Letter to the Mother from Kittu   We have started the project “The Spiritual History of India”.  Priti, Ratna and myself are doing the part related to Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. There are 16 children who have joined the project and most of them are between the ages of 11 and 14. One of the students showed me a letter written by you to him, which says: “There is no harm in studying but their teachings have been surpassed; and to know the Truth it is safer to understand Sri Aurobindo’s teaching.” After reading this, the question that comes in front of me is: Is it really useful to speak to such young children about Ramakrishna an

On Education: Sri Aurobindo Ashram School - I The history of the Ashram school – now known as the International Centre of Education – can be probably divided into four periods. The first period is from 1943 to 1950, the second one is from 1951 to 1958, the third is from 1959 to 1967 and the fourth one is the period after that. This article will deal mainly with the third period – that is to say from 1959 to 1967. However, the first two periods will be briefly touched upon. Before the 1940s children were, as a rule, not permitted to live in the Ashram. But when, during the war, a number of families wer

An experiment worth emulating   The Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education stands out as an interesting and unique experiment in the field of education. We present in this brief article some of its salient features   The first striking feature lies in the goal of education. The goal here is to help the child to grow to the fullest development of his being according to his nature, swadharma. It is based on this concept that education must be a bringing out of the child's own intellectual and moral capacities to their highest possible value and must be based on the psychology of the child-natur

Sri Aurobindo Ashram School 3 We shall first review the developments in the school from the year 1959. As already stated earlier, the Free Progress System was introduced on an experimental basis in 1959 at the Secondary level; from there it evolved to a surer and larger base in 1961; a small group of students were trying out this method and the Mother named it Vers la Perfection. However the whole of the secondary section was not following the Free System. One section – in fact the larger section was still continuing with the old method. The school at the secondary level was thus divided into two sectio

Sri Aurobindo and the Hindu-Muslim problem One of the most serious and apparently intractable problems that the Indian subcontinent has been facing for the last century and more has been the Hindu-Muslim problem. This problem which surfaced in a big way at the beginning of the 20th century finally culminated in the formation of Pakistan in 1947. It was thought then by many – and that included most of the senior Congress leaders- that with the formation of Pakistan the Hindu-Muslim problem would ease and finally even cease to exist; it was believed that the Muslims of the subcontinent bound by Islam and having their

THE HINDU-MUSLIM PROBLEM  The co THE HINDU-MUSLIM PROBLEM   The country is passing through a difficult and critical phase on the vexed issue of the Ayodhya - Babri Masjid problem. It is not really a problem of the temple and the mosque but much more fundamentally the problem of the Hindu - Muslim coexistence. It was the inability to solve this problem that led to the partition of the country in 1947 and unless we face this issue squarely and boldly and solve it once for all on a sure and sound basis it will recur again and again whether at Ayodhya or at Varanasi or in fact anywhere; for there are many contentious issues which can at any moment rai