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Rasearch in Education at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram
I. EDUCATION AND LIFE EDUCATION primarily aims at preparing the child and the youth for life. But what is life? And what is the aim of human life? The nature of education will depend upon the answers that we give to these basic questions.
Reseach in Education as conducted at the Ashram starts from an inquiry into these basic questions and this has resulted in a formulation of what can most properly be called “Science of Living."
All life, we find, in an affirmation and a growth, a pulsation of an interplay of forces, secking blindly or half unconsciously and half consciously some deepest satisfaction, in which it may find its resting-place or assured stability or equilibrium.
KIREET JOSHI as yet. However even this coexistence raises a possibility of an integration.
(b) And when the integration of these elements is effected, we find a clue to the reconciliation of the above three seemingly opposite views of the aim of life. We find then the exact relationship between the supracosmic, the supratereestrial and the terrestrial, and of all these with individual striving and growing on the earth. It is then realised that the supracosmic, the supraterrestrial and the terrestrial are the three terms of reality, the last two rooted in the first. The will to realise the self-fulfilment and perfection here on the earth is not a vanity Oia perversion; only its unwillingness to look beyond is a self-defeating limitation; for the complete self-fulfilment on the earth can be attained only by a union with the supracosmic and by a journey through the supraterrestrial and terrestrial planes and by preparing and realising the harmonisation and perfection of the principles and powers of the embodied existence here.
(c) Education then must be a preparation for such a journey, such an adventure, such a seeking and a realisation of harmony and perfection.
(d) In practical bat precise terms, this would mean that education must consist in the training and development of five essential aspects of personality, in order to widen, enrich, subtilise and integrate them into an ideal perfection. These five aspects are: the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic and the spiritual
Research is being conducted at the Ashrain into the various problems that arise in the implementation of this integral view of education.
There are, we find again, three fundartal powerful, but conflicting views concerning the goal or aim that life seeks to realise :
(1) According to the first, all life is an ignorant movement seeking for knowledge, which, however, can b: found only by the cessation of life, which in turn, can b: achieved only by the realisation of the supracosmic static Self or featureless Nirvana.
(2) According to the second, all life here is a preparation for a life elsewhere on a supraterrestrial plane, conceived either as a paradise or a heaven or an abode of perpetual joy and bliss.
(3) According to the third, which is very much in vogue today, the aim of life is to affirm itself here in this world or earth itself. There is, according to this view, nothing beyond this cosmos, or even if there be anything beyond this cosmos, the aim of life has nothing to do with it, either because the connection of with that beyond cannot be known or because life here is so preoccupying and absorbing that it does not inspire us, or leave us sufficient time, to inquire into that beyond.
All the.e three views have been deeply studied at the Ashram and our conclusions are as follows:
(a) Each one of the above views answers to the aspiration of one or more of the elements in the human personality: but, in the human personality, thom ele . It ire find to b. Xistant, though not imtegrated
II. AN EVALUATION OF EXPERIMENTS IN
EDUCATION
1. An interesting problem is to consider the relationship of the experiment conducted at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram with the experiments made in the field of education in the past or those which are being conducted at present.
(i) It is recognised that in the h story of the development of education, we find in certain systems of education a stress on a harmonious development of the cul, la vall dite mental. Such ir.cesc
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