Guiding Light of The Month

O Lord, how ardently do I call and implore Thy love! Grant that my aspiration may be intense enough to awaken the same aspiration everywhere: oh, may good- ness, justice and peace reign as supreme masters, may ignorant egoism be overcome, darkness be suddenly illu- minated by Thy pure Light; may the blind see, the deaf hear, may Thy law be proclaimed in every place and, in a constantly progressive union, in an ever more perfect harmony, may all, like one single being, stretch out their arms towards Thee to identify themselves with Thee and manifest Thee upon earth. - The Mother

Question of the month

In August 1965 an education commission of the Government of India visited the Ashram to evaluate the ideals and educational methods of the Centre of Education. At that time a group of teachers submitted the following questions to the Mother.

Q: In view of the present and future of national and international living, what is it that India should aim at in education?

A:  The Mother: Prepare her children for the rejection of falsehood and the manifestation of Truth.


Q: By what steps could the country proceed to realize this high aim? How can a beginning in that direction be made?

A:  The Mother: Make matter ready to manifest the Spirit.


Q: What is India’s true genius and what is her destiny?

A:  The Mother: To teach to the world that matter is false and impotent unless it becomes the manifestation of the Spirit.

Q: How does the Mother view the progress of Science and Technology in India? What contribution can it make to the growth of the Spirit in man?

A:  The Mother: Its only use is to make the material basis stronger, completer and more effective for the manifestation of the Spirit.


Q: The Country feels much concerned about national unity. What is the Mother’s vision of things? How will India do her duty by herself and by the world?

A:  The Mother: The unity of all the nations is the compelling future of the world. But for the unity of all nations to be possible, each nation must first realize its own unity.


Q: The language problem harasses India a good deal. What would be our correct attitude in this matter?

A:  The Mother: Unity must be a living fact and not the imposition of an arbitrary rule. When India will be one, she will have spontaneously a language understood by all.


Q: Education has normally become literacy and a social status. Is it not an unhealthy trend? But how to give education its inner worth and intrinsic enjoyability?

A:  The Mother: Get out of conventions and insist on the growth of the soul.

Q: What illusions and delusions is our education today beset with? How could we possibly keep clear of them?

A:  The Mother: a)The almost exclusive importance given to success, career and money.
b) Insist on the paramount importance of the contact with the Spirit and the growth and manifestation of the Truth of the being.

(‘All India Magazine’ June 2001, “The Right Object of Education And India’s National Education”, Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry)

"The supreme truths are neither the rigid conclusions of logical reasoning nor the affirmations of creedal statement, but fruits of the soul’s inner experience." - Sri Aurobindo

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