What we aspire at Sri Life

How blessed is the mother India who gave birth to so many great saints, sages, seekers and great philosophers ! Such great souls have been taking birth here from the times immemorial and awakened the common people, gave them wisdom, enlightened them, preached about their well being, peace, morality and right conduct in life. But may be the world is not prepared yet to receive the knowledge and follow the path to divine life. Have you ever given a thought that at present also many Gurus, Teachers, thousands of NGO's and social workers are actively contributing their share to different causes for   betterment of the society but has not influenced or reached to the highest level. Why?

To have a developed intellect is always helpful if one can enlighten it from above and turn it to a divine use. -Sri Aurobindo

The need of the hour is transformation from within, the transformation of consciousness. Sri Aurobindo says to manifest divine life on this earth we must transform our consciousness. What they set before us, as ideal is the Divine Life upon earth. In the real sense.
For years Sri Aurobindo, considered the formation of an Education Center as one of the best tmeans of preparing the future humanity to manifest upon earth a divine consciousness. The world needs an awakened and embolden India to establish a new consciousness on Earth. We surrender ourselves to this greater purpose and aspired to put maximum efforts to serve it. We've learned that the surest way to make lasting change happen is to adopt the reforms in education sector, To ensure a step in the right direction, we think of children in their entirety, an individual, an eternal soul, and firmly advocate the child centered education and Integral Education. Children are not objects of sympathy or our charity however well-intentioned, but the human being with the eternal growing soul, a progressing step in this earthly evolution of the human race. No they are not poor and needy they can be the reflection of our society and our growing consciousness.


Integral education refers to the educational thoughts of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, being tried out at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education at Pondicherry. This concept is declared by the Government of India as one of the five institutions of higher learning of all India importance. The Centre has been experimenting with the concept of Integral Education.

Given our experience of almost a decade of working with and for children, we have realized that if you care enough about the situation of our future generation -Indian children, enough to want to change it, you can, we can.We have seen more than 500 Aurobindo schools flourishing wonderfully in Odisha and some in intial stage struggling to survive due to lack of sufficient funds. As our first project Sri Life team has adopted one of the Sri Aurobindo schools in a far village area near Cuttack, Odisha.

We are not here to do (only a little better) what the others do. We are here to do what the others cannot do because they do not have the idea that it can be done.
We are here to open the way of the Future to children who belong to the Future. 

It is this spirit, the zeal that enables The team members, corporate houses, and institutions, originating from various parts of India, representing every ethnic, linguistic, religious and ideological persuasion, to come together to restore to children what is rightfully theirs -To Help the growing soul.
Each of you can get involved by contributing your time, talent, skills and dedication to raise funds through promotion and donations. Your commitment forms the core of this Indigenous Spiritual Indian movement that today involves a small group of like minded people, soon will cover the larger mass.

Sri Aurobindo

 

Sri Aurobindo and The Mother believed that the present world is a creation of the Divine and is not illusion. This world was not built by  a random play of chance. The Divine that has carved out the destiny is not blind. Whatever happens in the life of the world and the human being has been going on as per the divine plan. as stated In his monumental epic Savitri. His written works encompass many areas, from the political and spiritual renaissance of modern India to the intricacies of  yoga and the descent of what he called the "Supramental Consciousness”. This western-educated visionary and yogi attempted to create a synthesis of various yoga traditions and ideas of social and spiritual evolution. Integral education refers to the educational thoughts of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. The thoughts on Integral Education are being tried out at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education at Pondichery has been declared by the Government of India as one of the five institutions of higher learning of all India importance.

Sri Aurobindo came to tell us: "One need not leave the earth to find the Truth, one need not leave the life to find his soul, one need not abandon the world or have only limited beliefs to enter into relation with the Divine. The Divine is everywhere, in everything and if He is hidden, it is because we do not take the trouble to discover Him." - The Mother 
 

For the last 40 years of his life in Pondicherry Sri Aurobindo worked tirelessly for the realisation of his vision of a divine life upon earth. He revealed his new message for humanity and its glorious future primarily through his writings which reflect unerringly his genius as a scholar, writer, poet, literary critic, philosopher, social thinker, revolutionary, patriot, visionary and yogi. His masterful command over the English language, his infallible power of expression, his sharp intellect, his poetic genius, and above all his yogic insight and his love for humanity make it a veritable experience reading his works.

Sri Aurobindo was born on the 15th of August 1872, in Calcutta. As a child of 7 years he was sent to England for his education where he studied at St. Paul's in London and at King's College, Cambridge. During a brilliant academic career he mastered not only English but also Greek, Latin and French and became familiar with German, Italian and Spanish.

At a very young age Sri Aurobindo had begun to feel strongly that a period of great revolutionary changes was emerging in the world and in India and that he was destined to play a part in it.

Vision and Mission

 

Vision  

For the last four years, inspired by the concept of integral education, the school is endeavoring to discharge the fivefold education viz. physical, vital, mental, psychic and spiritual.

 The physical, that is the body concerns itself with health education and physical training. When the child is very young, it needs to be trained in the right physical habits
 The vital, that is the emotions, impulses and desires, energies of action deals with the thorough training of the five senses and character development
 The mental, that is the power of the mind and intelligence concerns itself with the development of the faculties such as observation, reasoning, judgment, imagination, analysis
 The psychic, that is the soul or the deeper spiritual element present in each being, relates to the education of the moral code of conduct, spiritual aspiration for progress and self exceeding.
 The spiritual, aspiration for progress and self exceeding, helping growing soul to evolve.


The truth seeks is made up of four major aspects: Love, Knowledge power and beauty. These four attributes of the truth will express themselves spontaneously in our being. The psychic will be the vehicle of true and pure love, the mind will be the vehicle of infallible knowledge, the vital will manifest an invincible power and strength and the body will be the expression of a perfect beauty and harmony.

Mission statement
The new aim is to help the child to develop his intellectual, aesthetic, emotional, moral, spiritual being and his communal life and impulses out of his own temperament and capacities- a very different object from that of the old education which was simply to pack so much stereotyped knowledge into his resisting brain and impose a stereotyped rule of conduct on his struggling and dominated impulses.....Sri Aurobindo

The aim of the education is not to prepare a man to succeed in life and society, but to increase his perfectibility to its utmost..... The Mother

Why Integral Education

Improving Education through innovative technology and growth of the Spirit

 "Everyone has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it & use it. The chief 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 noble use." 

The Three Principles Of True Teaching

“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. His business is to suggest and not to impose. He does not actually train the pupil’s mind, he only shows him how to perfect his instruments of knowledge and helps and encourages him in the process. He does not impart knowledge to him, he shows him how to acquire knowledge for himself. He does not call forth the knowledge that is within; he only shows him where it lies and how it can be habituated to rise to the surface. The distinction that reserves this principle for the teaching of adolescent and adult minds and denies its application to the child, is a conservative and unintelligent doctrine. Child or man, boy or girl, there is only one sound principle of good teaching. Difference of age only serves to diminish or increase the amount of help and guidance necessary; it does not change its nature.”

“ 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 superstition. It is he himself who must be induced to expand in accordance with his own nature. There can be no greater error than for the parent to arrange beforehand that his son shall develop particular qualities, capacities, ideas, virtues, or be prepared for a prearranged career. To force the nature to abandon its own dharma is to do it permanent harm, mutilate its growth and deface its perfection. It is a selfish tyranny over a human soul and a wound to the nation, which loses the benefit of the best that a man could have given and is forced to accept instead something imperfect and artificial, second-rate, perfunctory and common. Every one has in him something divine, something his own, a chance of perfection and strength in however small a sphere which God offers him to take or refuse. The task is to find it, develop it and use it. The chief 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 noble use.”

“ The third principle of education is to work from the near to the far, from that which is to that which shall be. The basis of a man’s nature is almost always, in addition to his soul’s past, his heredity, his surroundings, his nationality, his country, the soil from which he draws sustenance, the air which he breathes, the sights, sounds, habits to which he is accustomed. They mould him not the less powerfully because insensibly, and from that then we must begin. We must not take up the nature by its roots from the earth in which it must grow or surround the mind with images and ideas of a life which is alien to that in which it must physically move. If anything has to be brought in from outside, it must be offered, not forced on the mind. A free and natural growth is the condition of genuine development. There are souls which naturally revolt from their surroundings and seem to belong to another age and clime. Let them be free to follow their bent; but the majority languish, become empty, become artificial, if artificially moulded into an alien form. It is God’s arrangement that they should belong to a particular nation, age, society, that they should be children of the past, possessors of the present, creators of the future. The past is our foundation, the present our material, the future our aim and summit. Each must have its due and natural place in a national system of education.”                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                   - Sri Aurobindo
                                                                                                                        In 'The Human Mind'
                                                                    Sri Aurobindo and The Mother on Education                                                                                      

"Make of us , the hero warriors we aspire to become . May we fight successfully the great battle of the future that is to be born against the past , that seeks to endure ; so that the new things may manifest and we be ready to receive them."

This is the prayer we repeat every morning at our school says Tridev Acharya student of Sri Aurobindo's Rourkela School. He further adds my school had a direct touch of The Mother in 1966 And She herself gave the name of the school. Just after passing class 10th I enrolled to this institute which just turned my life to a newer edge and the wonderful experience of last two years, I just cant forget those moments and the atmosphere around my school, It  has the positive vibrations and blessings of Lord Sri Aurobindo & The Divine Mother I m much grateful to be the part of Sri Aurobindo's Rourkela School .Which just changed my attitude towards life and taught me the true meaning of existence and the mission of my life. I wish to found and integral education institute after finishing my studies. I m also the part of Sri Aurobindo's Yoga Mandir ,Sector-5 Rourkela and shall be more and more sincere in spreading The Mother's work and shall have anything for the development of it .   

  The Ideal  system of Integral education with free progress system.