
3. Faculty of Education for Human Unity^-,
4. Faculty of Arts, Crafts and Technologies;
5. Faculty of Synthesis of Knowledge;
6. Faculty of Futuristic Sociology and Business Management; and
7. Faculty of Studies in Sri Aurobindo and The Mother

In due course, new Faculties will be added, along with their respective departments and sections.

METHODS OF RESEARCH

Methods of research will not be merely theoretical and ideative but they will centrally be experiential and experimental, and will aim at concrete realisations.

An important aspect of the study of the theme of human unity will be to create in the international zone cultural pavilions representing different cultures’ of the nations of the world with special emphasis on provisions that would transmit to the students the messages of these cultures in a living, creative and experiential manner.

RESULTS OF RESEARCH

The results of research will be made available in the form of monographs, treatises; reference books, textbooks and teaching-learning materials, as also in the form of slides, film strips, full-length films and in the forms which can be adapted for the dramatic performances and other creative methods of learning and teaching.

EXTERNAL RELATIONS

The Centre will establish contacts and relationships with international universities, international schools and other international organisations in India and in the world as also with such departments of educational and cultural institutions, which are engaged in studies which are relevant to the aims and objects of the Centre.

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH

With the increasing support, academic and financial, the Centre aims to promote what may truly be regarded as international research. Not only will Faculties have scholars representing different languages and cultures of the world, there will also be encouragement to develop a system of international fellowships and international exchange of students and teachers so as to foster a vast programme of collaboration in the fields of studies and experiments in human unity.

FACILITIES

It is envisaged to have for this Centre a suitable building with a central- conference room with a capacity for 2000 people, and a number of seminar halls, exhibition halls, committee ^-rooms, classrooms, laboratories, central and departmental libraries; hostels and canteens. Other facilities will also be provided in this building which will promote new methods of student centred teaching-learning. In due course, a printing press also will be added.

Residential quarters will be provided to the members of the teams of researchers as also for the members of the administrative staff. The Centre will develop programmes for training of teachers in international understanding, peace and human unity. For this purpose, the Centre will provide facilities for teachers under training to study and participate in the research programmes of the Centre. Other suitable facilities will also be made available to them.

Development of this Centre will be gradual and will be so phased as to encourage increasing help from the Ministry of Human Resource Development and various other national and international agencies.

PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE

The Centre will not encourage studies for the sake of passing examinations and obtaining certificates/diplomas and degrees; it will aim at the pursuit of knowledge and development of the qualities of heroism and courage, of harmony and mutuality, and faculties and skills, — theoretical, practical and technical.

Students will be trained in the science and art of synthesis and interdisciplinary studies; they will have freedom of choice in regard to the selection of the subjects which are pursued in different Faculties and combine them meaningfully under the guidance of researchers and teachers. Emphasis will be laid on self-help, although requisite help will be available to them through lectures, seminars, group-classes, audio-visual teaching-learning materials, and innovative processes of testing and evaluation that will encourage integral development of personality.

ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN OF THE CENTRE

The architectural design and relevant details are being developed.

OVERVIEW OF THE THEMES OF RESEARCH

An outline analysis that will give an overview of the thrusts of the research work of the Centre is given below:

CENTRAL FACULTY OF RESEARCH IN HUMAN UNITY

Major Themes of Research:

l. Evolution

Theories of Evolution, Spiritual Evolution, Human Progress, Contemporary Evolutionary Crisis, Unity and Diversity; Human Unity, Towards the Next Species

2. Synthesis of Knowledge:

Ancient synthesis of Knowledge: Veda, Upanishads, Gita; other systems of synthesis of the past; Science and Modern Knowledge; Need for a new Synthesis; Integral Philosophy; Integral Yoga; New Synthesis of Knowledge and Human Unity.

3. Synthesis of Culture:

History of Religions; Ethical, Aesthetic and Rational Cultures; Contemporary Internationalism; Humanism; Necessity of Spiritual Transformation, Development of Spiritual Culture, Cultural Diversity and Unity; World Culture and Human Unity

4. Human-Unity:

State, Nationalism and World Union of free Nations; New forms of Political, Social and Economic Organisation; Ideals of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, League of Nations and its Failure; United Nations Organisation; Latest Developments; Towards Actual Human Unity

5. Next Species:

Concepts of Human Unity and Superhumanly; Supramental Being and Next Species; Experiments in the birth and development of the Next Species; Sri Aurobindo and The Mother: Their Experiments and Realisations for Human Evolution, Human Unity and the Next Species Concepts of Human Unity and Superhumanly; Supramental Being and Next Species; Experiments in the birth and development of the Next Species; Sri Aurobindo and The Mother: Their Experiments and Realisations for Human Evolution, Human Unity and the Next Species

OTHER FACULTIES

A. Faculty of Indian Culture and Human Unity Major Themes of Research:

1. Indian Religion and Spirituality; Dharma and Social organisation; Yoga
2. Indian Art
3. Indian Literature
4. Indian Philosophy
5. Science and Technology in India
6. Indian Polity
7. Renaissance of Indian Culture
8. India and the World
9. Lessons of Indian Experience for Human Unity

B. Faculty of East, West and Human Unity Major Themes of Research:

1. Common and Divergent Experiences of the East and the West: The Problem of Synthesis
2. Concepts of Civilisation and Culture
3. Pursuit of, Truth, Beauty and Goodness in Eastern and Western Cultures
4. Pursuit of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity in Eastern and Western Cultures
5. Problems of Cultural and Political Unity in the East and in the West
6. Evolutionary and Revolutionary Movements in the East and in the West: Their contributions to Human Progress
7. Contemporary Trends towards Planetary Civilisation: Problems and Quest for Solutions

• Science and Technology

• Arts and Crafts

• Humanistic Thought

• Law, Constitutions and International Judiciary,

• War and Peace

• Globalisation: Economic and Commercial Trends, Monetary Systems, Industrial Trends, Trends in Communication

• Conflict of Religions, Races and Cultural Prejudices

• Science and Spirituality

• Concepts of the Centralised World-State and Federation of Free Nations in a World-Union

• Ideal of Durable Peace, Harmony and Unity

• Ideal of Individual and Collective Perfectibility

C. Faculty of Education for Human Unity

Major Themes of Research:

1. Education for International Understanding, Peace and Human Unity
2. Methods and Contents of Complete Education for the Complete Human Being:

• Physical Education
• Vital Education
• Mental Education
• Psychic and Spiritual Education

1. Education for the Future

• Education for New Humanity striving for Human Unity
• Supramental Education

1. Specific Themes of Teaching and Learning:

• Languages;
• Sciences;
• Arts, Crafts and Technologies;
• Humanities;

Specific Themes to Aid Training of Teachers:

• Education for International Understanding, Peace and Human Unity
• Educational Innovations and Reforms
• The Aim of Life
• The Good Teacher and The Good Pupil
• Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body
• Stories of Heroism, Harmony and Illumination
• Mind and its Powers: Rational, Ethical, Aesthetic. Cosmic and Transcendental
• Concept of Divine Life and Education for Integral Science of Living

D. Faculty of Arts, Crafts and Technologies

Major Themes of Research:

1. Aesthetic Experiences and Artistic Expressions
2. Poetry; Theme of Future Poetry
3. Painting, Music and Dance; Theme of Universal Languages
4. Theatre and Cinema; Theme of Integration of arts, crafts and technologies
5. Art of Exhibition
6. Architecture and Planning; Problems of Rural and Urban Development for Humane Culture with special reference to:

• a) Environmental Protection;

• b) Afforestation;

• c) Alternative Sources of Energy;

• d) Urban Centres for Helping Villagers in integral development of villages

1. Arts and Crafts: Their Interrelationship; Creativity and Productivity
2. Arts and Crafts; Role of Techniques and Machines
3. Science and Technology
4. Technologies and Perils of Mechanisation
5. Training in Specific Arts
6. Training in Specific Crafts
7. Training in Specific Technologies
8. Role of Arts, Crafts and Technologies in promoting human unity
9. Arts and Crafts of the Future; the Supra-rational in the pursuit of Beauty

E. Faculty of Synthesis of Knowledge

Major Themes of Research:

1. Ancient and Medieval Systems of Synthesis;
2. Concepts of Modernity and Post-modernity
3. Nature and Methods of Scientific Knowledge
4. Nature and Methodology of Critical Knowledge
5. Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge
6. Frontiers of Logical, Mathematical and Philosophical Thought
7. Contemporary concerns_. of Biological and Medical Sciences: Quest for Alternative systems of Healthcare and Longevity; Quest for Human Bioengineering; Ethical Issues
8. Science, Ethics, Law and Religion in the current trends of thought: Conflicts and Quest for Resolution of Conflicts .
9. Yoga as Science
10. Emergence of Interdisciplinarity: Problems and Quest for Solutions
11. Emergence of the Theme of Consciousness:

• Importance of Psychology
• Psychical Research
• Higher States of Consciousness
• Relevance of Consciousness in Physical Sciences
• Yogic Knowledge of Matter, Life, Mind and Spirit

1. Contemporary Research for the Recovery of Ancient and Medieval Knowledge
2. Need for a New Synthesis of Knowledge
3. Sri Aurobindo’s contributions to the contemporary Synthesis of Knowledge
4. Synthesis of-Knowledge and Human Unity

F. Faculty of Futuristic Sociology and Business Management:

Major Themes of Research:

1. Society and its Unity;
2. Society, Civilisation and Culture;
3. Stages of Social Development; Infra-rational stage, Rational Stage, Supra-rational Stage;
4. Utopias: Old and New;
5. Future of Social Development: Advent and Development of Spiritual Age;
6. Advantages and Disadvantages of Economic Models of Capitalism, Communism and Socialism of various types;
7. Need for a New Economy:

• Concepts of a new Economic and World Order;
• Uses and Misuses of Money
• Motivation for Work: Economic, Humanistic, Spiritual
• New Economy for Work for All and Joy of Work, Work for Development of Faculties, Leisure for Inner Growth
• New Economy and Prosperity: Avoidance of Perils of Hugeness of Organisation and Mechanisation of the Human Being
• New Education for New Economy g)Honesty in Business
• Promotion of Universal Fraternity as an aim of Business and Industrial Development

1. Primary Principles of Honest Business Management:

• Aim to promote peace, concord and harmony;
• Utilisation of fighting instincts for conquering the causes of sufferings, weaknesses and ignorance;
• Assignment of Higher Positions in the hierarchy for shouldering higher responsibilities to serve and organise;
• Replacement of competition by relationships of emulation in doing well, of collaboration and real brotherhood;
• Management for Profitability in terms of honest share for risk-taking and organisational responsibilities

1. Training in Honest Business Management;
2. Experiments in Honest Business Management in Auroville;
3. Development of New Economy in Auroville as a Pilot Project;
4. New Forms of Political Organisation;
5. New Forms of International Relationships;
6. Law and Beyond Law;
7. Concept and Practice of Spiritual Anarchism: Relevance of Experiments in Auroville;

Faculty of Studies in Sri Aurobindo and The Mother

Major Themes of Research:

1. Collection of Background Materials required to study the works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, particularly, the following:

• The Life Divine;
• The Synthesis of Yoga;
• The Supramental Manifestation on the Earth
• Mother’s Agenda
• The Ideal of Human Unity;
• The Human Cycle;
• The Foundations of Indian Culture; and
• Savitri

1. Problems of Training Teachers who can impart the contents. of the Works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother to the members of the coming generations.
2. Development of Methods of Research that employ Experience of the Supreme Truth without developing any religion.
3. Research in the development of the next species.

Sri Aurobindo University of Human Unity

Some basic principles of the University.

1. There are no teachers, there are only learners, students on the Path; those who came earlier or those who came later, the old-comers and newcomers, walking the Path of Knowledge ("the learning is what the learner does, it cannot be done to the learner" from progressive education of Vygotsky).

2. All the researchers, who are part of this University, working in different fields, themselves are becoming a field of research. In other words there will be no job opportunities here, nothing will be done here for the sake of maintaining one’s livelihood or the suchlike, but for the sake of transformation of ones consciousness. There will be no professors of Philosophy, Psychology, Linguistics, History, Art etc., but Philosophers, Psychologists, Linguists, Historians, Artists etc., who will share their discoveries with the researchers from the other fields. The knowledge and the process of research will become contagious, it will flame up in everyone as common aspiration and search for the Truth, which is to be realized within ourselves and then in the world.

3. The collaboration and sharing among researchers from different fields will become a common practice and a new mode of learning. Before it can be successfully achieved the fundamental deconstruction of all the major disciplines of the Humanities has to be accomplished; and their reconstruction for a greater synthesis in service of a higher consciousness is to take place.

4. Well structured and organized processes of inter-disciplinary studieswill be based on a self-educational approach. It is in itself a field of research. It will start a new era in the history of humanity, a time of a conscious self-education, answering the demands of the approaching subjective age. It should be well formulated, and made available to all (websites, etc.). The learners will be self-motivated to learn how to think, to see, to speak, to hear, to live, to feel, to apply their will, to concentrate, to memorize, to be in the body, etc. etc.

A) Studies of the faculties of consciousness: Seeing, Hearing, Thinking, Speaking, etc. (within different paradigms of knowledge like Vedic, Western, Semitic, Tibetan, etc.) should be a considerable part of this research.

B) Studies of the Humanities in a systematic way: Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology, Linguistics, Art and Science etc. in their essential qualities corresponding with our essential faculties of consciousness can become another fundamental research of this University.

C) Interdisciplinary studies formed in a special way reflecting the features, style and mode of a particular approach of mental consciousness, such as: philosophical, psychological, historical, linguistics, artistic and scientific, and the abilities to discriminate among them within one’s own application of consciousness and to combine them within one approach, is a solid foundation for a higher education.

University Project

Adhidaiva Section of Education The Aim. The aim of this project is to create a new educational environment for people who want to study the Humanities to educate and develop themselves. It may also serve young Aurovilians who, after graduating from Auroville schools, seek a higher education

The Method. Its method is self-educational. It will map out for the student all the directions of human development and present their essentials and applications in the most coherent and comprehensive way. It will offer the programs for integral education in various fields of knowledge and skills as the complete course of the development of all the faculties of human consciousness.

The Research.

1. Development of an integral studies paradigm that facilitates a comprehensive and universal self-knowledge and world-knowledge.
2. Reconstruction of the major branches of Humanities. Classification of all study materials and introductory overview of their essentials and basics of human studies in the light of Sri Aurobindo and Mother.
3. The overview of all available directions of research and studies within the subject. Make available all necessary materials for self education.
4. The overview of related disciplines, techniques and methods of Self-education available in the world.
5. Collecting and analyzing all available data and the methods of development of major cognitive capacities, related exercises, games, etc., for different age groups.
6. Organising regular seminars and forums as well as open discussions.
7. The discussions on different topics within the major fields of knowledge. For instance Psychology may suggest the topic of "Evolution of Consciousness", and other fields may participate in this forum from their own point of view, bringing out data of their own research on the topic.

The main principles of Adhidaiva education. The main principles are presented in three major streams of cognition, through which we have access to reality according to Sri Aurobindo: Vision, Hearing, Touch, with their active counterparts: Thought, Word, Life respectively, as it is perceived in the old Vedantic texts.

Active Perceptive Self-Knowledge Thought Vision Word Hearing Spirit (Relation) ‒ Knowledge Manifestation ‒ Knowledge Life Body

The first Level: Studies of the faculties of consciousness

The first level is related to the studies of our individual cognitive faculties of consciousness (including senses). Here we are going to learn how to Think, See, Speak, Listen, Feel, and Be in the body more perfectly. It is the most interesting part of research. The courses on "How to Think" and to be conscious in thought, "How to Speak" and to be conscious in Speech, "How to develop mental concentration", "How to develop audio memory" etc. etc., will be prepared and offered to all. Senses are the instrumental part of perception of the faculties of consciousness. To see, for instance, through the sense-organ and to see, by using the cognitive faculty of consciousness, is not the same thing. To develop both: the instruments and the consciousness behind them is the aim of this level of studies. The research in these fields will be constantly upgraded through the input of all researchers working in these fields from all over the world.

The second Level: the Studies of the Humanities

The cognitive faculties of our consciousness and the main subjects of the Humanities have natural corresponding characteristics in our cognition:

1. Psychology deals with our subjective processes of thinking and feeling as such;
2. Philosophy deals with our mental faculty to view objectively and to conceptualize;
3. Linguistics deals with our subjective faculty of speech as such, how we subjectively relate to the world (communication skills);
4. Sociology and History deal with a relationship as such: how the individual and collective relate to one another, on the scale of space (Sociology) or time (History);
5. Art and Culture deal with the subjective refinement of our Life.
6. Science of Nature deals with Matter in the objective way.

Subjective Objective Self- Knowledge Psychology Philosophy Relation- Knowledge Linguistics Sociology Language History Art Manifestation-Culture Knowledge Science

Every key-subject can be combined with another one, giving a new discipline, for instance: Philosophy of Science, Psychology of Art, History of Philosophy, History of Linguistics, etc. Each discipline can have at least six sub-divisions, which makes 36 disciplines. But even these can be multiplied by the same six, for instance: History of Psychology of Art; Philosophy of Language of Art; Language of Art of Nature; etc., which makes it more than hundreds of disciplines.

The map of major key-disciplines:

Psychology Philosophy Science History, Sociology Linguistics Language Art Culture Psychology Psychology Psychology Psychology Psychology of History of Philosophy (of Society) Language (Cognition) Psychology Psychology of Science of Art (of Culture) Philosophy Philosophy of Philosophy Philosophy Psychology of History Philosophy of Science Philosophy of Art History, Sociology History of Psychology History of Philosophy of Language History of Language (Literature, Poetry) History of Science History of Art and Culture Language of Psychology Philosophy Language of History Language (Universal of Grammar) Science Language of Art Science of Nature Science of Psychology Science of Philosophy Science of History Science of Language Science of Art Culture Art of Psychology Art of Philosophy Art of History Art of Language Art of Science

These key-disciplines may include other disciplines in their fields, for instance History of Psychology could include:

1. Mythology of Self-discovery (Vedic Mythology, Egyptian Myths, etc.);
2. History of Occultism and Yoga;
3. History of Religion; and the list is open for many more subjects.

The basic requirements to develop human consciousness on the level of adhidaiva education can be defined as follows:

1. Philosophy. Everyone should have a metaphysical picture of the world. It is a system of mental views and beliefs - a metaphysical paradigm. It includes a hidden hierarchy of understanding of what is first and what is next, what is important and what is less important, and how it constitutes one reality. Without this paradigm the reality cannot be approached in a rational manner.

2. Psychology. Everyone has to know oneself to a certain extent and to have a certain psychological attitude towards the world. This knowledge of oneself usually differs from one’s metaphysical paradigm, though they are largely influencing each other. It is our psychological state that interacts with, correlates, corrects and even changes our mental picture of the world. Without it the reality cannot be approached in a truthful (sincere) manner.

3. Philology. To study and to relate to the world in general, one has to use language. To become conscious of one’s speech (as an intention) and language (as a system of mental categories) and to know how they function is a way to avoid many possible misunderstandings in research as well as in communication. The mastery over language is necessary to build up a metaphysical paradigm in a more comprehensive and truer way. It helps us also to understand ourselves psychologically: how our thoughts and feelings are functioning related to our speech-faculty and how it influences them. Without this understanding no serious research is possible in either field of philosophy or psychology, and the reality (either subjectively or objectively) cannot be dealt with in a correct (precise) manner.

4. Sociology. One has to know one’s roots: history, religion, social and cultural heredity: what state one belongs to, what nation, what community etc. One has to know one’s own past in order to understand one’s present and future, to be firmly grounded in one’s own approach towards the future. This knowledge is wider than our own psychology or even philosophical paradigm. It introduces a knowledge about the relations between individuals and groups in time and space, beyond our reach. It draws our consciousness to a larger reality of community, country, earth, and finally to the universal and cosmic existence. It brings the aspect of the Spirit into the picture, - a larger reality within and without us. It indicates to us that there is a unifying phenomenon: the Space and Time in which we live, and which is common for all of us. Without this knowledge man will not be able to understand his growth and the purpose of his life.

5. Art and Culture. Culture phenomena can be defined as a refinement of our Life in its aspect of Beauty, Harmony, Perfection. It is what the Spirit has already manifested in Life as a result of a long period of evolution. It is what makes us human and civilized. Without it we will be simply barbarians. It is the aim of creation and it is its path. To develop ourselves fully, individually and collectively, we have to learn to feel, to see, to understand and to manifest the Beauty and Harmony, to seek after it, to be it.

6. Science of Nature. Knowledge about matter is indispensable for the understanding of Manifestation. All the changes of thought, form and structure, whether philosophical, psychological, linguistic, social, cultural or scientific, are possible only in matter. Matter is a foundation and embodiment of any change. It is fixing everything to a certain stability, where the change can take place. If matter would not fix every change, the next step would have no meaning, for it would have no ground to manifest this new change.

An approach to systematise and to organise our knowledge into an integral knowledge, where all major cognitive functions and capacities of our consciousness will be exercised bringing about all the particularities, is the aim of this module of self -education. Identifying the source and nature of different studies with their cognitive faculties of consciousness from all possible perspectives, the scholars themselves in their consciousness become the body of research, the field of discovery. Self-education becomes the major method of integral research and knowledge.

The advantages of the Vedantic system of adhidaiva education.

1. The faculties of consciousness are properties of every individual; they do not reflect any cultural, national, philosophical, religious or social characteristics. Training and educating these faculties can be considered as universal education for all, leading eventually to the discovery of the innermost being.

"...the thought of India has always maintained that a human being is 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..." Sri Aurobindo, (SABCL, Vol.17, part 6, p.199)

"The central aim of Knowledge is the recovery of the Self, of our true self-existence" (The Synthesis of Yoga, p.335)

2. Being properties of individual consciousness, the faculties can be easily and with interest studied by all, for it becomes a study of oneself (a note: the EU commission’s report recommended the development of increasing individual knowledge as the only future possibility of social development in the multi- national and multi-cultural environment).

3. It introduces all the Humanities, all fields of objective knowledge, into the subjective studies of individual consciousness. It brings the disciplines of the Humanities, which at present exist in themselves, as it were, closer to the individual self-studies. It is as if the Humanities are not being studied as such but the consciousness of the individual through the Humanities, which makes all the subjects a means to know oneself, and therefore they become interesting.

"Those systems of education which start from an insufficient knowledge of man, think they have provided a satisfactory foundation when they have supplied the student with a large or well-selected mass of information on the various subjects which comprise the best part of human culture at the time. The school gives the materials, it is for the student to use them,- this is the formula. But the error here is fundamental. Information cannot be the foundation of intelligence, it can only be part of the material out of which the knower builds knowledge, the starting-point, the nucleus of fresh discovery and enlarged creation. An education that confines itself to imparting knowledge, is no education." (Sri Aurobindo, (SABCL, Vol.17, part 6, p.331)

4. It also introduces Spirituality in the most concrete way, making it less abstract, imaginative and therefore altogether a doubtful exercise, but a concrete experience of every moment of our life.

"An integral education which could, with some variations, be adapted to all the nations of the world, must bring back the legitimate authority of the Spirit over a matter fully developed and utilised." The Mother, (1965 in reference to the Education Commission, quoted in India and Her Destiny, p.18)

University Project

Adhyatma Section of Education

The Aim. The aim of this section of the project is to provide study materials and to create educational methods and environment which may be conducive and lead aspirants to the discovery of their Psychic being and their higher Self. We can call it the Studies of Consciousness.

The methods and research. The methods are to be developed as self-educational and interactive, involving all activities of man in the discovery of himself, by doing Karma-Yoga. Learning about the psychic qualities of the Mother’s Symbol in their application to everyday life and activities; observing and contemplating the actions of the Supramental Sense and Mind in their fourfold movement of Samjnana-Ajnana-Vijnana-Prajnana, described by Sri Aurobindo, are some of the fundamentals of the Greater Psychology of the future. Conducting research in all available meditative and spiritual practices in the world in order to recognize their practical value for the future development of human consciousness.

The main principles of Adhyatma Education.

1. The main principles of Psychic Education are expressed in the twelve psychic qualities of Sincerity, Humility, Gratitude, Perseverance, Aspiration, Receptivity, Progress, Courage, Goodness, Generosity, Equality and Peace.
2. The Studies of Spiritual Consciousness can be undertaken through the studies of meditation undertaken in various techniques and traditions, and awakening of higher realms of Consciousness.
3. The Studies of "The Synthesis of Yoga" and other writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother related to the topic of the discovery of the Self and the Psychic being; organizing workshops related to those studies.

The studies of the qualities of Psychic Being

(A brief overview)

Sincerity, Satyam

Simple sincerity: the beginning of all progress.

An uncompromising sincerity is the surest way to spiritual achievement. Do not pretend - Be. Do not promise - Act. Do not dream - Realise.

Do you know what perfect sincerity is? Never to try to deceive oneself, never let any part of the being try to find out a way to convincing the others, never to explain favourably what one does in order to have an excuse for what one wants to do, never to close one’s eyes when something is unpleasant, never to let anything pass, telling oneself, "This is not important, next time it will be better."

Oh, it is very difficult. Just try for one hour and you will see how very difficult it is. Only one hours, to be totally, absolutely Sincere. To let nothing pass. That is, all one does, all one feels, all one thinks, all one wants, is exclusively the Divine.

"I want nothing but the Divine. I think of nothing but the Divine. I do nothing but what will lead me to the Divine. I love nothing but the Divine."

Humility, Nati

True humility consists in knowing that the Supreme Consciousness, the Supreme Will alone exists, and that theI is not.

To be humble means for the mind, the vital and the body never to forget that without the Divine they know nothing, are nothing and can do nothing, without the Divine they are nothing but ignorance, chaos and impotence. The Divine alone is Truth, Life, Power, Love, Felicity. Therefore the mind the vital and the body must learn and feel, one and for all, that they are wholly incapable of understanding and judging the Divine, not only in his essence but also in his action and manifestation.

This is the only true humility, and with it come Quiet and Peace. This is also the surest shield against all hostile attack. Indeed, in the human being it is always the door of pride at which the Adversary knocks, for it is this door which opens to let him enter.

Gratitude, Bhakti

A loving recognition of the Grace received from the Divine. A humble recognition of all that the Divine has done and is doing for you. The spontaneous feeling of obligation to the Divine, which makes you do your best to become less unworthy of what the Divine is doing for you.

The nobility of a being is measured by its capacity of Gratitude.

Perseverance, Dhriti

A persevering will surmounts all obstacles.

Perseverance — the decision to go to the very end.

Perseverance is patience in action.

What you are not able to do today, you will achieve tomorrow. Persevere and you shall conquer. Persevere in your aspiration and effort, do not allow yourself to be discouraged by setbacks. This always happens in the beginning. But if you continue to fight without paying any attention to them, a day will come when the resistances give way and the difficulties vanish. It is by persevering that one conquers difficulties, not by running away from them. One who perseveres is sure to triumph. Victory goes to the most enduring. Always do your best and the Lord will take care of the results.

Aspiration, Ishti

True aspiration is not a movement of the mind but of the psychic. It is to the sincerity of your aspiration that the Love answers spontaneously. Let your aspiration leap forward, pure and straight, towards the supreme consciousness which is all joy and all beatitude. Beyond words, above thoughts, the flame of an intense aspiration must always burn, steady and bright.

Receptivity, Buddhi

It is with the widening of the consciousness and the one-pointedness of the aspiration that the receptivity increases.

Surely you are trying more or less consciously to draw the forces and divine love towards you. The method is bad. Give yourself without calculating and without expecting anything in return, and then you will become capable of receiving.

How can we know that we are receptive? When we feel the urge to give and the joy of giving to the Divine’s work, then we can be sure that we have become receptive.

Progress, Riddhi

Try to enjoy doing everything you do. When you are interested in what you do, you enjoy doing it. To be interested in what you do, you must try to do it better and better. In progress lies true joy.

It is true that my force is always with him to help him to do his work; but my force is essentially a force for perfection, and to be able to allow it to work fully, one must have a constant will for progress in the work.

Open yourself more and more to the Divine’s force and your work will progress steadily towards perfection.

Courage, Viryam, Shakti

Courage is a sign of the soul’s nobility. But courage must be calm and master of itself, generous and benevolent. In true courage there is no impatience and no rashness.

Never mistake rashness for courage, nor indifference for patience.

A noblest courage is to recognise one’s faults. There is no greater courage than to be always truthful. Have the courage to be completely frank with the Divine.

Goodness, Svasti

Indeed the good will hidden in all things reveals itself everywhere to the one who carries good will in his consciousness.

This is a constructive way of feeling which leads straight to the Future.

One should keep goodwill and love constantly in his heart and let them pour out upon all with tranquility and with equanimity. Good will for all and good will from all is the basis of peace and harmony. A tireless benevolence, clear-seeing and comprehensive, free from all personal reaction, is the best way to love God and serve Him upon earth. I mean a benevolence sincere and spontaneous in thought and speech and not a supposed benevolence in acts which is accompanied most often by a dreadful sense of condescending superiority serving chiefly as a platform for human vanity.

Generosity, Danam

The effect of the ego... is to shrivel the being. This is the cause of aging, it shrivels you up like a fading flower, it dries you up.... (There is) the difference between the two states, between the person, the individual personal being, turning towards the Lord, imploring Him to reveal His Will, and then this experience of becoming ─ by extending oneself, by opening, enlarging, merging into the creation ─ of becoming the Lord’s Will, the Supreme Will.

Equanimity, Samam

Equanimity: immutable peace and calm.

Tolerance is only the first step towards wisdom. The need to tolerate indicates the presence of preferences. He who lives in the Divine Consciousness regards all things with a perfect equanimity.

In the deep peace of equanimity the love will grow to its full blossoming in a sense of pure and constant unity.

Peace, Shanti

The peace must be immense, the quietness deep and still, the calm unshakable, and the trust in the Divine ever-increasing. It is by a quiet, strong and persistent peace that the true victories can be won.

It is only in tranquility and peace that one can know what is the best thing to do. If you ask from within for peace, it will come. There is no greater peace than that of a pure mind.

The vast peace and calm are there, ready for you to open to them and receive them. Let the vast peace of the divine penetrate you entirely and initiate all your movements. In peace and inner silence you will more and more become conscious of the constant Presence. It is in peace that knowledge and power are truly effective. It is in the most complete peace, serenity and equality that all is the Divine even as the Divine is all.

The Studies of Consciousness

(Some notes, as an example of these studies)

Upanishads speak in the four terms, vijñāna

Vijñāna is the original comprehensive consciousness which holds an image of things at once in its essence, its totality and its parts and properties; it is the original, spontaneous, true and complete view of it which belongs properly to the supermind and of which mind has only a shadow in the highest operations of the comprehensive intellect.

Prajnana is the consciousness which holds an image of things before it as an object with which it has to enter into relations and to possess by apprehension and a combined analytic and synthetic cognition.

Sanjnana is the contact of consciousness with an image of things by which there is a sensible possession of it in its substance; if prajnana can be described as the outgoing of apprehensive consciousness to possess its object in conscious energy, to know it, sanjnana can be described as the inbringing movement of apprehensive consciousness which draws the object placed before it back to itself so as to possess it in conscious substance, to feel it.

Ajpana is the operation by which consciousness dwells on an image of things so as to hold, govern and possess it in power. These four, therefore, are the basis of all conscious action.

As our human psychology is constituted, we begin with sanjnana, the sense of an object in its image; the apprehension of it in knowledge follows. Afterwards we try to arrive at the comprehension of it in knowledge and the possession of it in power. There are secret operations in us, in our subconscient and superconscient selves, which precede this action, but of these we are not aware in our surface being and therefore for us they do not exist. If we knew of them, our whole conscious functioning would be changed.

The trend of knowledge leads more and more to the conclusion that not only are the properties of form, even the most obvious such as colour, light etc., merely operations of Force, but form itself is only an operation of Force. This Force again proves to be self-power of conscious-being in a state of energy and activity. Practically, therefore, all form is only an operation of consciousness impressing itself with presentations of its own workings. We see colour because that is the presentation which consciousness makes to itself of one of its own operations; but colour is only an operation of Force working in the form of Light, and Light again is only a movement, that is to say an operation of Force. The question is what is essential to this operation of Force taking on itself the presentation of form? For it is this that must determine the working of Sanjnana or Sense on whatever plane it may operate.

Everything begins with vibration or movement, the original disturbance. If there is no movement of the conscious being, it can only know its own pure static existence. Without vibration or movement of being in consciousness there can be no act of knowledge and therefore no sense; without vibration or movement of being in force there can be no object of sense. Movement of conscious being as knowledge becoming sensible of itself as movement of force, in other words the knowledge separating itself from its own working to watch that and take it into itself again by feeling,— this is the basis of universal Sanjnana. This is true both of our internal and external operations. I become anger by a vibration of conscious force acting as nervous emotion and I feel the anger that I have become by another movement of conscious force acting as light of knowledge. I am conscious of my body because I have myself become the body; that same force of conscious being which has made this form of itself, this presentation of its workings knows it in that form, in that presentation. I can know nothing except what I myself am; if I know others, it is because they also are myself, because myself has assumed these apparently alien presentations as well as that which is nearest to my own mental centre. All sensation, all action of sense is thus the same in essence whether external or internal, physical or psychical.

This spiritual sense of things, secret and superconscient in us, alone gives their being, worth and reality to the psychical and physical sense; in themselves they have none. When we attain to it, these inferior operations are as it were taken up into it and the whole world and everything in it changes to us and takes on a different and a non- material value. That Master-consciousness in us senses our sensations of objects, sees our seeings, hears our hearings no longer for the benefit of the senses and their desires, but with the embrace of the self-existent Bliss which has no cause, beginning or end, eternal in its own immortality.

On Supramental Consciousness

If we suppose a supreme consciousness, master of the world, which really conducts behind the veil all the operations the mental gods attribute to themselves, it will be obvious that that consciousness will be the entire Knower and Lord. The basis of its action or government of the world will be the perfect, original and all-possessing vijnana and ajnana. It will comprehend all things in its energy of conscious knowledge, control all things in its energy of conscious power. These energies will be the spontaneous inherent action of its conscious being creative and possessive of the forms of the universe.

What part then will be left for the apprehensive consciousness and the sense? They will be not independent functions, but subordinate operations involved in the action of the comprehensive consciousness itself. In fact, all four there will be one rapid movement. If we had all these four acting in us with the unified rapidity with which the prajnana and sanjnana act, we should then have in our notation of Time some inadequate image of the unity of the supreme action of the supreme energy. The supreme consciousness must not only comprehend and possess in its conscious being the images of things which it creates as its self-expression, but it must place them before it — always in its own being, not externally — and have a certain relation with them by the two terms of apprehensive consciousness. Otherwise the universe would not take the form that it has for us; for we only reflect in the terms of our organisation the movements of the supreme Energy. But by the very fact that the images of things are there held in front of an apprehending consciousness within the comprehending conscious being and not externalised as our individual mind externalises them, the supreme Mind and supreme Sense will be something quite different from our mentality and our forms of sensation. They will be terms of an entire knowledge and self-possession and not terms of an ignorance and limitation which strives to know and possess.

A separative knowledge arises when the sense of differentiation overpowers the sense of identity; the self still cognises its identity with the object but pushes to its extreme the play of intimate separateness. At first there is not a sense of self and not-self, but only of self and other-self. A certain knowledge of identity and by identity is still there, but it tends to be first overstructured, then submerged, then so replaced by knowledge through interchange and contact that it figures as a secondary awareness, as if it were a result and no longer the cause of the mutual contact, the still pervasive and enveloping touch, the interpenetrating intimacy of the separate selves. Finally, identity disappears behind the veil and there is the play of being with other beings, consciousness with other consciousness: an underlying identity is still there, but it is not experienced; its place is taken by a direct seizing and penetrating contact, intermingling, interchange.

"It is by this interaction that a more or less intimate knowledge, mutual awareness or awareness of the object remains possible. There is no feeling of self meeting self, but there is a mutuality; there is not yet an entire separateness, a complete otherness and ignorance. This is a diminished consciousness, but it retains some power of the original knowledge curtailed by division, by the loss of its primal and essential completeness, operating by division, effecting closeness but not oneness. The power of inclusion of the object in the consciousness, of an enveloping awareness and knowledge is there; but it is the inclusion of a now externalised existence which has to be made an element of our self by an attained or recovered knowledge, by a dwelling of consciousness upon the object, a concentration, a taking possession of it as part of the existence. The power of penetration is there, but it has no natural pervasiveness and does not lead to identity; it gathers what it can, takes what is thus acquired and carries the contents of the object of knowledge to the subject. There can still be a direct and penetrating contact of consciousness with consciousness creating a vivid and intimate knowledge, but it is confined to the points or to the extent of the contact.

There is still a direct sense, consciousness-sight, consciousness-feeling which can see and feel what is within the object as well as its outside and surface. There is still a mutual penetration and interchange between being and being, between consciousness and consciousness, waves of thought, of feeling, of energy of all kinds which may be a movement of sympathy and union or of opposition and struggle. There can be an attempt at unification by possession of others or through one’s own acceptance of possession by other consciousness or other being; or there can be a push towards union by reciprocal inclusion, pervasion, mutual possession. Of all this action and interaction the knower by direct contact is aware and it is on this basis that he arranges his relations with the world around him. This is the origin of knowledge by direct contact of consciousness with its object, which is normal to our inner being but foreign or only imperfectly known to our surface nature."¹

Some examples

Modern psychology has extended our knowledge and has admitted us to a truth which the ancients already knew but expressed in other language. We know now or we rediscover the truth that the conscious operation of mind is only a surface action. There is a much vaster and more potent subconscious mind which loses nothing of what the senses bring to it; it keeps all its wealth in an inexhaustible store of memory. The surface mind may pay no attention, still the subconscious mind attends, receives, treasures up with an infallible accuracy. The illiterate servant-girl hears daily her master reciting Hebrew in his study; the surface mind pays no attention to the unintelligible gibberish, but the subconscious mind hears, remembers and, when in an abnormal condition it comes up to the surface, reproduces those learned recitations with a portentous accuracy which the most correct and retentive scholar might envy. The man or mind has not heard because he did not attend; the greater man or mind within has heard because he always attends, or rather sub-tends, with an infinite capacity. So too a man put under an anaesthetic and operated upon has felt nothing; but release his subconscious mind by hypnosis and he will relate accurately every detail of the operation and its appropriate sufferings; for the stupor of the physical sense-organ could not prevent the larger mind within from observing and feeling.

Similarly we know that a large part of our physical action is instinctive and directed not by the surface but by the subconscious mind. And we know now that it is a mind that acts and not merely an ignorant nervous reaction from the brute physical brain. The subconscious mind in the catering insect knows the anatomy of the victim it intends to immobilise and make food for its young and it directs the sting accordingly, as unerringly as the most skilful surgeon, provided the mere limited surface mind with its groping and faltering nervous action does not get in the way and falsify the inner knowledge or the inner will-force.

These examples point us to truths which western psychology, hampered by past ignorance posing as scientific orthodoxy, still ignores or refuses to acknowledge. The Upanishads declare that the Mind in us is infinite; it knows not only what has been seen but what has not been seen, not only what has been heard but what has not been heard, not only what has been discriminated by the thought but what has not been discriminated by the thought. Let us say, then, in the tongue of our modern knowledge that the surface man in us is limited by his physical experiences; he knows only what his nervous life in the body brings to his embodied mind; and even of those bringings he knows, he can retain and utilise only so much as his surface mind-sense attends to and consciously remembers, but there is a larger subliminal consciousness within him which is not thus limited. That consciousness senses what has not been sensed by the surface mind and its organs and knows what the surface mind has not learned by its acquisitive thought. That in the insect knows the anatomy its victim; that in the man outwardly insensible not only feels and remembers the action of the surgeon’s knife, but knows the appropriate reactions of suffering which were in the physical body inhibited by the anaesthetic and therefore non-existent; that in the illiterate servant-girl heard and retained accurately the words of an unknown language and could, as Yogic experience knows, by a higher action of itself understand those superficially unintelligible sounds.

"To return to the Vedantic words we have been using, there is a vaster action of the Sanjnana which is not limited by the action of the physical sense-organs; it was this which sensed perfectly and made its own through the ear the words of the unknown language, through the touch the movements of the unfelt surgeon’s knife, through the sense-mind or sixth sense the exact location of the centres of locomotion in the victim insect. There is also associated with it a corresponding vaster action of Prajnana, Ajnana and Vijnana not limited by the smaller apprehensive and comprehensive faculties of the external mind. It is this vaster Prajnana which perceived the proper relation of the words to each other, of the movement of the knife to the unfelt suffering of the nerves and of the successive relation in space of the articulations in the insect’s body. Such perception was inherent in the right reproduction of the words, the right narration of the sufferings, the right successive action of the sting. The Ajnana or Knowledge-Will originating all these actions was also vaster, not limited by the faltering force that governs the operations directed by the surface mind. And although in these examples the action of the vaster Vijnana is not so apparent, yet it was evidently there working through them and ensuring their co-ordination."²

CIRHU Meeting-17 January 2000

CIRHU MEETING

17 January 2000

Yesterday I spoke of the books that we want to bring out that was one part. The second part is the program of research as regards the Central Faculty and the many other faculties of which I have spoken. The word "faculty" may seem to be very pompous, bombastic considering where we are now, but let the words not deter us from doing what is to be done.

I’m very much interested in two things: One is that a spirit of research be developed in Auroville; and second is that that spirit of research percolate in such a way that students benefit, that students begin to feel that research is the method of education.

So I would like to introduce to you the idea of the research projects that I have outlined. I did this to some extent with a small group at one time, but now that there are so many people here, I thought we could share what was at the back of my mind when I wrote this paper. I don’t know if you have seen this paper as a whole: The Center of International Research in Human Unity. I have said here that the concept of the proposed Center rests upon four needs:

1. The need to deepen, widen and heighten the tasks of higher levels of educational research;
2. The need to harness expertise, scholarship and professional experience which are already available in Auroville, to invite such help as is available from relevant institutions in the country and in the world, and also from visiting scholars and teachers;
3. The need to give a more concrete form to the growing understanding of the concept of human unity that underlies the Charter of Auroville;
4. The need to provide a suitable environment and programme of higher education to the students of the Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research.

There can be many more needs also which I have not mentioned here, but I felt that these four needs, at least, exist at present in Auroville, and there has to be an answer to these needs. The question was how to answer these needs and I felt that, first of all, we must be clear as to what will be the focus of Auroville. If you look around in the world, every big research institution has what you might call a point of specialisation. For example, in India we have one very important centre of advanced research, in Shimla, called The Institute of Advanced Research, which is housed in one of the big palaces where the Viceroy used to live in the olden days when British rule was on India; its central focus is the study of man and the highest aspirations of man. We have in Bombay the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, where the focus is not man, but the nature of matter; physics, mathematics — that is the focus. We have Rashtriya Veda Vidya Pratishthan, The National Foundation for Vedic Research, where the focus is the Veda, the knowledge contained in the Veda, the contemporary crisis of man and how Vedic knowledge can be utilised for resolving the problems of today, and to what extent.

Similarly, I thought that if there is to be a focus in our research center, then we should be quite clear about it. And as I was contemplating, three terms emerged in my consciousness: One was evolution, the second was human unity, and the third was next species. And I thought that these three subjects could be the point of focus, of attention.

If all of us have come to Auroville, it is to advance the evolutionary purpose at this critical juncture for mankind. We have come because we are dedicated to bringing about the actualisation of human unity, and since we are inspired by the solutions that Sri Aurobindo has proposed for the resolution of the crisis of mankind in terms of the birth of a new species, it is, we might say, the highest research in the world today. Sri Aurobindo has said that it is with the birth of the new species — in the very process of the birth of this new species that greater and greater harmonization in the world will be possible. The unity of mankind rests upon spiritual transformation, and spiritual transformation means to aim not at a departure from the world, as in the past, but in facing the world, taking up the problems of the world and transmuting man himself. It is in this process that the problems of today can be resolved. Now this subject is of great importance, not only to us but to the whole world it is as if it were the world setting up this center, and not us. As Mother rightly said at the very beginning, "Auroville belongs to nobody in particular but to humanity as a whole." So our perception is that it is as if human beings, who are very much concerned with the unity of mankind and the resolution of the crisis of mankind today, felt a need to establish on the earth at least one place where the highest research could be conducted. It is in that sense that I look upon the proposal, and therefore I thought that the term that we have used, Center of International Research in Human Unity, needed to be understood in that light. It is not we, a small group of people, as it were, but mankind as a whole that is in need of this research and that has put up this particular small space on the earth which, happily, the government of India has made some effort to support. And now support is coming from many quarters in the world.

So that was the first point I wanted to make and that is why I said that there should be a Central Faculty in this Center. It should focus upon evolution, human unity and the next species. And, while giving some further detail, I have spoken of five important topics:

1. Evolution itself
2. The synthesis of knowledge
3. The synthesis of culture
4. Human unity
5. The next species.

This is a further elaboration of these three topics. Now, these are to some extent repeated in other faculties which will be more specialised. This Central Faculty will be interdisciplinary in the fullest sense of the term. Others also will be interdisciplinary, but specialised in certain matters, in certain respects.

Those specialised faculties will be the following:

1. The Faculty of Indian Culture and Human Unity
2. Faculty of East, West and Human Unity
3. Faculty of Education for Human Unity
4. Faculty of Arts, Crafts and Technologies
5. Faculty of Synthesis of Knowledge
6. Faculty of Futuristic Sociology & Futuristic Business Management
7. Faculty of Studies in Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.

These are the seven faculties that I have envisaged. This is only a first draft and there can be many more details, many more additions to these faculties. We may think that some of them need not be there at all, which is quite possible. This itself is a document for research; we can research into it and bring about changes in this paper.

Now, I would like to explain a little bit about each one of these seven faculties and what the thrust of each one will be.

I. The Faculty of Human Culture and Human Unity

All the cultures of the world have made useful contributions to the unity of mankind, and yet I have here focused upon Indian culture. There are three reasons for this. The first is that we are occupying a small space in India and, therefore, it has a direct relevance to India. Secondly, Indian culture has very consciously, right from the beginning, spoken of universality in a very concentrated manner. If you read the Veda, which is the earliest document of India, it has spoken of vishvam, "the whole universe", right from the beginning.

"The whole world is a family" is another proposition made in Indian culture; and the Veda itself speaks of a universality which will comprise the solution of the problems of different religions, different races, different levels of human beings, and so on. If you read the Veda you find that tremendous care is taken to understand the human race as a whole, the problems of the human race and the goals to be achieved for the entire race. This has created a certain development in Indian history, if you follow it right from the beginning to the present day. It is not an accident that Sri Aurobindo happens to be today the representative of Indian culture, and also happens to be the greatest synthesis of the East and the West, he has spoken of the ideal of human unity in the boldest and the most courageous terms. Many have spoken of human unity, but the kind of breathtaking propositions, the boldness that is there in those propositions, is singular. So I thought that it would be very useful to bring out the lessons of Indian culture that are relevant to the unity of mankind.

II. Faculty of East, West and Human Unity

Here we are concentrating upon, not India as merely India, but India as a part of the East. I have spoken of East and West separately because very often it is thought that there are some divergences between East and West. I would like that the divergences be understood, but also that we concentrate upon convergences, and explode to some extent the myth of the division between East and West. In one of the last messages that Sri Aurobindo gave — I think it was addressed to America — he said that, actually, although it is said that the East is spiritual and that the West is material, this kind of a black-and-white distinction is wrong. In both the East and the West there has been a spiritual search; in both the East and the West there has been a search for material welfare, material prosperity and economic development. If there is some divergence, it is an emphasis of one kind or of the other. Not that there are no divergences at all — there are divergences — but they are not of such a magnitude that they could create a wall. It is not as if "East is east and West is west and never the twain shall meet", there is no such division between the two. So we need to make our research, because there is a view in the world that the two can never meet, that even if the force of circumstances was such that we had to meet, even then, it would be as if two neighbours were sitting together for a cup of tea, but nothing more. On the contrary, what we need is a real synthesis in which each culture can bring out its own speciality, and yet they can meet and converge together. This is a subject about which Sri Aurobindo himself has written at length, both in The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity, and we need to do a tremendous amount of research on this subject. And I have in my delineation brought out many, many subtopics of this research topic.

III. Faculty of Education for Human Unit

Since Auroville is to be a site for continuing education, unending education, and the youth that never ages, Auroville can make a very significant contribution to the field of education. I personally believe that Auroville in due course will be a site of very bold experimentations. In any case, that should happen. And if this experimentation takes place, we shall have to make contributions to the world at large in the field of education. Fortunately, today the best educational systems in the world are open. They are looking for new vistas of educational thought, new vistas of educational experience. Although these concerns are not percolating down at the lower levels of thought today, either in the East or in the West, but at the highest levels of educational thought, there is a great concern for the future, and there is a great search for the education for tomorrow.

So I think that our Center here can legitimately have the privilege of becoming a leading one, an advanced center of educational research, with the possibility of contributing to the educational experience of the world

IV. Faculty of Arts, Crafts and Technologies

In fact, you might say that this is something connected with our concern with three important fields which have to be manifested fully in Auroville within the domain of aesthetics. Sri Aurobindo has said that no culture can survive or thrive — however high it may be in its spiritual endeavour, or however low in its material endeavour — unless there are instruments of transmission. Human beings do not live merely at the top or at the bottom. A human being by his very nature is integral and lives simultaneously on many planes. Unless therefore the aesthetic aspect of human being is fully developed, unless the crafts and technologies are fully developed, the culture cannot be stable. In fact, if you study the history of cultures of the world and ask why some of the cultures have died — in fact, most of the cultures from ancient times have died — you will find that this is the reason that at their peak level, they developed only a specific art, but neglected crafts and technology; or they developed technology but neglected arts and crafts; or developed crafts, but neglected technologies and arts. It is only when you combine arts, crafts and technologies that a civilization or culture can continue to survive. Fortunately, in Auroville we have a number of artists, a number of architects, a number of technologists and engineers. It’s a most favourable circumstance. And therefore I think that in Auroville we can do very advanced research in these three fields of arts, crafts and technologies.

I also wanted to emphasize here that normally arts and technologies are bifurcated. Those who are artists are put on one side, those who are technologists on the other. And crafts are given a minor importance, as if they were meant for villagers. I mean, this is the normal attitude — not all over, but in general this is the attitude — but if you examine these subjects in their totality you will find that there is no art possible without technique and without technology. No artist can be perfect unless he is a master of technique. A good poet has to have a mastery of the technique of prosody; no artist can do a good painting unless he masters the technique of painting — he has to have even the knowledge of how to mix the colours, and there arc techniques of mixing the colours. This may look like prosaic work compared to the imagination in which the artist normally lives, but when it comes to brass tacks, when it comes to really painting, with a canvas before him and a paintbrush in his hand, it is the technical aspect that is uppermost, and if he has a weakness in relation to this he can never become a first-rate artist Similarly, you cannot be a master of technology unless you have a very high, level of imagination and aesthetic sense. Every machine, for example, can be conceived as an expression of beauty. Every technique, once you enter into it, you find that there is in it a rhythm of poetry, or a vision of art, of painting, or a rhythm of music. Every great technologist has found in his deepest experience this play of art and aesthetics.

Now, crafts, according to many, are to be left to rural people but actually they are something that is so important for all aspects of life. It is crafts that synthesize both technology and art in a very singular manner. It is because of this interconnection between art, crafts and technologies, and the need for interdisciplinarity among these three, that I thought of bringing them together. This is not usually done, but I would like to give a message through this faculty that all three need each other, and that there must be a place where all three meet together.

V. Faculty of Synthesis of Knowledge

Usually, in ordinary universities, you have got Arts and Sciences. This is how most universities are they have schools of Arts and Science. They have got arts and sciences, and the two are bifurcated: If you do arts, you don’t do science; if you do science, you cannot do arts.

But by bringing arts and technologies together I have tried to show that without science there is no art and without art there is no science. The two are complementary and even need each other. I have not proposed a special Faculty of Science as such here, and there is a reason behind it. First of all, I do not think that we shall be so equipped as to become a center of advanced scientific research. (Let us hope we can become equipped nothing is denied, because nothing should be denied.) But this does not mean that we shall not do science. We shall do a lot of science, but with a certain focus: namely, science as a part of the synthesis of knowledge.

At present science is done primarily as an instrument of technology. In the modern world you find that most of the science students today are leaving pure research because they feel that technology is much more lucrative, much more stable. It’s a utilitarian view. But even with pure research in science, where it is done, not many scientists are aiming at bringing the different frontiers of science together in one large sweep. There’s too much specialisation, so that we know more and more about less and less

Now, one important contribution that Sri Aurobindo has made is in the field of synthesis. Synthesis is the greatest need of mankind today, and although one speaks of synthesis, one needs to do research as to what its meaning is. There can be synthesis in the form of juxtaposition: You bring so many elements together side by side, put them side by side, and many people think that is a synthesis; the mere juxtaposition of various elements is misconceived as a synthesis. There are schools which call themselves schools of integral education;

they do physical education, crafts education, art education, thinking education, moral education, spiritual education — they give periods for all of them and then say, "This is integral education". What I call it is education by juxtaposition. You bring all the elements together, put them side by side, but there is no attempt at synthesizing. Then there is what may be called compromise — that is also very often regarded as a synthesis. Many conflicting views, many conflicting interests are brought together, somehow. For example, there is usually a conflict between aesthetics and ethics. The aesthetic man has a kind of abhorrence to the puritanism of the ethical man; the ethical man feels that the aesthetic man is very loose and doesn’t care for the high endeavours of the human spirit, to rise above the impulses, and so on. So the two usually collide, and the rational man very often remains like a thin wedge between the two. He does not know where his position is in the conflict between ethics and aesthetics, and whatever he says does not have much effect either on the ethical man or on the aesthetic man, so that he seems to be living in an ivory tower somewhere above — at least, he thinks he is in an ivory tower from where he can preach to many people but with very little effect. As a result, there is a tendency today to bring about a compromise, to try to bring them together as far as possible. This is the formula: Whatever possibilities exist, try to bring them together as far as possible. But this can only arrive at a compromise. The demands of aesthetics are to be received to some extent, the demands of the ethics are to be received to some extent, the demands of rationality are to be accepted to some extent. Somehow, some kind of juxtaposition or some kind of compromise is arrived at.

If you read Sri Aurobindo’s works you find out what synthesis really is everything is integrated. There is a very beautiful chapter in The Synthesis of Yoga, a chapter called "Synthesis", where he has discussed the question of how to bring about the synthesis of the different systems of yoga. Now, we need to study that chapter very much in depth, so as to get an idea of what synthesis is. If you read The Life Divine, you also get this great idea of synthesis. Sri Aurobindo does not need to speak of Western thought and Indian thought — the whole thing is taken as if one principle of thought existed. The various kinds or trends of thought that can arise out of the branching of ideation are brought into a harmony. It is not as if Sri Aurobindo says, "Here is Eastern thought, here is Western thought, and now the two are brought together." His starting point is synthesis, his middle point is synthesis, his end is synthesis. Out of that synthesis you can yourself perceive the different trends of thought, and you can find how they’re already harmonised in the larger sweep. Mother once told us in the Ashram School that we should develop among children what she called "spherical thought" — a thought which is spherical. It’s a very special quality: a thought which is not linear, not angular, not compartmentalised, not fragmented, but spherical.

Now, it is in spherical thought that synthesis is automatically born. This is the theme that we need to develop most, because without this synthesis the unity of mankind is impossible. The unity of mankind will require unity of the thought of the people, unity of the culture of the people. And this can come about only when there is a solid base of knowledge. No culture can survive without a basis of knowledge, so it is only by bringing about a synthesis of knowledge that human unity can be really assured. It is here that the frontiers of knowledge in various fields are, as it were, brought together on one focus. You can have physicists, biologists, scientists, psychologists, yogis — all kinds of knowledge, all avenues of knowledge, have to be developed and brought together and specialists should be able to have a dialogue among themselves. A real synthesis has to be constantly developed. So this will be a faculty where this great facility will be available. And if this facility exists, you can imagine what will be the facility for students. If there is a Faculty of the Synthesis of Knowledge, working at the highest level on the plane of research, the whole idea of synthesis will percolate among students, and spherical thought will be automatic. The very breath of primary school, secondary school, Last school or No school will be simply this sphericity; it will be available all over. This will be the contribution of the synthesis of knowledge of this faculty.

VI. Faculty of Futuristic Sociology & Futuristic Business Management

I have conceived of this faculty for two reasons. The first is that we are in Auroville a collectivity; the emphasis in Auroville is not on individual realisation but on collective realisation, and therefore our focus has to be on the problems of collectivity. In fact, Auroville has always been confronting collectivistic problems, and in spite of quarrels and battles and whatever there may be, the collectivity has survived, which is a tremendous achievement. And this collectivity has some kind of an oneness which you can see from outside much more visibly than maybe perhaps from within. But it is visible. Collectively there is a kind of a thrust — programs are conceived collectively, invitations are given to people collectively, sharing is collective, the thrusts are collective. The individualistic, egoistic tendency is at least resisted. Even if there is mutual criticism it is about this: that one has become too isolated, or tends to be isolated. Each one may think of the other as an isolationist, but the criticism is that it should not be so. How to overcome isolationism? How to develop collectivity? That has been the problem of Auroville right from the beginning, and we are developing therefore a new kind of sociology. Mr. Tata said that the fact that Auroville has survived for 25 years (it was at that time 25 years) is itself a guarantee of its power and its future, because usually societies of this kind break down quite easily. I know many centers of research, particularly in India, where money is offered to people to come to a collectivity. And they have found that people don’t respond. And whatever number of people do come into that collective organisation, very soon, within six months, each one becomes an island. There is one research center which is residential, the condition is that you must reside — if you are a researcher, you cannot do your research in your home, or wherever you are, you must come and stay — and very beautiful accommodations are provided by the institution, free of charge. But it has been found that they must not allow anybody to live in this center for more than three years — this is the experience that has been gained. There was an idea that there should be what they called "Core Fellows", who would remain continuously present for 20 to 25 years and thus would give continuity to the research work. That was the idea. After experience, it was found that Core Fellows become the real center of division. They developed such rivalries that every newcomer was trapped in divisions, and vested interests began to develop very quickly. The experience has been so hopeless, instead of being a collective research effort, that now the fellowships are given for two years to begin with, to be extended for one more year, and that’s the end of it! All the Core Fellows have been eliminated from the center; nobody is there permanently.

Now, this is the experience of the best institution of India, designed to create a collectivity and to do collective research. Human beings, when they begin to live with each other... It becomes very difficult. As Bernard Shaw remarked, "The only difficult thing in the world is to love your neighbour." Christ has said "Love thy neighbour as thyself", but although you can love other people in the world — you can be very hospitable, for example, with guests who are going to live with you for 10 days or 12 days — the moment you know someone is there for good, all kinds of problems arise.

So we have to find the deeper roots of sociology, why we come together, why we live together. And unless there is a movement for transformation, merely bringing human beings together will not bring us harmony. It is only when human beings come together in order to transform themselves, with this aim. Harmony is not possible at the physical, vital or mental levels. Many attempts have been made at harmonising people, but this is not possible, because mind, vital and physical are not the principles of harmony. They are basically rooted in division. Matter is best dealt with when it is a small piece divided from all the rest. The vital life strives best when plans are formed as against other plans. Divide this plan from another plan, then vigour and robustness begin — there will be enmity between the two, but enmity brings about a unity of this particular plan against the other one. It is on the basis of division that people become very vigorous at the vital level. And Mind, you know, is always a dividing consciousness. As Sri Aurobindo says, the basic apparatus of Mind can do only four operations — all other operations of the mind are only derivatives of these four — namely: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. These are the four operations of the mind; all other operations of the mind are only specialisations of these four. And addition is not possible without division, subtraction is not possible without division, multiplication is not possible without division — and division is division.

So the human mind is so constituted that you cannot harmonize this division at the level of the mind. It is only when human beings come together for transformation, for going beyond the human mind, that you can hope to have harmony. If our problems have been so acute, it is because very often we have come here for that purpose but we are not working so assiduously towards that program of transformation. And to the extent to which we are moving, we are harmonising. And I think that harmony will come. There is a greater and greater awareness that we have to move forward for the transformation of our nature, and this is the basis of our "futuristic sociology". And Sri Aurobindo has explained this in detail both in The Human Cycle and The Ideal of Human Unity.

I have joined it up with futuristic business management, and it could be questioned why I should do that. The reason is that Auroville is happily a place of business, happily a place of work, a place of commerce, a place of industry. And Mother has spoken of the Industrial Zone as one of the important zones of Auroville. Therefore it is inevitable that Auroville develop all the faculties which are required for industrial development, commercial development, business development. And I speak of "futuristic" business development because we are not here to repeat. As Mother said, the age of business is over. So we have to conceive of a futuristic industry and therefore the kind of management which will be required for this futuristic society will be quite different. That is what I want to emphasize here by speaking of futuristic business management.

VII. Faculty of Studies in Sri Aurobindo and The Mother

Now, this is obvious: We are all here because we have read Sri Aurobindo, we have been inspired by Sri Aurobindo and The Mother. But to sustain ourselves we need to continuously study, which is not sufficiently recognized. People have read something of Sri Aurobindo, they have felt inspired, and they have come here. But then, there is a psychology which has developed: "Study is not necessary, work is necessary. Do work. Study is not so necessary."

Now, I am not opposed to work at all on the contrary: I would very much like that work be emphasized. But at the same time I would like to emphasize that everyone in Auroville has to have a program of studies in Sri Aurobindo, at his own level ‒ maybe at a lower level, at a higher level and the highest levels. I think we need to galvanize ourselves constantly by taking a bath in the studies of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. It is a daily need, as it were.

So I would very much like to emphasize studies in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother — and they are very difficult works, extremely difficult works. In fact, I have not read such difficult works in the humanities as the works of Sri Aurobindo. Most of the things are incomprehensible — which is a fact. You may read, you may understand the English and so you may think you have understood what Sri Aurobindo has written, but it is only at our level. For example, even a small thing: I was talking the other day to the children of Jivatman. Now, the concept of Jivatma — is it comprehensible? I gave a talk to the children, who gave the illusion that they had understood a little (which is a good illusion, because it is through this understanding that one moves forward), but who can understand what Jivatman is? And this is only one of the topics in Sri Aurobindo’s writings. When he talks of the Higher Mind and the Intuitive Mind and the Illumined Mind and the Overmind and Supermind — and Sri Aurobindo has described all these things — as I said, we can understand the English of what he has written, but not what it exactly conveys. How can you understand? How is it comprehensible?

It is by constant study and constant growth of inner experience going side by side that we can strive to understand Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s works. But it is very necessary that at every level we read again and again and again. One person asked the Mother, "Mother, what shall I do in my life?" So Mother said, "Read Sri Aurobindo." The person said, "But Mother, I’ve read several times Sri Aurobindo’s works." So Mother simply said, "Read Sri Aurobindo."That is the amount of study that is required, that even when you feel that you have read a lot, you still need to read a lot.

So that is why I want very much this faculty to flourish in Auroville, where all the works of Sri Aurobindo and The Mother are brought together. There should be people who study them in depth. Yesterday I mentioned that the Mother had said that the teacher should not be a screen between Sri Aurobindo and the pupil, that the task of the teacher is to give the background material for understanding the works of Sri Aurobindo — I would like this faculty to do this background material. People who work in this faculty and I hope that in due course there will be at least a thousand — will be working all the time creating materials which will be helpful to students in understanding Sri Aurobindo. Take for example the idea of the logic of the Infinite, which is one of the central ideas of The Life Divine. Background material will be: What is logic? What is the logic of the finite? Logic itself today is a very, very highly developed study. The Aristotelian logic has been surpassed, symbolic logic has come into its place, and now even symbolic logic is being surpassed. In reality people are, without knowing it, being driven into the field of the logic of the Infinite.

This is only one subject — but how much material needs to be prepared if this subject is to be studied by our students! And since these subjects are very difficult, we have to attend to this need very urgently. I feel that, in Auroville itself, there should be a number of workshops on the studies of Sri Aurobindo, a number of them, and there should be a very large participation in them.

We all need to reread Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, all of us, and these workshops should be the life breath of Auroville. So I would like this kind of activity to be fostered in this Faculty of Studies in Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Central Faculty

Finally, I have conceived this whole Center as having only one faculty — although I have spoken of seven faculties, I have spoken of a Central Faculty — and that is, the real faculty. In fact, all the seven are only subordinate faculties, meaning thereby that these faculties have to work in some kind of unity, interdisiplinarity, so that the Center’s principal subjects — namely, evolution, human unity and the next species — are thoroughly supported by whatever streams of knowledge that you bring through the various faculties. All of them ultimately should nurture these three important subjects.

It is to this effort that I wanted to invite all members of Auroville, even those who may feel very diffident about research. I would like to tell them that Mother has put down the program of Auroville, and the one word that she has put down is research. The only program of Auroville is research, so we are automatically members of this research team. It’s a club of researchers, as it were, and we are all to participate in this research. Therefore I would like to invite everybody. And that will really give meaning to the idea of Auroville being a place of unending education.

I have suggested that since in Auroville there are many people who are highly educated, since there is a great expertise, I would like them to study the, various themes of research delineated here. I would like them to add some new ones, or subtract some, and write a ten-page note on whatever they are good at. One may be good in music, another in painting, a third in technology, a fourth in studies of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother — whatever. The reason is that I want to present these papers to students who are now getting ready for higher education. All research thrives when there is a two-way traffic: the researcher giving the benefit of his research to the students, the students exploring the results and posing new problems to the researcher and stimulating new research. I’ve not seen any teacher thriving very well without students. You need students all the time — then your own teaching becomes much more marked, precise, refreshing. So I would very much like that these ten-page notes be collected, then I want to hold a kind of conference of students in Auroville, if that is possible. I want to bring these papers and these researchers together in front of them, and tell them, "This is a kind of a small wealth that is available in Auroville you are free to swim in this ocean of knowledge."There is no compulsion — it is No School, so there is no schooling as such — but there will be this kind of opening available

You choose whatever studies you want to make out of these because the teachers and researchers are available. Maybe they don’t have much time to give to the students, but then this is No School. Therefore, teachers need not come exactly at ten o’clock and go at five o’clock. It’s No School. We need to develop new methods — research methods — of education.

This was the method in the Upanishads, the Upanishadic method of education, where a student could go to a teacher and the teacher did not engage all his time. He simply gave you a program to follow. A teacher may not have the time to deal with the program, but he gives you the program, and then you continue with it — the student studies by himself and occasionally meets the teacher. Maybe some people have time, and they can do research and intensive education at the same time. There are some students who need, on certain topics, such help that they will require daily dialogue with the teacher. Also, because the student is doing a lot of research himself, every day he has a lot of questions to ask. In such cases, a teacher may be available who has got a lot of time also, and who may engage a student every day two hours, three hours at a stretch, only one student. Adi Shankaracharya had only five students, but he devoted his time to these five pupils and created a great impact upon India and Indian culture. This is the system. Depending upon your availability, upon the need of the work, the need of the student, you are free to organize your research and your transmission of the results of the research to the students in a way that is suitable to you. Again, it is No School, and therefore there’ll be no supervision over it. It’s entirely between you and the pupils.

It is this kind of higher education that I feel we should develop in Auroville. So I invite you — this is the practical aspect of my endeavour today — to write a ten-page note on whatever your speciality may be. If you don’t write, it doesn’t matter. You simply say, "I will speak." In which case we shall arrange a talk by you to the students, where you can expound what you know and what you can do, so the students know what you are able to do. And also there is one very important thing. All teaching has to be interesting. Of course, interest depends upon many factors, and our knowledge should reach a point where it becomes interesting... But this is pedagogy, and I don’t want to enter into pedagogy just now.

We want to organize events in Auroville where researchers can meet students, can transmit their experience to the students and receive questions from students. Not necessarily in a group meeting, but even individually. Such an organisation should exist in Auroville; there should be some framework for this kind of possibility. There are many students who feel that they are not being attended to, that their aspirations are not being answered, or that what they want to learn is not available here. Why should there be such a situation? There are such learned people available in Auroville! I think this problem has to be met concretely.

This was my little practical request, so that we can go forward in developing this research centre. CIRHU is not a building; it’s an activity, and we are all here to do this activity. Buildings are necessary, they will come up in due course, but even without buildings, meetings and education are always possible.

On Education-28 April 2000

Here are two selections from Kireet’s reflections on education (one from a talk he gave at Bharat Nivas last April to members of SAIIER and another to the group coordinating the CIRHU Resource Centre last November).

As you will see it is a very open-ended approach, one which he himself sees as an on-going research.

On education

In answer to a question...

… I personally think that for younger children when lot of help is needed there is a need of schooling. The word schooling means a place where you need lot of help and lot of help is given.

This is my interpretation because Mother has not written what is Last School, what is After School and so on. This is my interpretation which is to be given, the interpretation of somebody who has thought over it. It may be helpful so I am not putting any authoritative statement on this subject. It is only my own research.

I think that the kindergarten is already no school. Children are free, they can do whatever they like, and it is very pleasant. In fact, everybody agrees all over the world that kindergarten schools are the best schools. Children are so happy, they can do whatever they like, they swim? Here for example you have got a swimming pool for younger children, which is a very rare thing, even anywhere in the world. But you have such beautiful experiences that you might say it is no school.

But then when you come to Transition, the kind of experience that you have got is also very good. The structure that you have created is neither a structure nor that kind of complete wildness which happens in some of the progressive schools in the world. It is a very good blend, and the possibility has been helped by the architectural design. What I call hall of culture and laboratories are already combined as it were in each classroom. This is what I would call a place where schooling is needed but as a last school, because that the children know that after this schooling will become less and less. Because when you begin to grow and you need less help, then you need to have a new kind of structure.

So I would say actually, in term of these words, that Transition school should be really called Last School. It is a last school. It is a good schooling because all things have been taught in a way where the freedom and structure are very well blended. I think that you have done something that is excellent. It is why the idea came to me that you should have somebody to report on the research that has been done in the emergence of Transition school. It is a beautiful school I tell you. Every child is happy, every child. For example, there is one girl who was writing a story and she said: “I don’t want anybody near me. I have to write a story and think.” She was allowed to sit alone at her table. This freedom is rarely obtained anywhere. A child who would say: “I want to write alone in my own small table…” So, first of all a child who is able to express this wish, her own decision that she needs solitude so much so that even when you are present she hardly looks at you is unusual. We were present in the classroom. She hardly looked at us. She wrote very seriously… So, I suggest that you should now have somebody to report, somebody who will interview the teachers and students and makes a good report of fifty, sixty, eighty, hundred pages on how this has emerged. But don’t disturb it, don’t make more structure than there is now. It is very well done; it is a kind of optimum level that has been reached. I would really call this Last School. In the sense that I would tell the children as they grow up towards the class 6 to 8 or whatever, that now you will learn more and more by yourself.

It is a last school. Not that you don’t jump immediately from last school to no school. So I am very happy that Mother has spoken of three schools in between: After School 1, After School 2 and After School 3. After school is something which corresponds to what children do at home in regards to homework. After school is a time for homework, for what the children do for homework?

What I find, for example, in Deepti’s school, which is called Last School, is exactly this. Every child is doing his homework. There is so much of individuality, so much of doing by oneself. The kind of drawings they have done? I must tell you it is something you should exhibit in Auroville in a very central place so that everybody can see the kind of drawings and painting that they have done,─ such beautiful things. It will be amazing. I would really say that somebody should photograph and keep them in your archives. It is very important.

So I conceive that what is done actually in Last School is what is should be named After School. Not Last School but After School because it is what children are doing when they are at home. When you want to individualize everybody in that school. It is a real freedom there is no structure as it were, which perfectly corresponds to the needs of the children at that stage. They can read by themselves, they can write by themselves. You know on the lower level you need to teach the children how to read and write — unless they need no reading and writing — otherwise how can they do work on their own. They need lot of schooling before that, so I would say that from class 1 to 8 should be called Last School.

Then after you should have After School. But Mother has spoken of three stages, and I was wondering what these three stages correspond to. In any case what is done here at Last School is one of the three stages of After School.

Intervention not audible…

… We have to see. I am not proposing anything. It is up to the teachers here what they decide to do, but if you ask me, I would like to give the name of Last School to the present Transition school. I would like to give the name of After School 3 to present Last School. What is being done in After School that is for me After School 1. The school Center for Further Learning I would name it After School 2. And this one which is Last School, now After School 3.

You see the progression. From the blend of structure and freedom in the classes of Transition school you come to another kind of structure — it is more like tuition which is given, like tutors who are teaching children at home. It is what I call After School 1.

When I visited the school Center for Further Learning which is such a beautiful school I saw there is lot of freedom there and there is some structure. Then I come to Last School which is really After School 3. And now I am taking classes with the students there and I find that what I am doing is Super School.

This is a novel experience for me because I was wondering what is Super School? And I find that the class that I am giving to them again involves a lot of teaching and there is no freedom. It is Super School. So, I was wondering what are the characteristics of Super School. First of all, the subjects that you are teaching must be of a high level, therefore super. Secondly, you are not actually schooling them but preparing them to learn higher subjects by themselves. It is schooling, but the purpose here is to enable students to follow higher studies by themselves. It is only a kind of a preparation. So still schooling is needed.

And third in this process of preparing you don’t trot or canter, you gallop. Therefore at Super School the speed with which you prepare them is not a slow, gradual development. You take subjects of such nature that even if you give hundred lectures it is galloping. As Mother said to prepare for studying The Life Divine you need ten years of preparation. This can be bridged you might say bridged to some extent, if you are at Super School, if you have the possibility of meeting students for two hours, three, four hours at a stretch and you can engage them and take them… For example I cover logic and which I have done in six months, in only two days which is like galloping. You go from one idea to the other. Because you know, most of the time in ordinary colleges, courses are lay down, periods are fixed, teachers come in their own way, many students are not attentive, you have to repeat so much, so it takes such a long time. But if you have students like this who are prepared — those who have gone to After School because they are ready to learn a lot by themselves so that their attention, their consciousness is already developed, then you can gallop in your movements. This is a personal new experience in my life: how you can teach a large number of subjects. First of all I made a survey of the different subjects which are been studied in the world, a very brief and rapid survey. And I fixed in this large survey where philosophy comes, where logic comes, where epistemology comes, where cosmology comes, what is metaphysics and how logic has to be seen in The Life Divine. If you want to study logic what is the process of ratiocination, what is the process of application of the law of identity, of the law of contradiction, law of extended middle, law of sufficient reason. Now all this can be rapidly gone over as Sri Aurobindo said… I have been very much aided by one sentence of Sri Aurobindo: “You should take the children rapidly to that which is the most interesting in the subject.” This sentence is very important and I found in Super School you should have such methods of learning, such processes of learning where the children gallop from one point to the other and go straight to the thing that is very interesting. Super School is a place where you need lot of schooling with regard to very high subjects, very difficult subjects and then you go as fast as possible, as rapidly as possible, you take the students to the heart of the matter as it where which is the most interesting part of the whole subject.

So I would suggest that the students of Last School could now go into Super School and then they can be trained to enter into No School where does not need schooling anymore.

This is how I understand what Mother had written. This is my present interpretation. You have today in Auroville Last School, After School 1, 2, 3, and now developing Super School which can then prepared at No School. And it is exactly what Mother has written. Isn’t it? It is how I understand and therefore now to answer to your question about growth and structure I feel that at every stage if you have architectural design in such a way that hall of culture and laboratories are side by side then depending upon the aid that a child needs you can put him here or there for shorter period or longer period and it is a teacher who will observe all this. This is the only structure I will plead for. All right.

I don’t believe in exams. And yet sometimes exams can be a great amusement. We can even have quiz programmes. Not because of any ordinary reason, but because general knowledge is a very important door to the widening of the mind. The base of every student should be as wide as possible. In our general schools, in order to make our mind very wide, they are making every subject compulsory. Which is a mistake. You should not make any subject compulsory. Let students float very easily on the oceans of knowledge. Free style swimming. So that you enjoy without making anything compulsory. You get amusement out of it, in fact General Knowledge course can be very great amusement and at the same time the mind is widened. It becomes a boredom only if it becomes compulsory. If I say that you must study economy at the elementary level, history at the elementary level, it becomes boring. But if the most interesting parts of Economics are told to you in six lectures, it becomes very interesting. The same thing can be very interesting, it is for this reason that I have proposed General Knowledge course. So I will invite you to General Knowledge course at the same time.

This is a book called General Knowledge book. Don’t be frightened because we will not study this book at all. But it only shows that if you want to appear for highest examinations then of course this book is necessary. As I told you I don’t want you to appear in examination at all, but as an amusement we should be prepared to read such a book. As an amusement, there is no compulsion at all but in due course it may take four years, five years, six years, doesn’t matter, time is enough. In any case some of the very interesting parts of the book should come to you as soon as possible.

The Resource Center Of Cirhu - 22 October 2000

This Resource Center will be a sort of a no school, in the sense that here there is no school teacher, but everybody learns by himself or learns by collaboration and that membership to this no school is open to all.

The idea that emerged was of a multi media Center and it corresponded to one of my own idea where I had spoken of a learning environment which would consist of hall of culture and laboratory both set together side by side or intermingled in a magical way so that an individual is free to be at home. It is a place where individuals come with questions or without questions in their mind. If there are questions there is a possibility of exploration. If there are no questions there are possibilities of being stimulated by what I would call demonstrations, or else one comes to practice or apply whatever one has learnt theoretically or otherwise so as to develop it further. In the process of practising the help can best be given by what I have called laboratory. The difference between hall of culture and laboratory is that the hall of culture is more predominantly a place of demonstration and exploration. The laboratory is a place of practicing, a place of development of faculties. In the hall of culture the pace is leisurely; in the laboratory the pace is measured. There is a rigor and there is a concentration. In the hall of culture there is basically a silent atmosphere, but there is no stress of arriving at what I would call perfection. It is a preparation; it is a place for preparation. Laboratory is a place where the stress is on perfection. Both processes are very often simultaneous and therefore the contiguity of hall of culture and laboratory should be contiguous, so that one can switch from here to there whenever one likes

In fact, the more I think about what Mother has said about Last School, After School 1, After School 2, After School 3, Super School and No School and Mother’s big word research if you put the whole thing together it makes a big cycle as it were.

And although they may seen to be successive in a certain sense they can be also simultaneous. One can be simultaneously in the Last School, After School 1, 2, 3, Super School, No School and Research. This Resource Center could have also all these aspects in the simultaneously manner, although the emphasis will be here on No School and Research. I think all these aspects are actually aspects of emphasis of one of important process namely the learning process. We are all students and we are learning all the time but in the learning process sometime you emphasise one aspect, sometime you emphasise the other and so on. In fact I have been contemplating on this subject deeply and these are my reflections that I can share with you.

There is a kind of unity which can be filled to its fullness if we have this Resource Center. I see now the necessity of what we call a Resource Center. May be we may change the name afterwards but there is a need of such a place where all the processes of learning are available in the form of resource. That will be the special quality of that particular place.

So let me now go back to all the processes of learning and then it may give us a better idea.

There are, I think, four things which happen whenever when one learns. There is first the process of development. It is something that is inherent to every individual to develop. A child right from the first day, if there is one learning process it is development ‒ automatically, inherently. And, in fact, if you learn what is the process of child’s development it throws a great light on the entire process of education.

In the first place we see that the child has an inherent enthusiasm. If that enthusiasm is wanting we might say the child is either sick or born premature — of course we are all born premature therefore we have not enough enthusiasm — but enthusiasm is something which is the basic capital out of which everything grows. In fact, Sri Aurobindo has said the special characteristic of the student is enthusiasm — utsaha. There is no educative process possible without this utsaha. The teacher’s function, Sri Aurobindo says, is to nourish that enthusiasm and to lead it further. But the base is the child lifting up his hand and the teacher drawing that hand which is lifted up. The kind of picture we have put in the book The Good Teacher and the Good Pupil. So, the child automatically is holding up his hand as it were, all the time. This is the basic expression of his enthusiasm. It is that which develops. Every activity of the child afterwards develops because the child is constantly kicking up.

Secondly the child has no intention of learning. His intention is playing. So basically all learning should be play. Mother once told me that if you are concerned with very small children, you should arrange time to play freely and watch them play and intervene only when it is necessary. Seeing that they don’t injure themselves. All the things that you arrange in the surrounding should be to stimulate the play.

The third thing about the child is that whenever he plays or learns — learns through play, because for him all learning is playing and all playing is learning — the child does it with his entire being. This is a specialty of the child of the learning process. Whatever the child does, he does it with his all body, mind, heart, everything, whole heartedly.

Fourthly the child has a normal habit or natural tendency to learn and to repeat what he himself has learnt, and this repetition is done with a kind of a joy. When a child has learnt and you ask him: "You know this poem." He wants to recite it immediately and he is not tired to repeat it several times. I think these are the real processes of development: enthusiasm, play, whole being involvement and repetition. And there is a cycle of this and that is how development takes place.

I was reflecting first on the kindergarten. This is a process, a natural process of learning. Kindergarten is the process in which you develop, in which you begin to grow. And this should be present in the entire process of learning, whether you are a child or an adult or an old man or whatever. You remain a child and all the time you learn by playing and by an enthusiasm which never vanishes. We should ensure that this should be the real spirit of learning everywhere. The whole atmosphere of Auroville should be inflamed with this spirit. We are all the time playing in the garden of God. That should be our real feeling all the time.

So the first stage is an ever-present stage throughout kindergarten. We are all the time in the kindergarten. I think Mother use to love the idea of jardin d’enfant. And you know there was a very interesting development of jardin d’enfant. Usually we used to take children in the school of the Ashram at the age of three or four but then requests began to pour upon the Mother to take children of a lower age. And we did not have so much space either in the school for children of a lower age and so on, but there was a real pressure so Mother told me once you develop jardin d’attente. And I have had the privilege of developing jardin d’attente. Playing with ball was found to be one of the best methods of helping children at that stage (one year) in the jardin d’attente. I use to play with a big ball or a small ball with the children. I think that this idea of jardin d’attente and jardin d’enfant should be a constant atmosphere in Auroville. All of us are at every stage in jardin d’attente.

We could call the CIRHU "kindergarten of God’s children".

Good idea. Try to fix it somewhere. Research is a natural process in God’s kindergarten school.

What I am trying to show is that all the processes of learning should be simultaneously be present at all the stages of education. But some of them may be more predominant at a one stage; others may be less prominent at other stage. If you develop in order that the kindergarten spirit is present at every stage, soon you begin to learn by the method of kindergarten — playing. There is a need to nourish that development. Because of our human frailty we cannot keep the spirit of playing all the time therefore we make a concession and create what is called Last School. Right from the beginning we give a message to children that "you are now going to a school but remember it is the last school." Do that so that the spirit of play does not disappear. We tell them: "This is a concession we make for you." The first stage of schooling is the stage of last school. In the last school the emphasis is upon development.

If you want to make a curriculum of the entire process of education in Auroville, this curriculum would consist first of further developing what the child has already developed in the kindergarten, automatically. You give a push by the methods of schooling.

What do we mean by schooling? Schooling implies in the first place what we call spoon-feeding. There is a need of spoon-feeding — that is to say a great help is given to the child to develop further what the child has already developed by way of playing. Schooling should not be necessary, normally if the world were perfect and play would continue all the time so that all that you need to learn would be learned only by playing. But because human society is very artificial and is not spontaneous, there is a need of schooling which consists of giving a further stimulus to what the children have learnt by play. And usually the children automatically develop three things: speech and therefore language, movements of the body and some of the development of faculties of the mind. The minimum faculties of the human mind are adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Sri Aurobindo has said that human mind does not go beyond these four operations.

Question: Integration?

Integration is a higher level of mind. The specialty of mind is to differentiate, to divide. As Sri Aurobindo has said: "All ignorance is based upon division." Supermind unifies. It is the special distinction between Supermind and Mind. Supermind unifies and unifies totally. It is based upon a oneness which is inherently complex. But the complexity is complex at once. It is not by adding up various elements. It is all at once. Supermind is a consciousness of all at once. It is its very constitution. Human mind organises but basically it organises on the basis of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Its organising is a kind of reflection of the Supermind because Mind is not at anytime separated from Supermind. Therefore the faculties of Supermind already operate in the Mind. But if you want the differentia of the Mind then the differentia is these four operations. And Sri Aurobindo has said that Mind does not go beyond these four operations — as Mind.

Question: When a child plays he is also not attached to the result...

Absolutely. That is why God is a child. He plays. His enjoyment is ananda, ‘a constant delight’. Whatever activity is done is delight. So what you say is quite true. That is why we have to be in kindergarten all the time. It is an imitation of God. God is in a constant play and if you are playing in the garden of God you are in a constant play. So, even in the last school this element should be prominent. As far as possible you should always learn through play. It is only because human beings cannot sustain the play that, because of the artificiality of the human mind, that other processes have to be implemented or supplemented there.

In the last school, however, this element of spoon-feeding where the teacher knows what the child has learnt by play and these three things as I said are normally learnt: language, bodily movement and four operations which we then call afterward mathematics.

After a short discussion on discipline and freedom...

In the ordinary circumstances whenever the mind begins to predominate these dichotomies arise and we must respect them because mind develops in this mathematical manner: freedom, discipline; work, play; all these distinctions we make — spontaneous schooling and learning. Schooling itself is a part of a dichotomy of free play, free learning and schooling. As soon as the mind begins to develop the idea of schooling arises. But first of all you should remind everybody it is a last school so that the idea of play remains predominant. The real education, the real learning should be basically a matter of play. And this schooling, which is being done, is the last time that it is being done. The idea of last school I like it so much that right from the beginning a warning is given to everybody, to the teachers as well as the pupils, that this schooling is a concession given to them. They need it because their mind is not directly in consonance with the rhythm of the Divine, so schooling is necessary.

After a discussion with the assembly...

It is why the role of teacher is so great. The role of the teacher is a normative role. It is a role in which you lead the child from positive to normative — to higher. Normative means in which you have reference to ought. Always the teacher is one who holds up to the child the idea of ought. The idea of ought is actually the idea of God. Because we are separated from God, at present in our mind, we always hold up the norm of God. Therefore all education is basically spiritual education whether you like it or not. Any reference to ought, which is normal in an education process, derives itself from God. It is from the Divine nature. Our aim should be constantly to lead the child from the present stage to the ideal stage with least friction, which is very difficult. That is why Auroville education is a great experiment. The reason why we should not do what others are doing elsewhere is this, as Mother once wrote to me saying: "We are not here to do better than what others are doing, but to do something that others do not even know that should be done." And this is actually the true education that we have to develop. And then the role of the teacher is very great because you have to be constantly aware that actually you are with a soul. And you are dealing with a soul which is playing. Outwardly the child has forgotten that he was playing and you have to lead him back to what Plato call remembering. That is the very definition of education for Plato. Plato said that all learning is remembrance. You remind the child that he is God, that he is the child of God. In fact, that is the only thing that has to be done in education.

Question on the word normative and how it could be misused.

You are right, therefore idea of normative should be defined. The word normative is not enough. You have to be constantly defining what is value.

Alright, to come back to last school which I was trying to expound in my own mind. Last school is largely a kindergarten, but supplanted with a tremendous amount of schooling. Reminding the child all along that he will soon overcome this need of schooling. So the method of last school should be so constituted that you remind the child that he has to do by himself. The schooling is only a concession. It may be a long period of seven to eight years because the purpose of this schooling is to develop more and more what is already developed in the kindergarten namely: language, mathematics and bodily movements. Plus many other faculties which might develop up automatically, imagination for example. Many children develop imagination automatically. Then power of imitation and therefore dramatics; the power of formation, designs of various kinds and that is what gives birth to art. And along with sound and language are connected the art of poetry and the art of music. Apart from those three things namely: language, mathematic and physical development you allow also the others things which result from imagination — painting, music, whatever.

If you want to make a curriculum for the last school you emphasise these first three things because to the mind proper these three things are very important. And for other things every child does not necessarily manifest those developments. Every child does not become a painter, a musician or an artist. Therefore although this should be encouraged you should not have a kind of insistence that they should develop these faculties. Even with regard to those three things there should not be compulsion. There are children who are tuned to music more than to learning the alphabet. It is in our preoccupations with our present life that we say you have to learn the alphabet first and we insist that the children learn the alphabet, but some children may not like it, they may be good musicians instead. Once Mother told me that nothing should be compulsory. In the whole process of education nothing should be compulsory.

So you should have a kind of flexible curriculum for a last school within the first eight years — last school should be only for eight years when children need to learn by schooling, by feeding, by the constant presence of the teacher to look after them and to see their defects and deficiencies, when their development requires a good deal of guidance. And our aim should be that during the eight years the children learn at least the languages which are spoken in their environment. Secondly, the children should learn very well the four operations of arithmetic. That should be the aim of the curriculum of the eight years. This is the sound rule actually three R’s as they are called. They are quite good but if you limit yourself to any three R’s and put them in a sequence, first year you do this, second year you do that, third year you do this, it becomes uncreative. You should not prescribe first standard goal, second standard goal and third standard goal. You put overall goals for the first eight years. During the first eight years you should educate the child so that basically he will be able to speak, write and read, at least three or four languages. This should be done particularly in the kindergarten and in the first few years. We in Auroville emphasize those languages which are appropriate to the international surroundings that we have. Apart from this what should be the level to which you should reach in eight years? You should have at least the minimum level at which the child may be capable. Some children may become quite proficient in certain languages even at the age of twelve, thirteen; some may not have that capacity or they may be doing so many languages at the same time that in each one they progress only a little, but their capacity is very great. They can become very good translators in due course. We should not discourage, we should only put down the minimum level and we can say that the maximum is any height to which the child is capable of reaching. It may be that even A level in the first eight years in particular respects is possible. We should have no limit with regard to the efficiency that should be reached in the first eight years. Reading, writing and calculating at the minimum level so that afterwards — and this is the minimum level that I am now defining — he does need the help of the teacher to do further studies, as far as those things are concerned. This is the minimum level that is why it is last school. Last school means that afterwards he does not normally need the help of the teacher — spoon-feeding is over. That should be our norm. The maximum is any level you can reach, but for minimum a child should learn at least this much. In these days for example computer is a very important instrument for learning by oneself and you should add that also the capacity of skill for computer, so that afterwards one can learn by oneself whatever one wants to learn. So, reading, writing, calculating plus anything that the child has potentiality for, anything the child has already developed in the kindergarten to some extent — the rudiments have been already developed and you develop them further — that would be the curriculum for the last school.

There are three processes of learning. Learning by development, learning by demonstration and learning by exploration. All the three processes should be involved in this movement of last school. In fact, all these three processes are constant everywhere — in the kindergarten and here also. But here the emphasis will be largely upon development, not so much upon exploration and not so much upon demonstration. They should not be absent, they can be even large, but the largest time should be allotted to development.

Kireet has been reminded of the time limit...

After this comes after school 1 in which the emphasis will be a continuous process of demonstration. You demonstrate to children many things. Exploration is present, development also is present. You imagine a child coming home from the school. What does he want to do? He wants to relax, he wants to watch cricket on the television. Normally we do not do anything systematically but if we are a good teacher you will present lot of demonstrations. Demonstrations about laboratory work. For example how to produce water out of oxygen and hydrogen combined together. But a good teacher finds out many things which have to be demonstrated. And you give an intensive programme of demonstrations. It will be after school 1. Other processes are continuing, but there is less teaching, less feeding, more learning and developing by oneself, more demonstrations and also explorations. After two years in after school 1 you have more explorations, putting the child before the wall and obliging him to explore. A very special programme of explorations. You know that that the child after some demonstration and relaxation in the home wants to go out, to walk out, to wander about. This is the process of exploration. So, what child normally likes to do, you do it systematically, deliberately.

What I call development is a process of assimilation. You develop and assimilate... Assimilation is a constant process of learning, of all development.

After school 2 specialises in explorations. After school 3 emphasises development. It is a cycle. What has been emphasised in the last school repeats itself in a more prominent manner in the after school 3: development. After demonstration, after exploration once again there is a repetition of development. And here the process of assimilation becomes much more important than previously. Then comes super school. Here again it is a repetition of last school. Again schooling becomes important because now there is a transition from one stage of thought to a higher level of thought, from one stage of action to a higher level of action. Therefore the role of the teacher as a stimulator becomes very important. The schooling process becomes very intense at the level of super school but the other processes also should be there. Apart from schooling but schooling of a different kind and I don’t want to go into it because the time is running out, so I just put myself forwards into the no school in which students and teachers are all one, they are all kindergarten children again. And they can learn whatever they want to learn on their own, there are no teachers available excepting consultancy. Some consultancy will be available; some kind of cooperative learning, everyone is a teacher and every one is a pupil. That kind of partnership. And then of course research. You advance further, you specialise in something and you go on into intensive research by yourself.

As I conceive it CIRHU is a place of no school and research. And this Resource Center of which you are speaking should be a Resource Center where all the processes of learning are available; where consultation is available, where schooling is available, where development is possible by your own effort, where explorations are possible, where demonstrations are possible. All facilities should be available. I think that if these ideas are kept in mind we can now organise the Resource Center.

Question: As these resources should be available to all the students from kindergarten to super school this implies that this Resource Center should be located in the same campus?

It should be not far. Because you know the whole process is one. Contiguity I have found in my experience to be extremely important. Contiguity is very important for some kind of concentration of atmosphere. Too much of a distance distracts therefore it should be as far as possible contiguous. Not one into the other but contiguous. The Resource Center should be something from which many stimulating ideas would emerge. And all teachers would like to consult and to come to the Resource Center for stimulation, for getting new ideas and so on. And this Resource Center should be, not only the Center for what we have discussed so much, the evolution of human species and the mutation and so on, not only for synthesis of knowledge and synthesis of culture, but also for everything that is relevant to the teaching/learning process.

Question: inaudible...

Every teacher has to be an educational philosopher. Our programme of teacher training should have this understanding. One used to say I am a small teacher or a big teacher. No, everybody is a good teacher. Everybody has to be a teacher. And a real teacher who understands the real process of education quite well and therefore can apply any process which is valid for a given child or a given group at any given stage.

On Super School - Auroville

On Super School

Before you all leave I want to tell you that we are now building up Super School. We are sitting today in a Super School. This is the Hall of Super School. I am very keen that all of you from today graduate into Super School. You have left the Last School. You have gone into Super School!

And I want to tell you what I mean by Super School.

This is my interpretation.

Mother has given the word "Super School". She has not said what it means. We can only try to understand. So I want your participation in that sharing. We will all enquire, what is this word "Super School" that Mother has used? So I have been making a research for the last several months now. In fact right from the time that I came to you first, I was as it were, blessed by all of you and I felt a Grace on me, that I am now given a chance to make a research. You know whenever you have chance to make a research you should think you are blessed, because all life is to be a research. So I felt very greatly blessed and for which I have to thank you again and again for it is you who gave me the chance of research.

And I found that what I was doing in these sessions with you was already Super School. It is like Harpagon. You know the story of Molière, isn’t it? Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. Harpagon discovered that what he was speaking was already prose! He discovered what is prose and he found out that what he was speaking was already prose! Similarly, when this word "Super School" came ─ Deepti brought to me what Mother had written. At that time I did not even know that Mother had written the word "Super School" and in that document Mother had written only five terms: Last School, After School 1, After School 2, After School 3, Super School and No School. So I came to know of it only a few months ago. And then I enquired as to what it is, that I was doing with all of you, I discovered that I was already doing Super School.

Super School, I discovered, is to my mind — at least at present tentatively — a school. First of all it is a school. And school is what? A school is a place of schooling. And what does schooling mean? Schooling is a place where students are helped. In comparison to that, No School is a place where students are not helped. They are left to themselves. You do everything yourself. You discover all yourself. There is no school. So if we are in a Super School it means that you are in a school where a lot of help is being given — as I am bringing in Parmenides, his statement which you may not know and which you will take a long time to find if you have to do it yourself. But here you are given help. Somebody who has read this for the last forty years is getting a chance to bring it to your notice, saying look there is a big treasure here, and this one sentence here, this jewel, is a very important jewel, he brings it to you and gives it to you. So this is schooling. Schooling is a place where lot of help is given.

But help about what? Help about higher realms of thought and action. You can help children in writing the alphabet that is also help. That is also schooling. But here, in Super School, you are given help in the higher realm of thought and action. So this is one mark of it being a Super School. We are now dealing with the higher and highest thought. In fact, just now we did the highest thought that can be envisaged. So we are dealing with the higher and highest thought; that is our main content. That is the mark that we are now in a Super School, dealing with higher thought and action.

Then, in giving you help, there is a kind of a speed; a Super School is to ride on a galloping horse. A horse which is galloping. Neither trotting nor cantering but galloping. You go from what is written in the Twentieth Century to Fifth Century BC. At one stroke you were taken as it were, from one point to the other at a gallop. And again you come back to the present day — by gallop. The speed is galloping. You are summarizing the whole store of thought as quickly as possible, with a tremendous speed.

What Mother has said in the third article of the Charter, it is a tremendous task. "Taking advantage of all the past discoveries" — unless you gallop you cannot do it because Mother also wants you to spring towards the future, because if you take all the time only in galloping and assimilating the past, there is no time for the future. So we have got to gallop very fast.

The speed with which we are going to do our work will be a very super speed. Like a Japanese train. The bullet train. In fact the mark of any achievement of a higher level is measured by the speed. The quicker you can move spontaneously, the better is the sign of your great progress, already achieved. Little children can progress little by little by little by little. But as you move forward the mark whether you belong to a higher level or not is this ─ whether you can make galloping speed.

After studying you for the last six months, I then told Deepti that you belong to higher education already. This is my judgment on all of you because what I was talking to you I could not have talked and I tell you that I did not come to talk to you with any prepared plan. I just sat with you and allowed my mind to tune in with you and speak what I felt could be absorbed by you. And I found myself so happy that I could speak at the highest level that I could think of. Therefore it was to me a mark that you all belong to higher education. Whether you pass exams or don’t pass exams, I don’t mind. For me examination is not the measure of your achievement. The fact that you are absorbing these higher levels of thought automatically proves that you belong to higher education.

Super School is a place where you are aided, you need aid. You still do not belong to a stage where I can say now you need no school. You don’t belong to that level. You will belong to that level and we are preparing you in such a way that you will be able to say one day that we don’t want you. Bye bye. We shall move forward ourselves. And we wait for that happy day when that will come. But now you need help. So this place is a place where you expect a great deal of help. I am giving long lectures. If it were No School, perhaps you would not need any lectures at all. But at present I am deliberately giving long lectures because I want to gallop very fast. As if I want to fly with you and go far and then I want to leave you. I will say now you can fly yourselves. This is my aspiration.

So I am taking you to a field, which is supposed to be very difficult. Even great philosophers do not read The Life Divine. This is a very difficult book. But I want to read with you this very book because it will take us to very, very far off regions and very quickly I want to do it. What I want from you is a great readiness to fly and if you are tired any time, please tell me very frankly. Because I should stop — for that moment we shall fly slowly. Because I don’t want that you should suddenly say that now I won’t come at all. No, I want you to be with me all the time. Even if you are slow, I shall slow myself down and go slowly with you. Even if it takes many years it does not matter. But we shall do this course, regularly and assiduously. If I ask you to study please study nicely. Be prepared, don’t be tired. That is all I ask, don’t be tired. We want to rise to very high levels of thought and action. We want to do this very speedily and we want to prepare you for No School. Till that time we shall be with you.

I have said therefore that the program of this Super School is the following. We shall concentrate upon two great books. The Life Divine and The Synthesis of Yoga. The Life Divine is the highest book of thought and The Synthesis of Yoga is the highest book of action. So these are the two focuses of our work. At the same time, to understand these two books we have to assimilate the whole past — in its essentials at least. Therefore I have said, to begin with, I want to give six lectures on Western Philosophy, six lectures on Indian Philosophy, six lectures on World History and six lectures on Economics — at least six lectures so that you can enter into the field. We shall have some kind of cyclical movement and then you will find yourself better and better equipped to read these two great books.

You should be able to read these two books by yourself basically. So even now I am trying to have you read basically without my telling you and asking questions to you in such a way that you read yourself and tell me the answers. That will be our style of studying.

I have also proposed what is called a General Knowledge course. Now, very often, a General Knowledge course is regarded to be "non-stuff". "Non-stuff" in the sense that where is this, how many rivers are there in India; what is the height of the Himalayas? This is a matter of General Knowledge. It is quiz programme as it were you have this on TV so often. But to my mind a General Knowledge course is a very important course. It is not only a quiz programme. If you want to summarise the past very quickly, you should be able to touch the doors of many domains of knowledge. What is the method by which you can touch the doors of many domains? You may not enter the doors after knocking them. But at least, you should know that if you want to enter into a certain domain, here is the door. So, I am acquainting you with a large number of domains so that if you want to enter into any domain you are not a stranger. At least the geography is known to you, not the history. But the geography of doors is known to you. So it is with that idea that I have proposed a General Knowledge course.

In India the General Knowledge test paper is one in which any question regarding any domain, can be asked. And you should be at least able to say that you are acquainted with it. I want that kind of a course for you. If somebody speaks of commodities, equilibrium of price, index — these are terms of Economic — you should not gape. You should be able to understand what these words mean. Similarly of other subjects. If one speaks of enzymes, it should have some meaning in your mind — what is enzyme. If somebody speaks of DNA, you should be able to understand what this word DNA means. Chromosomes, genes, what does it mean? So there are so many such terms floating in the world today we should be able to grasp them, understand them properly.

So there is no fixed program, no syllabus, nothing, no examination. I would like you to swim freely in the field of wide knowledge of the world. And then I have told you that whatever you are interested in — some of you are artists, some are physical educationists, some of you are musicians — I would like you to specialize in all this. It is a part of Super School. I would like everybody to have some skills. And I have told you that one skill that you should possess is speedwriting. As students of Super School you should all be able to do speedwriting. Either stenography, shorthand or you find your own system of shorthand, but you should be able to take notes very quickly. It is one skill which is absolutely indispensable. So do it. Capacity to summarise, capacity to report, these are some of the skills which you should develop. So whether you are taught or not on your own you should do this, so you will gain real confidence when you are able to summarise. After finishing the first Chapter I shall tell you to summarise. And don’t worry I shall summarise with you. It is not as if you will be left without aid, I shall work with you to summarise the whole Chapter.

Apart from that you should have some other skills in which you are interested. Right from gardening, to cooking, to brick-making, or architecture. There are so many things in Auroville, so many skills are manifested, kindly look out and see what you would like to do, that skill must develop. Sri Aurobindo has spoken of four aspects of your personality — Wisdom, Heroism or Courage, Harmony and Skill. We want each student to develop these four things. In his own way, in her own way, at one’s own speed, but ultimately at the end of Super School you should feel that you have sufficiently shaped your personality in these four directions.

So this is the programme of Super School that I have so far discovered and I am sharing with you. We should still discover more, may be that our programme will become longer and longer, but that doesn’t matter, without any restrain of time or space we fly higher. Alright. Good!

Education for Human Unity (Auroville)

Experimental Research

in

Education for Human Unity

Explorations in Contents and Methods

of

Last School

After School

Super School

No School

Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Educational Research

Auroville

Research in the new perspectives of education has resulted in numerous programs, curricula, and tools, some of which are presented below:

(a) Child-centred Education:

• Innovative assessment tools including the portfolio method and students’ self-assessment.
• “Free Progress” education whereby students are involved meaningfully in choices about their own education.
• Programs to increase children’s awareness of themselves, and initiate the process of developing and integrating the different parts of their being.
• Disciplinary processes that are accepted voluntarily by all and not imposed arbitrarily.
• Interdisciplinary team approaches to education so that all teachers become aware of individual children’s strengths and weaknesses.

(b) Integral Education:

• Education of the moral, aesthetic, emotional, psychic and spiritual parts apart from the physical and mental.
• Development of all the senses so that their reception of stimuli is exact and precise in a scientific way without influence of emotive preference.

(c) New Contents of Education:

• Multidisciplinary thematic and project work to effectively engage children and help them to understand how to integrate the various strands of the educational process.
• Manual skills as a necessary part of education to provide children with practical skills, an understanding of work ethics, and practical contexts for integrating their classroom knowledge.
• An all rounded approach to physical education in which values such as team spirit, leadership, and perseverance are as critical as physical achievement.
• Drama as a significant tool of developing and training the emotional parts of the personality.

(d) Education for Human Unity:

• Approaches for conducting classes composed of a multicultural, multilingual student body.
• Language programs that emphasise Sanskrit, Tamil, French, and English.
• Exposure to world heritage.
• Curricula that integrate world cultural experiences so that individuals begin to understand how diversity can lead to a more enlightened unity.
• Exposure to the development of international design of living and intermingling of rural and urban cultures.

Auroville is meant “to be the first realisation of human unity based on the teaching of Sri Aurobindo.” Autryville’s Charter states that it will be “a site for unending education.” Over the last 17 years, through SAIIER, Auroville has strived to realise this vision. Autryville’s commitment and its past history now position it to make evermore significant contributions to the world at large toward the manifestation of human unity. As this theme is vast and is also being pursued in several other international universities, it is felt that in Auroville this theme should be focussed on special subjects found in the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Having diagnosed the present global crisis as an evolutionary problem, Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have developed a vast fund of knowledge concerning the integral development of humanity. With this knowledge, humanity can consciously evolve and overcome its limitations. This evolution could bring humanity into a universal consciousness. Possessed with holistic powers of action, unprecedented processes of harmony, peace, human unity and evolution would result.

The experiential as well as experimental methods of research elaborated by Auroville in various aspects of human life towards a synthetic organisation of a spiritualised society aims to spark this evolutionary process, and integrate it into the educational experience of the world and the future development of humanity.

Explorations:

Last School

The aim of Last School is to firmly establish an integral, value-oriented, child-centred education early in children’s development. This initial focus is critical to ensuring that children can most effectively assimilate concepts that lead to human unity. For example, the discovery of the inner and outer being and the witness attitude provide children with some of their first tools in developing themselves as complete beings. It is only by completing ourselves that we can begin to understand each other and create human unity. Last School will develop techniques and curricula to integrate traditional subjects such as reading, writing, mathematics, sciences, computer, environmental and social studies with integral, child-centred, value-oriented learning. Integral assessment tools will be developed to examine both children’s progress and the overall programs. For example no grades will be given. Instead methods for children to evaluate their own learning and personal progress will be created, as well as formats for individual student/teacher and parent/ teacher discussions. Effective techniques, curricula, and assessment tools will be documented and handed over to the outreach, teacher training, and learning materials departments for dissemination.

After School I, II & III

The aim of After School I, II & III is to establish a method and a favourable environment to awaken the soul and spirit in humanity. This will be accomplished through child-centred, value-oriented educational approaches including Free Progress where key concepts will be spacious freedom and large unity as expressed by Sri Aurobindo, “for the nature of the Spirit is a spacious freedom and a large unity into which each man must be allowed to grow according to his own nature.”

The function of After School is to operate a progressive de-schooling out of the first structured frame of Last School, so that students have the space and help to find themselves and choose by themselves what they want to develop. After School consists of three stages. In the first stage, focus is on the rooting of faculties to be developed. In the second stage, students are exposed to a multitude of demonstrations to awaken their interest and awareness about both themselves and the world. The third stage consists of free exploration to allow students to find their true centres of interest and pace of progress.

After School is a preparatory phase leading to Super School.

The three stages of After School will include programmes of studies in sciences, humanistic studies, languages, fine art, hobbies, crafts and technologies, -- all of them well-oriented towards values of the rational, aesthetic, and spiritual pursuits, and all contributing towards the understanding of peace and human unity.

Super School

Super School will be focussed on higher knowledge and action, and will endeavour to emulate a quest of frontiers of knowledge, develop courses of applied philosophy and broad canvas of subjects that are theoretical, practical and technical.

Secondly, teachers and students will employ new methodologies that will aim at accelerating the rate of progression. As a result, it is expected that the discoveries of the past will be assimilated as quickly as possible, and students will be enabled to spring forward towards new discoveries in various fields of general interest and also of specialisation. Already, a new course of Applied Philosophy and Yoga has commenced. Thirty courses of general knowledge are being planned, and a number of students have already chosen fields of specialisation in art, music, and certain other areas of technical skill which are available in Auroville, — such as ecology, water harvesting, architecture, planning, management, and several crafts and technologies.

Thirdly, it is proposed to prepare students to study by themselves and develop what Mother has called “No School” (This Programme is presented under CIRHU).

“No School” Programme

No School will cater to the needs of research in higher education in various fields where students are mature enough to conduct their education on their own. It will highlight the methodology – for the benefit of the students as well as the teachers – of self-education, free from all mechanical processes of schooling and prefixed curriculum, timetables and teacher-dominated classrooms. The aim of this programme is an integral development of the personality and its method consists in a “Free Progress” approach, which allows the students to discover and master knowledge from their own inner needs and aspirations.

It is, therefore, envisaged to develop a programme that will provide a psychological, spiritual and material environment in which the students will have the possibility to choose whatever studies they want to engage in out of the wealth of knowledge that will be made available by CIRHU and the other Faculties. Similarly, depending upon their availability and the needs of the students, the teachers will be free to organise their research and the transmission of the results of this research to the students in a way that is individually suited to them.

In order to initiate the programme, it is envisaged that the coordination of the first phase will be taken up by the Exchange Programme team.

Notes

1. The Life Divine, p. 568

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2. Upanishads, p.148

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