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EDUCATION
Sriniketan (Abode of Wealth)
: Tagore's mind was fixed on
total upliftment. This wish was fulfilled when, on 2nd February,
1922, within six weeks of inauguration of Viswabharati, an upliftment
centre was established at the village of Surul 3 km. away from
Santiniketan. This new centre, named 'Sriniketan' was greeted with a
song Tagore specially composed for the occasion :
Back ! Get thee back to the starving land
That craves thy bounty with outstretched hand!
Next day Leonard Elmhirst, an Englishman who admired Tag-
ore and came to work for him, collected two assistants and ten boys,
piled them into a decrepit bus and headed for Sural. Tagore's instruc-
tions were moving : "Around us the life of the villages lies in ruins;
their old order is almost vanished; their economic balance is upset,
their health is broken. Move among them, search thoroughly, find out
the causes of this disintegration; then come back and tell me what we
must do to arrest it". Elmhirst studied the situation and explained the
causes - Malaria (ill-health), Monkey-tricks (money-lenders' receipts)
and Mistrust (want of mutual confidence) - in his essay titled 'Robbery
of the Soil". Tagore planned Sriniketan's future on his advice. Now
Sriniketan is an integral part of 'Viswabharati'.
SRI AUROBINDO
Sri Aurobindo's scheme of education is called 'Integral Educa-
tion'. His basic ideas on education were first published in a series in
his magazine 'Karmayogin'. These were collected together and printed
in a booklet titled 'A system of National education for India.'
According to him there are three things which have to be taken
into account in a true and living education (i) the individual in his
commonness and uniqueness (ii) the nation and its people and (iii) the
universal humanity.
India has seen in man a soul, a portion of the Divinity en-
wrapped in mind and body. It is a conscious manifestation in nature of
the universal spirit. Nature has cultivated in man a mental, intellec-
tual, ethical, dynamic and practical, an aesthetic and hedonistic, a vital
and physical being; but all these are powers of a soul which manifests
through them. The soul is greater than them all and arises into a
spiritual being. Which is his ultimate divine manhood.
Similarly India's conception of a nation is not an organised and
armed community placing itself in the service of the national ego, but
a great soul of a community which has manifested a nature of its own
(swabhava), and a law of that nature (swadharma), and has embodied
it in the various aspects of its culture. Equally so, humanity is the
vision of the universal manifesting in the human race evolving through
life with the ultimate spiritual aim. “ True spirituality”, as the Mother
says, "is not to renounce life but to make life perfect with a Divine
Perfection."
Education to be complete must have five principal aspects: the
physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual. Usually
these succeed in a chronological order. This does not mean that one
should replace another but that all must continue, completing each
other, till the end of life.
To start with, all knowledge comes through experience on
account of the interaction between the individual and the environ-
ment. The five sense organs experiencing the five types of sensations
- touch, smell, taste, seeing and hearing - transmit them to the brain.
Eternal India
encyclopedia
These are automatically stored in memory. The store house is
'Chitta'.
From these by a process of sorting out and linked classification in
various forms the mind power
{Manas)
converts them into thoughts.
This
'Manas'
has also the power of generating its own thoughts inside.
The next process is attended to by intellect (
Buddhi)
which has the
power to select, organise and reorganise thought groups relevant to
the purpose required at different times and different places. Further
deep is the 'intuition'
(Antaratma)
which has the power of receiving
'revealed' knowledge directly without the help of
Chitta, Manas
or
Buddhi.
But in 'man' this 'intuition' is not yet developed perfectly,
though some individuals get occasional flashes of it. The process of
knowledge may be diagrammatically presented as follows:
S
: Sensations through sense organs.
1
: Store house (Memory)
2
: Sorting and converting into thoughts and generating thoughts
(Mind)
3
: Organising and reorganising (Intellect)
4
: Revelation (Intuition)
"The first problem in a national system of education," in Au-
robindo's views, is to give an education as comprehensive as the Euro-
pean and more thorough, without the evils of strain and cramming.
This can be done by studying the instruments of knowledge (the
layers depicted above), strengthening and sharpening them and by a
system of teaching which shall be natural, easy and effective. He
enunciates three basic principles of teaching: (1) The first principle of
true teaching is that nothing can be taught; the teacher is not an
instructor or task-master, he is a helper and a guide. He does not
impart knowledge, but shows the student how to acquire knowledge,
himself. (2) The second principle is that the mind has to be consulted
in its own growth. The idea of hammering the child into the shape
desired by the parent or teacher is a barbarous and ignorant supersti-
tion. The best aim of education should be to help the growing soul to
draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a nuble
cause. (3) The third principle of education is to work from the near to
the far, from that which is to that which shall be. We must begin from
the environment (soil, air, sights, sounds, habits etc.) The past is our
foundation, the present our material, the future our aim and summit.
The Supermind: The Dawn of a New Age
The manifestation of this world out of the Supreme is achieved
through a double process, the descent and ascent. The descent is an
involution which is a limitation of consciousness by successive steps.
The ascent is an evolution, that is the emergence in matter. Today man
is the brightest product of our universe. Will the evolution come to