Beginning
with Inner Discovery
Beginning
with Inner Discovery
“The first necessity is the inner discovery in order to know what one truly is behind social, moral, cultural, racial and hereditary appearances.
At the centre there is a being free, vast and knowing, who awaits our discovery and who ought to become the active centre of our being and our life in Auroville.”
~ The Mother
Utilitarianism and Education
Humanity stands at the cross-roads, and the choices we make today will create the world that our children shall inherit.
If a revolution in perspective can take place perhaps we shall be able to create systems of education that can truly empower youth to comprehend, inwardly and outwardly, the world they confront.
On the other hand, educational aims may continue to remain largely utilitarian, that is valuing merely what is useful rather than what is Good and True and Beautiful. And so the system shall continue to construct ‘products’ whose personalities are oriented mainly towards the pursuit of successful careers and money making. For it is this aim that dominates educational pursuits and institutions, handicapping and dwarfing what should be a sacred vocation.
A Need for Change
And thus it will remain, that at an age when children should be dreaming of beauty, of greatness and perfection, dreams that may be too sublime for ordinary common sense, children now dream of money and worry about how to earn it.
What is of greatest value to them in their education is merely what may be useful when they grow up so that they too can earn a lot of money.
What happens to the aspiration to learn for the sake of knowledge, to study in order to know the secrets of Nature and life, to educate oneself in order to grow in consciousness, to discipline oneself in order to become master of oneself, to overcome one’s weaknesses, incapacities and ignorance, to prepare oneself to advance in life towards a goal that is nobler and vaster, more generous and more true?
All of these, which ought to be the true aim of education, are swallowed up by the terrible modern-day malady of utilitarianism.
“Every workplace in Auroville should first be a place of offering to a higher principle and of mutual giving. Then the reality of a new economy would emerge.”
~ The Mother
“Our call is to young India.
It is the young who must be the builders of the new world.”
~ Sri Aurobindo
Our world will face formidable challenges in the coming decades, for which current educational programs offer no preparation.
Our planet and humanity are in a situation of acute disorder created by experts of all kinds. We need something other than these instrumental skills without inspiration, which are locally competent but without vision and overall incompetent.
What we will need more and more are men and women capable of thinking in a creative, intuitive, and synthetic way, of finding in themselves the soul force which can alone face the needs of the time, and to invent a new thought, a new life, a new world, if humanity is to survive.
The mission of education can no longer be to produce ready-made citizens for a system that cannot find solutions to the problems it has created, it is to promote the emergence of men and women capable of building themselves consciously on a truer basis, while building a new world in which they chose to live together without exclusion, around common aspirations and projects.
Towards
Free Progress
Towards Free Progress
“Free progress for me first of all is self-discipline because the word free which is a term which is very misused, freedom and then we have progress. It’s always relative that you can always have lots of meanings for these two words but for me free progress is self-discipline.
It should not be imposed.
It should come from within you, know what you want to do then free progress is a great thing for you because you really do things for yourself.
There is no outside pressure. You’re always motivated.”
~ Satyavan, Student
“Last School has that opportunity!
Brings you the idea to focus on yourself.
Try to understand more what is inside us.“
~ Gaia, Student