CHAPTER 19

1 See, for further details, Anjum Sibia (2006).

2 There are many schools in India, drawing inspiration from the vision of Sri Aurobindo, that have amalgamated the CBSE syllabus with Integral education. However, there are two schools, SAICE (Puducherry) and Mirambika (New Delhi), which have implemented the principles and methodology of Integral education quite radically. Mirambika has an Integral teacher education programme (duration 3 years) on the same campus. The student-teachers do their teaching practice at Mirambika.

3 Sarandha, A Tribute to Mirambika on its 25th anniversary. Published in The Awakening Ray, Vol. 10, 4, (2006).

4 The ordinary way of man’s individual and social living seems indeed to be a contradiction of these principles; for certainly we bear a terrible weight of external necessity, rule and law and our need for self-expression, for the development of our true person, our real soul, our inmost characteristic law of nature in life is at every turn interfered with, thwarted, forced from its course, given a very poor chance and scope by environmental influences. Life, State, society, family, all surrounding powers seem to be in a league to lay their yoke on our spirit, compel us into their moulds, impose on us their mechanical interest and rough immediate convenience. We become parts of a machine; we are not, are hardly allowed to be men in the true sense, manuṣya, puruṣa, souls, minds, free children of the spirit empowered to develop the highest characteristic perfection of our being and make it our means of service to the race. It would seem that we are not what we make ourselves, but what we are made. Yet the more we advance in knowledge, the more the truth of the Gita’s rule is bound to appear. The child’s education ought to be an outbringing of all that is best, most powerful, most intimate and living in his nature; the mould into which the man’s action and development ought to run is that of his innate quality and power. He must acquire new things, but he will acquire them best, most vitally on the basis of his own developed type and inborn force. And so too the functions of a man ought to be determined by his natural turn, gift and capacities. The individual who develops freely in this manner will be a living soul and mind and will have a much greater power for the service of the race. And we are able now to see more clearly that this rule is true not only of the individual but of the community and the nation, the group soul, the collective man (Sri Aurobindo, 1976, pp. 499−500).